Its combat days long behind it, the USS Ward gun sits peacefully amid a blanket of early December snow in this nighttime scene captured in 1972. (Bob Walsh, Pioneer Press/TNS)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Tribune News Service) — The gun that fired the first American shot of World War II will be moved from its longtime home in St. Paul this week, exactly 80 years after that defining conflict of the 20th century came to an end.
The destroyer USS Ward’s No. 3 deck gun, which a crew of St. Paulites used to sink a Japanese submarine off Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, has been on display outside the Veterans Service Building on the Capitol mall for 67 years.
On Tuesday — the anniversary of Japan’s 1945 surrender to the Allied Powers — the gun will be transferred to the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum at Camp Ripley in Little Falls, where it will take pride of place in a new 20,000-square-foot facility that is expected to open next fall, said Randal Dietrich, the museum’s executive director.
“The first thing visitors will see is this Ward gun,” he said. “It’s an opportunity and an obligation to do right by our World War II veterans — to make sure that history is preserved for the benefit of generations to come.”
The 11,000-pound gun, which was loaned to the state of Minnesota by the U.S. Navy in 1958, has served as the backdrop for World War II veteran reunions, Pearl Harbor Day commemorations and other events over the years. But decades spent exposed to the elements have taken their toll.
The state’s Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board approved the gun’s removal earlier this year after a months-long review process.
“We are losing it to time and the weather,” Dietrich said. “The gun that announced American entry into World War II is an important artifact. It needs to be indoors and professionally preserved.”
The museum, which has taken over the loan of the gun from the state, will spend the next 12 to 18 months restoring it before installing the gun as part of an exhibit that will tell the story of the Naval reservists from St. Paul who crewed it during the war. The gun remains the property of the Navy.
Dietrich asks members of the public who would like to attend the removal ceremony on Tuesday to RSVP at mnvetmuseum.org/vjday-rsvp.
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