Qualla: Honouliuli National Historic Site

Honouliuli National Historic Site: Introduction

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Japanese American internees called it jigoku dani -- Hell Valley. Tucked into a deep, isolated gulch near Waipahu on Oahu, Honouliuli Internment Camp was designed to be forgotten even while it operated. After it closed in 1946, the jungle did the rest. Tropical vegetation swallowed the flimsy structures, and the fact that Hawaii had run its own internment camp slipped from public memory almost entirely. It took a volunteer named Jane Kurahara, tracing an aqueduct visible in an old photograph, to rediscover the site in 2002. Today Honouliuli is a National Historic Site, a reminder that the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans was not confined to the mainland's desert camps.

Honouliuli National Historic Site: An Island Under Martial Law

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Hawaii was placed under martial law. More than 150,000 Japanese Americans lived in the territory, comprising over a third of the population. Incarcerating them all, as was done on the West Coast, would have collapsed Hawaii's ...

Honouliuli National Historic Site: Behind the Wire

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The camp opened in March 1943, receiving internees transferred from Sand Island. An eight-foot dual barbed-wire fence enclosed the compound. Eight watchtowers overlooked the grounds, staffed by a company of military police under the supervision of Captain Siegfried Spillner. The ...

Honouliuli National Historic Site: Lives Interrupted

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Among the internees was Sanji Abe, a legislator for the Territory of Hawaii who served his community in public office from 1895 until his death in 1982. Harry Urata, a music teacher, endured Honouliuli and was subsequently transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center on the...

Honouliuli National Historic Site: Swallowed by the Valley

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the camp closed in 1946, its structures -- built cheaply and for temporary use -- deteriorated quickly. The gulch's fast-growing tropical vegetation reclaimed the site within years. No markers were placed, no memorials built. The land changed hands several times, and in 2007...

Honouliuli National Historic Site: From Silence to Remembrance

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On February 24, 2015, President Barack Obama designated Honouliuli a national monument by presidential proclamation. The John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed on March 12, 2019, redesignated it as a national historic site, a status that helps se...