Expanded gallery holds soldiers’ war memories

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — A 40-ton, 76-foot-long Japanese mini-submarine, one of five used in the attack on Pearl Harbor 68 years ago Monday, has a new permanent home at the expanded National Museum of the Pacific War in the landlocked Hill Country of Texas.

The cigar-shaped black steel sub, once jammed with torpedoes, batteries and a tiny compartment for two crewmen, is a centerpiece exhibit at the new George H.W. Bush Gallery at the museum in Fredericksburg, about 60 miles northwest of San Antonio and the hometown of famed Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of American naval forces in the Pacific.

Former President Bush, who as the nation’s youngest naval aviator survived being shot down in the Pacific, is to be among an expected 4,000 attendants today when the expanded museum gallery that carries his name is dedicated.

"My Navy experience took a scared kid and made a man out of him,” said Bush. "For me, the Navy was both honorable and most satisfying. No question about that.”

The museum, which attracts 80,000 to 100,000 visitors a year, has grown to an entire city block since the mid 1960s when it began on the site of a century-old hotel once owned by Nimitz’s family and notable in pioneer days as the only place around with a bathtub.

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