An 86-year-old survivor of the Japanese attack on the Pacific Fleet says a two-year, $58 million upgrade of the USS Arizona Memorial shoreside facilities is the least that can be done to honor the 2,402 killed and 1,282 wounded on Dec. 7, 1941.

“;We can't do enough,”; said Art Herriford, who now lives in Van Nuys, Calif., “;to apprise the world of what went on here. We lost a lot of very, very young men.”;

Herriford described plans to renovate the 28-year-old USS Arizona Memorial visitor center as “;awesome.”;

Herriford was a 19-year-old battery range finder operator on the light cruiser USS Detroit when Japanese fighters attacked his ship and others moored at Ford Island 67 years ago.

The National Park Service, which has run the center since 1980, the Navy and the Arizona Memorial Museum Association yesterday broke ground on a new facility that will be called the Pearl Harbor Memorial Museum and Visitor Center.

The new facility will be built on the 11 acres where the current visitor center sits, but the site will be enlarged by six acres, using the area where the Ford Island ferry used to dock. The new museum and visitor center, at 23,600 square feet, will nearly double the size of the current museum.

Construction is expected to be completed in September 2010 with a grand opening planned for the 69th observance of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 2010.

Sen. Daniel Inouye said the creation of a new memorial and museum is “;in our national interest. When people forget about their past - past glories and past crises - it does something to our national character and spirit.

“;It could put us in jeopardy. We are hoping this will rebuild our spirit once again.”;

In his keynote address, Inouye, a Medal of Honor recipient, recalled that a national survey of high school seniors in 1991 revealed that half of them did not understand the significance of Dec. 7, 1941, or a place called Pearl Harbor.

“;I would hate to think that the thousands of men who gave their lives on that fateful day and the painful days that followed did so in vain.

“;We're spending a whole lot of money to make this very attractive,”; Inouye later told reporters, “;so that generations to come will find themselves coming here to learn something about Pearl Harbor.”;

Designed to accommodate 2,400 visitors a day, the visitor center now draws twice that number. Some 1.5 million visitors a year pay homage at the state's leading tourist destination.

When it was built in 1980 on “;reclaimed land”; where fill material was used to expand the Halawa Basin area, the visitor center was designed to settle no more than 18 inches. However, over the years, the center has settled more than 30 inches, allowing water from the harbor to seep into the basement and degrade the concrete structure.

The Arizona Memorial, which was built in 1962, spans the midsection of the battleship, which was sunk by Japanese warplanes, making it a maritime tomb for the remains of more than 900 sailors, officers and Marines of the battleship's 1,177 crew who were killed.

The new visitor center will house a ticket booth where visitors will be able to obtain information and tickets for the four major Pearl Harbor sites - the USS Arizona Memorial, the Battleship Missouri Memorial, the USS Bowfin Museum and the Pacific Aviation Museum.

In September the Navy awarded Watts Construction a $32.6 million contract to build the new visitor center and museum.

The existing theater will be renovated and another added, doubling current capacity.

The current center will remain open during construction.