As thousands of people head to Pearl Harbor anniversary ceremonies today, they'll find new signs to help them get there more easily.

In the past, as many as 600 people a day looking for the USS Arizona Memorial and other visitor attractions instead have ended up at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, according to one study. The new signs are designed to end the confusion between the two destinations, state officials said.

"Many visitors become lost and find themselves stopped at the gate into Naval Station Pearl Harbor, resulting in visitor frustration, lengthy waiting periods for those entering the base and Navy gate guards managing additional and unnecessary traffic," said state Rep. Mark Takai, who headed a task force trying to fix the problem.

Officials hope the new signs will substantially decrease the number of misdirected tourists, who often had to follow a complicated detour through a Navy housing area to get on the right track again.

The problem was large highway signs labeled "Pearl Harbor," which many visitors thought referred to the attractions, which include the USS Missouri Memorial, the USS Bowfin Submarine and the new Pacific Aviation museum, said Dietra A. Myers Tremblay, who studied the traffic patterns last year as part of her master's degree work in the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Myers Tremblay spent two weeks outside the naval station gates counting the number of drivers who thought they were going to see the sights only to be turned away by stern-faced sentries.

Myers Tremblay said the number of people who arrived at the Navy base gates was as high as 684 one day; that's 15.2 percent of the 4,500 people who visit the Arizona Memorial on an average day.

"And when you consider how many people arrive on a bus or tour, the percentage of lost drivers could be a lot higher," she said.

Takai and other lawmakers had been meeting with representatives of the historic sites since 2005 to create a Pearl Harbor Historic District and soon discovered the highway sign problem.

The new signs installed on the H-1 Freeway and Kamehameha Highway will distinguish between the visitor areas open to the public, and the base, which is closed to the public, said Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa.

As part of the project, the Department of Transportation last month installed six ground-level signs along Nimitz and Kamehameha highways pointing people to the Pearl Harbor historic sites. The new signs are brown — the color reserved for National Park Service and other historic sites.

This week, the Transportation Department began the second phase of the project, replacing existing large, overhead signs along the H-1 Freeway near the airport. The signs direct visitors to either "Pearl Harbor Historic Sites" or "Naval Base," allowing them to distinguish between the destinations, Ishikawa said.

The state was able to keep the project costs to about $25,000 by overlaying the new signs on old ones, rather than replacing the entire structure, he said.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.