March Events: 10th Anniversary Kickoff

March marks the official 10th Anniversary Kickoff celebrations for Honouliuli National Historic Site. Though the park was established on February 24, March is a significant month for the park since the camp itself was opened in March, the park was redesignated as a National Historic Site this month, and Honouliuli was added to the National Register of Historic Places in March.

The first set of speakers to launch the festivities are the archaeologist team heavily involved with laying the foundation for Honouliuli to become a National Monument. There will also be an in-person panel event.

The park service also acknowledges that March is Women's History Month, and in honor of the women imprisoned at Honouliuli, there will be special tours of the Konko Mission of Wahiawa, a mission founded by Honouliuli incarceree Haruko Takahashi in May and August. To learn more about the women incarcerated during WWII, visit our Women in the Camps page.

Please Note:

Nearly all of our Speaker Series events will be virtual.

Event details will be posted closer to the month in which they take place. Please check back for updates to the calendar and event pages.

---

Speakers: Mary M. Farrell and Jeff Burton

Date and Time: March 30, 2025, 3:00-4:00PM (HST). Please register for the event using the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88062574509.

You will receive a confirmation email after registering. This event is free and open to the public.

Discussion Summary: Hell Valley: Uncovering a WWII Civilian and POW Prison Camp in Paradise

When it was rediscovered by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi (JCCH), the Honouliuli Prisoner of War (POW) and Civilian Internment Camp was hidden in a densely vegetated gulch-- only 14 miles northwest of Honolulu, but worlds away. The site was buried not just physically, but also historically: although the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from the west coast of the United States was chronicled in books, movies, plays, museums, and countless articles, there was a widespread belief that there had been no internment of civilians in Hawaiʻi during World War II. Volunteers from JCCH and students from the University of Hawaiʻi braved the dense vegetation to document that the site indeed had many remnants of the prison camp. With those concrete slabs, rock walls, guard tower foundations, and fences, Honouliuli retains enough archaeological integrity to be listed on the National Register, an important first step on becoming a National Historic Site. As a unit of the National Park Service, Honouliuli will be able to tell its story of how the U.S. has treated its citizens and POWs in times of crisis.

Biographies:

Jeff Burton is the Cultural Resources Program Manager at Manzanar National Historic Site in California. Although he has published reports on topics ranging from pre-contact Indigenous camps and Pueblo villages to Spanish missions and frontier Army posts, his passion is the archaeology of World War II Japanese American internment sites. He has conducted work at Poston, Minidoka, Tule Lake, and Manzanar, and has taught a summer field class at Honouliuli Internment Camp in Hawaiʻi. Since 1993 he has directed archaeological investigations at Manzanar, and his 2001 nation-wide overview of internment sites was cited in the national law that created the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. His documentation of still-extant remains at other incarceration camps has helped lead to the designation of three of the places as National Historic Sites: Minidoka, Tule Lake, and Honouliuli. In 2017 he received an award for excellence from the Society for American Archaeology. He has published articles in academic journals and his work is featured in site tours, visitor handouts, and in an NHK-Japan documentary.

Some of Jeff Burton's publications can be found here.

Mary M. Farrell is a senior archaeologist for TEAM Environmental, Inc. (Bishop, California). Most of her career was with the U.S. Forest Service in California and Arizona, where she had the privilege of working with volunteers, Tribal members, and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Universidad de Sonora on projects exploring public archaeology, historic preservation, and traditional perspectives on land use and stewardship. But some of her most important work has focused on World War II incarceration of civilians, working with Jeff Burton on projects at Manzanar, Minidoka, Poston, and Tule Lake, and leading an effort to honor Gordon Hirabayashi and other Japanese Americans who resisted the unconstitutional mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. With the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu, she and Jeff led a field class at Honouliuli for four summers, prepared the National Register nomination, and contributed to the Special Resource Study that led to the designation of Honouliuli as a National Monument.

Some of Mary Farrell's publications can be found here.

Honouliuli 10th Anniversary Celebration Kickoff Event (Concluded)

Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i

Date and Location: March 27, 2025, 2454 S. Beretania St. Honolulu, HI 96826, 10:00-11:00 AM

About the Event: Join the National Park Service and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i to kickoff the 10th anniversary celebrations at the Generations Ballroom, located within the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i. This event is free and open to the public.

Panel members Carole Hayashino, former JCCH president and David Lassner, former University of Hawai‘i President will share how Honouliuli became a national park and the role of their respective institutions. The panel members will be joined by Superintendent Christine Ogura who will share the latest information about the park.