Spring 2002

Alfred Yee’s work commemorates military personnel who gave their lives in the attack on Pearl Harbor

When 16-year-old Alfred Yee saw Japanese bombers navigating low over his Kaimuki house on December 7, 1941, he thought his life was over. Little did he know he would play a role in commemorating all American military personnel who gave their lives for America that day during the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

The 1948 civil engineering graduate was the lead structural engineer for the USS Arizona Memorial, which straddles the hull of the battleship USS Arizona that was sunk during the attack.  The memorial, which was completed in 1961 and dedicated in 1962, received much attention last December with the observation of the 60^th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Yee’s job was to implement the design of architect Alfred Preis.  As described by Preis, “the memorial sags in the center but becomes strong and vigorous at the ends, expressing initial defeat and ultimate victory.” 

To achieve the desired effect of the memorial  “we had to build a structure to span clear of the width of the ship,” Yee explained.  “Due to ground settlement, the hull of the battleship keeps moving and we can’t depend on it for support.”  The 184-foot span is supported by independent piers 111 feet apart.  The Arizona lies in water 40 feet deep and pilings for the piers had to be driven to 150-foot depths.  

A solution for building the span led Yee to precast a set of “tuning fork-shaped" girder sections in concrete that geometrically fit to provide balance to the various sections.  Each precast section weighs 137 tons and is post-tensioned together to produce a structure combining precast with poured concrete. 

Discussing the memorial with Yee could earn the listener a continuing education credit in structural engineering, but the structure is more than an engineering project to him:  “Whenever I went to the memorial site during the construction, I got a lump in my throat and I became emotional because there are 1,177 dead at that site. It’s really a graveyard." 

“The memorial park has a movie about the history of the USS Arizona and the attack on Pearl Harbor which is shown to the visitors before boarding a shuttle to the USS Arizona.  As I frequently take visitors to the memorial,  I must have seen the movie at least 100 times, and I always get tears in my eyes when it's over.” 

Yee’s relationship to the memorial goes back to the Pearl Harbor attack itself.  “I was one of many who saw Japanese pilots, their faces, goggles and leather helmets,” Yee remembered.  “The thought I had was that they were going to land and then imprison and starve us to death.  I thought I was never going to have the opportunity to grow up to be a man.” 

The young man’s prediction did not come true.  He grew up and quite quickly, as did many people his age in that era.  He volunteered to help in a chemistry lab at Pearl Harbor shortly after the attack.  When he was subsequently drafted into the military, he was assigned to the Signal Corps as a buck private teaching electronics at Fort Shafter in Honolulu. 

After the war, he came to Rose Poly and made what he calls “the best choice I ever made…Rose gave me such a strong basic engineering education.”  After receiving his degree in civil engineering, he went to Yale where he received a master’s degree in structural engineering in 1949. 

Yee returned to Hawaii where he participated in organizing one of the first precast/prestressed concrete production facilities in the country.  He remembers analyzing the economics of prestressing and precasting concrete to significantly reduce the amount of concrete and steel needed to carry the same load for the same span.  Through the years, Yee has obtained numerous patents for his inventions in the area of precast construction devices, methods, and structural framing systems.  He has put his skills and knowledge to use throughout the Pacific Rim in high-rise buildings, offshore platforms and oceangoing concrete vessels. 

At the age of 76, Yee shows no signs of slowing down.  He is president of Applied Technology Corporation, an international structural engineering consulting firm, specializing in precast concrete design. 

Yee’s work graces several locations, including the Philippines, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, China and Guam.  Yee even works with the country that struck fear in his heart 60 years ago.  “At the time of the bombing, I was sore at the Japanese, but today I’m doing business with them.  They’re good people, and it all goes back to their leadership at that time.”