President Obama Orders Flags Removed from Pearl Harbor Memorial-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Claims that President Obama ordered the removal of American flags from the Marine Remembrance memorial at Pearl Harbor have gone viral.
The Truth:
President Obama didn’t order American flags to be removed from a Marine Remembrance memorial at Pearl Harbor.
That rumor went viral in May 2016 when the website Departed published photos of flag supposedly being removed from Pearl Harbor’s Marine Remembrance under the headline, “Marine Corps Pearl Harbor Memorial Flags Removed at Obama’s Request!”
The post, which had more than 80,000 views and hundreds of comments from enraged viewers who believe that Obama had actually ordered the removal of flags from Pearl Harbor, doesn’t include any text. Instead, it includes a serious of photos of what viewers can only assume is flags being taken down at Obama’s request — but that’s not the case.
This above photo, for example, was taken in December 2015 and it shows two sailors aboard the USS Essex amphibious assault ship somberly commemorating the 74th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks as they passed the USS Arizona Memorial. And the flag in the photo is not being removed — it’s flying at half-staff to honor the lives lost in the Pearl Harbor attack, Bay News 9 reports.
Additional photos that show men pointing at a flag at the Marine Remembrance Memorial first appeared at the website Americans Working Together in 2007, before President Obama was sworn into office. At the time, the flagpoles were reportedly voluntarily removed due to the National Park Service’s record of maintenance (it’s not clear exactly what that means, or if the flagpoles were ever put up again):
And prior to the voluntary removal of the flags in 2007, there was even more flap over the Marine Remembrance Memorial’s flags. Jonathan Jarvis, who oversaw redevelopment at Pearl Harbor as the director of the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service before he was appointed director of the National Park Service, reportedly ordered the removal of the Marine Remembrance to make way for redevelopment but was rebuffed by a grassroots veterans effort.
So, there’s been plenty of debate about flags and memorials over the years at Pearl Harbor — but they had nothing do with President Obama. That’s why we’re calling this one fiction.