We are delighted and gratified that the former internment and POW camp at Honouliuli has just been officially designated as a site for a historical monument.

It is altogether proper that this historical site is now to be preserved so that future generations will remember how so many Japanese-Americans from various islands of Hawaii were incarcerated during the Pacific War in flagrant violation of the United States Constitution and basic human rights.

What is little known, however, is that as many as 2,700 Koreans also were detained at Honouliuli during the war.

Most of these Koreans were non-combatant civilian laborers, forcibly mobilized by the Japanese military to work on various military facilities throughout the Pacific.

They included a small number of Korean soldiers conscripted into the Japanese military as well as three fishermen who were kidnapped — yes, abducted at gunpoint — by the United States Navy and brought to Honouliuli.

In remembering the Honouliuli Camp for posterity, we should not forget how these Koreans were brought to Hawaii.

Under the colonial rule of Japan, several millions of Koreans were forcibly mobilized to work for Japan’s war causes. A large number of them worked on various islands in the Pacific (the exact number is yet to be determined), and more than 2,700 of them ended up as prisoners of war at Honouliuli.

The first group was brought to Hawaii after the battle of Makin Atoll. The Japanese authorities had placed some 276 Koreans on Makin Atoll, and after bitter fighting, only 105 Koreans, less than half, had survived and were brought to Hono-uliuli, according to one historian.

In the battle of Tarawa Atoll, there were more than 4,700 Japanese defenders, including 1,200 Korean laborers. After four days of fierce fighting, the only survivors were one Japanese officer, 16 enlisted men, and 129 Korean laborers. These Koreans were taken to Honouliuli.

Saipan was another place where thousands of Koreans died after ferocious battles, and those Koreans who survived, numbering 300 to 400, were brought to Honouliuli, most requiring medical treatment from Japanese abuses.

Koreans experienced similar situations over and over again throughout the Pacific. Those who were brought to Hawaii were only a small fragment who survived, and a much larger number — yet unaccounted for — of innocent Korean civilians perished.

And then, there are two other cases.

There were three college students who were conscripted into the Japanese military, deserted out of their nationalistic motivation, and volunteered to work for the United States Office of Strategic Service (OSS).

While still under training as special agents for OSS, the war came to the end; overnight, they were reduced to POWs and were sent to the Honouliuli Camp.

Later, one of them, Pak Sundong, was immortalized in Korean literature as a major fictional character by his nephew, Cho Chong-rae, in one of the all-time best sellers in Korea, "T’aebaek Sanmaek."

The case of Kim Tokyun, Kim Kich’an, and Ch’oe Kumbong is a most startling example of abduction by the United States Navy.

In early 1945, the United States was reconnoitering the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula.

On April 6, an American submarine, Tirante, surfaced in the calm sea near Samch’onp’o, fired guns upon fishing boats, forcibly removed three Koreans at gunpoint, and took them to Hawaii.

The United States Navy wanted military information on the Korean coast.

The abduction team was headed by Lt. Endicott Peabody, a Harvard graduate who went on to become a governor of Massachusetts.

To this date, no American — institution or individual — has ever apologized to these Koreans and their families.

In memorializing the Honouliuli Camp, we must remember these Koreans as the innocent victims of the horrific war.