A 2015 Kaimuki High School graduate earlier this month recalled how his political science professor at Creighton University had never heard of the Honouliuli internment camp, where hundreds of Japanese-Americans were confined during World War II.

“I think there’s a lot of work needed to educate the rest of the country, not only in Hawaii,” said Premsak Phosi at a recent regional youth summit held at the Pacific Aviation Museum on Ford Island.

Phosi, a political science major who just completed his freshman year at Creighton, was among the panelists at the Smithsonian Youth Summit on Japanese American Incarceration in World War II. He emphasized the importance of telling the story of Honouliuli and the civil rights violations against Japanese-Americans in order to prevent a repeat of the past.

More than 50 students from La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls, Campbell High School and Kaimuki High School attended the summit, which was co-hosted by the museum and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii. The Smithsonian Institute’s National Youth Summit events were also held in Michigan, Colorado, Washington and Washington, D.C.

An excerpt from the film “The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii,” which featured former internees who were confined during the war, was shown. Honouliuli was the longest-operating and largest WWII internment and prisoner-of-war camp in Hawaii. Nearly 4,000 individuals were confined there, including German-Americans and immigrants of Italian, Irish, Russian and Scandinavian descent.

Honouliuli opened March 1, 1943, after the government shut down a Sand Island detention camp. The 160-acre site surrounded by barbed wire was in a hidden gulch in West Oahu. Internees called the camp “jigoku dani,” which means “hell valley.”

The Rev. Todd Takahashi, associate minister of the Konko Mission of Honolulu, spoke to summit attendees about his aunt Haruko Takahashi, founder of the Konko Mission of Wahiawa, who was confined at Honouliuli for 18 months. She had dual citizenship and was interned because she was a Shinto priestess.

Takahashi broke down in tears when he recalled how his father stopped reading FBI records of his grandfather Zenji Takahashi of Hawi, who was detained at Sand Island before he was sent to an internment camp near Santa Fe, N.M.

Takahashi’s father came across the word “yellow” used to describe his grandfather’s skin color. “This had a profound effect on him and he just did not want to read past the first page,” said Takahashi in an email.

In 2015, President Barack Obama designated Honouliuli a national monument.