With Pearl Harbor, you need to either secure your tour time from the limited number of tickets available on the web site at 60 days out. Or you need to arrive early to wait in the standby line to get an assigned tour time. The closer you are to the front of the line, the earlier your tour time will be. The later your tour time, the more time you have to wait there. There is a museum area that's free (took us about an hour). You don't want to have to leave and come back, because parking can be a challenge later in the day.
I've not been on December 7th, but I imagine its a madhouse. I would probably arrive around 5am or earlier to get in the standby line for tickets. Personally, I would choose another day.
Another option is an organized tour. I'm not sure what Aulani offers, but we took one that included transportation to and from our Waikiki hotel. They also facilitated getting our tour tickets for us because our group needed to be on the same time schedule, so we didn't have to worry about getting an optimal tour time. I imagine all organized tours operate this way.