 In 1916 , part of Ford Island was sold to the U.S. Army for use by an aviation division in Hawaii , and by 1939 it was taken over by the U.S. Navy as a station for battleship and submarine maintenance . From the 1910s to the 1940s , the island continued to grow as a strategic center of operations for the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Ocean . Ford Island was at the center of the attack on Pearl Harbor and on the U.S. Pacific Fleet by the Japanese fleet on December 7 , 1941 . It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 , and as of 2011 the National Trust for Historic Preservation has listed the island as one of the United States ' most @-@ endangered historic sites . 
