The museum's origins trace to 1983, when the Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce pushed for an aviation museum to be housed inside Honolulu International Airport. That first iteration, the Pacific Aerospace Museum, opened in 1991 under founder Frank Der Yuen. Airport expansion plans forced its closure in 2001, and two years later the exhibits were removed. But the idea refused to die. A new foundation picked up the mission and set its sights on a far more ambitious location: Ford Island itself, the heart of the Pearl Harbor attack. Senator Daniel Inouye championed the vision as part of a broader rebirth for the island. Support came from remarkable corners -- former President George H. W. Bush, Chuck Yeager, and Paul Tibbets all served on the board. Astronaut Walter Schirra lent his name to fundraising efforts. On December 7, 2006, exactly sixty-five years after the attack, the museum opened its doors in Hangar 37.

Hangar 37, once a seaplane hangar, sprawls across 7.25 acres and houses nine exhibits, a movie theater, and flight simulators. The eleven-million-dollar renovation preserved the building's scars while creating a modern museum experience. Among the aircraft on display is a Japanese A6M2-21 Zero, a model similar to those used in the Pearl Harbor attack. Salvaged in 1968 and restored to flying condition by 1985, it eventually made its way to the museum in 2006. Nearby sits the Boeing N2S-3 Stearman biplane that a young George H. W. Bush used for flight training -- including his first solo flight. A ten-foot-tall, forty-foot-wide diorama of the Battle of Midway, commissioned for $400,000 and built over three years by former Navy pilot Karl Lau, brings the pivotal 1942 naval engagement to life in miniature detail.

Rising above the hangars, the Ford Island control tower holds a singular distinction: it was the location of the first radio alert during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Designated a national historic landmark since 1964 alongside the runway, the tower became a personal cause for Senator Inouye. The museum committed over $7.5 million to its restoration, with a $3.8 million Department of Defense grant providing the initial funding. Defense firms donated nearly $449,000 toward the effort, many contributions made in Inouye's memory. The restoration work, led by Kiewit Building Group -- the same contractor that built the museum -- aimed to return this Category 1 historic structure to its wartime appearance. Because Ford Island remains part of the active military installation at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, reaching the museum requires a tour bus from the Pearl Harbor Historic Sites at Halawa Landing, adding a sense of crossing into a place still shaped by its military purpose.

In 2012, the museum became a Smithsonian Institution affiliate, joining the network of museums that extend the Smithsonian's reach beyond Washington. By April 2013, it had welcomed its millionth visitor. But the museum's ambitions extend beyond tourism. Its education programs have reached 3,500 students from 40 schools, including a cultural heritage exchange that connected Kaiser High School students with peers in Chengdu, China, to research 1940s American-Chinese relations. In 2021, the museum opened a 4,000-square-foot Aviation Learning Center. The Historic Hawaii Foundation awarded the museum a preservation honor in 2007 for its redevelopment of Hangar 37, and TripAdvisor ranked it among the top eight aviation attractions in the United States. Here on Ford Island, surrounded by the quiet waters of Pearl Harbor and the rusting hulks of ships that never left, aviation history is not abstract. It happened right here, in these hangars, on this runway, under this sky.