BARKING SANDS — Kauai’s Pacific Missile Range Facility is planning to drop the missile — from its own name. “We’re called the Pacific Missile Range Facility, but here’s some insider baseball,” said Capt. Bruce Hay, commander of PMRF. “We’re not
BARKING SANDS — Kauai’s Pacific Missile Range Facility is planning to drop the missile — from its own name.
“We’re called the Pacific Missile Range Facility, but here’s some insider baseball,” said Capt. Bruce Hay, commander of PMRF. “We’re not going to be called (PMRF) forever.”
Instead, the base is moving forward on an initiative to honor the late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye by changing its name to the Inouye Pacific Range Facility. Hay made the announcement Wednesday during a Military Appreciation Luncheon, drawing applause from the roughly 50 people gathered at the Barking Sands facility.
“Although we’re taking missile out of our name — because we do a lot more than just missiles — that will always be part of our heritage here,” he said. “And that’s how we got our start.”
A World War II veteran, Inouye received the Congressional Medal of Honor — the nation’s top military honor — for his bravery charging a series of machine gun nests in San Terenzo, Italy in 1945, which cost him his right arm.
Later in life he became the nation’s first Japanese-American congressman and was later elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served 50 years. He died in Dec. 2012, at the age of 88, as the most senior U.S. senator and the second-longest serving senator in American history.
Hay said renaming the base in honor of Inouye, a man who had strong ties to the military, the island of Kauai and PMRF, was “befitting.”
“He was a great advocate and champion for the range,” Hay said. “It doesn’t seem like enough to pay (him) back.”
Jennifer Sabas, director of the Daniel K. Inouye Institute Fund, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The idea was reportedly brought forward by PMRF officials and predates when Hay took over as commander of the base in July 2013. Hay said the name change initiative stalled for awhile but is now moving through the military chain of command and to the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert. So far, it has been endorsed by the U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, with the final decision slated to be made in Washington, D.C.
While the change is not yet a done deal, the skipper is confident it will go through.
“It’s been supported at every level of our chain of command, so the likelihood of it not getting honored is pretty small,” he said.
Hay recognized that the renaming of a U.S. Naval facility that has been around since 1958 may take time and will not be an easy task.
“We have to figure out logos and all kinds of other crazy stuff,” he said.
The move won’t be the first time a historic Kauai landmark changed its name to honor Inouye. In May of 2013, a formal dedication ceremony was held in Kilauea to rename the 100-year-old lighthouse there as the Daniel K. Inouye Kilauea Point Lighthouse.
PMRF, located on Kauai’s Westside, is the world’s largest instrumented multi-environmental range capable of supported surface, subsurface, air and space operations simultaneously, according to its homepage. There are over 1,100 square miles of instrumented underwater range and over 42,000 square miles of controlled airspace.
