The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii held a private ceremony Friday at Honouliuli to mark the 75th anniversary of the first day the internment camp opened during World War II.

A group of nearly 30 people comprising Koichi Ito, consul general of Japan in Hawaii; Jacqueline Ashwell, superintendent of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument; family members of former internees; and staff and volunteers of the cultural center participated in a special pilgrimage to the former internment site in West Oahu.

Honouliuli, the largest and longest-operating internment camp in Hawaii, first opened on March 2, 1943.

Unlike the mainland’s mass internment of Japanese-Americans after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, authorities confined selected Japanese-Americans in the territory of Hawaii, which included Buddhist priests and community leaders.

The cultural center has identified 17 confinement sites across Hawaii.

Over the course of the war, about 400 civilian internees and 4,000 prisoners of war were held at Honouliuli, which is in a deep gulch in Kunia and was surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. During their confinement they endured intense heat and lots of mosquitoes.

Almost seven decades after the interment camp closed, President Barack Obama proclaimed Honouliuli as a national monument in 2015. Much work still needs to be done before it opens to the public, which could take up to 10 years.

During the pilgrimage Friday morning, cultural center volunteers led the group to view some of the remaining features of the former internment camp, including an aqueduct and a retaining rock wall. Some attendees waved off mosquitoes as they walked on a narrow paved path lined with tall guinea grass.

The event concluded with a ceremony held on a large concrete slab where the mess hall once stood. Bishop Chishin Hirai of the Nichiren Mission of Hawaii and Bishop Shugen Komagata, grandson of former internee Bishop Zenkyo Komagata of the Soto Mission of Hawaii, officiated the ceremony to honor the memory of the hundreds of internees.

As 91-year-old Edna Saifuku stood on the concrete foundation, a painful memory emerged of how they were not allowed to have any physical contact with their father, Sam Nishimura, during family visits held at the mess hall.

She was 15 when she visited her father at Honouliuli. “We couldn’t touch him,” Saifuku said. “My sister, who was 2-1/2 years old … she wanted to hug him, but we couldn’t do it.”

Nishimura, a nisei born and raised in Haleiwa, owned a tailor shop there. In April 1942 authorities detained him at Sand Island and later transferred him to Honouliuli. Altogether he was confined for 2-1/2 years. During that time his wife, Hisae, cared for their six children and tirelessly worked at the tailor shop.

For Superintendent Ashwell, standing on the concrete slab was a tangible reminder of events that should have never happened.

She acknowledged efforts of the National Park Service’s partners in keeping the history of Honouliuli alive in their shared mission to ensure the former internment site “is not forgotten.”