Six years after Honouliuli was designated a national monument, officials still are not sure when the former internment and prisoner of war camp will officially open to the public.
But with the hiring of the national historic site’s first superintendent and only full-time staffer in March, officials say they have big plans ahead, including asking for public input on what they would like to see there.
Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong, Honouliuli National Historic Site superintendent, said plans are progressing but at a slower pace than anticipated due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the long contracting process. Before beginning larger projects, she said, an environmental assessment must first be completed, including soil testing and surveying of the 123-acre site.
Wakatsuki-Chong said the National Park Service hopes to start that soon but is still working on contracts. Once contracts are awarded for the assessment, it could take up to a year to complete. After that, she said, work will start on two main projects: stabilizing a retaining wall that could block access to the site should it fail, and removing soil from an aqueduct that runs through the property.
Another major consideration is determining a permanent way for the public to access the site.
The NPS already has completed two of three planning milestones for Honouliuli. In 2019 a 52-page Foundation Document provided basic guidance for planning and management decisions, including descriptions of the park, its purpose and historical significance, environmental conditions, the cultural landscape and archaeological features.
A 32-page preliminary project planning document, completed in September, delved more deeply into the planning process and made recommendations on priorities, such as conducting studies to determine public access.
Wakatsuki-Chong said next to come is a general management plan that asks members of the public what they would like to see at the historic site, a process that typically spans two years.
In the meantime, tours of Honouliuli that were organized through the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii starting in 2010 will remain closed. Wakatsuki-Chong said there is no tentative opening date for the site yet or for when tours might resume.
“The NPS manages six sites that tell the Japanese American incarceration story. We only have 423 park units, so that’s significant,” she said. “That’s more than 1% of the sites dedicated to this. That’s the National Park Service’s commitment to tell these stories.”
Dedicated as a national monument in 2015 by former President Barack Obama, Honouliuli housed 175 buildings, 14 guard towers and more than 400 tents from 1943 to 1945. The site was known by the camp’s 400 internees and 4,000 prisoners of war as Jigoku-Dani, or Hell Valley.
Most of Honouliuli’s civilian internees were Japanese Americans suspected of disloyalty, many of whom were community, business and religious leaders.
Nate Gyotoku, JCCH president and executive director, said the public can still learn about Honouliuli through the nonprofit’s education center. Open 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, the center is free to the public and features historical photos, artifacts, oral history videos and virtual tours of Honouliuli.
Gyotoku said the center still receives calls from the public asking when the popular site tours will resume.
“There are a lot of people who want to go,” he said. “It’s important to keep that history alive. For us, we want to be able to continue educating the public on the story. It’s an important story to keep telling.”
As a new monument, Honouliuli is allocated about $350,000 annually in base funds from the NPS, which could increase over time, Wakatsuki-Chong said. Depending on projects, she said, the site receives additional federal dollars, including about $6,400 in grant money last year to pay interns and to work with students from the University of Hawaii at West Oahu and Manoa on oral history projects and archaeological research.
With Wakatsuki-Chong as the only full-time staffer, the historic site shares some workers, including from business administration and facilities and maintenance, with the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. She said there are plans to hire two additional full-time employees — a cultural resource specialist and a maintenance worker — over the next fiscal year.
As a Japanese American whose family was incarcerated at war relocation centers at Manzanar and Tule Lake in California and Minidoka in Idaho, Wakatsuki-Chong said she brings a unique perspective to her job. Four generations — her great-great-grandmother, who was born in Honolulu and moved to the mainland, great-grandparents, grandparents and aunts and uncles — were incarcerated at Manzanar during World War II.
Her father, the fifth of eight children, was the first of his siblings born outside of the camp after the war ended.
“This is part of our nation’s history. A lot of it is understanding the racial prejudice and civil liberty
violations,” she said. “Anti-Asian sentiment went unchecked and led to these (incarceration camps during the war). We need to make sure that we understand our history so we don’t repeat it. We don’t want this to happen again.”
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Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
