trumpeter new jersey

In all honesty, your best course of action is to get hold of a Tamiya 1/700 Missouri. It's a beautiful kit - and represents that ship in her WWII configuration. All the Iowa-class ships got heavily modified after the war; changing a kit in 1983 configuration back to the WWII version would be a real challenge. And it probably would end up costing more than the Tamiya kit.

There were some differences between the Missouri and the New Jersey. The latter came out of the shipyard with a round bridge structure that was unique among the ships of the class. By the end of the war, however, she had a "square" bridge that looked almost exactly like the Missouri's. Making an accurate model of the New Jersey from that kit would be pretty straightforward - and if you didn't make any changes at all (other than the color scheme) few people would notice.

Also, the aft supestructure was heavily modified to accept Harpoon and Tomahawk cruise missiles, all 40 mm and 20 mm guns were removed long ago and the entire mast and radar suite is different. I'd say it would be simpler to just buy a WWII version.