Honouliuli National Historic Site
The Honouliuli Internment Camp was one of five internment camps in Hawaii during World War II.[1][2]
Construction and operation
Run by the US Army, the camp's supervisor was Captain Siegfried Spillner.[3] The camp was constructed on 160 acres of land near Ewa on the island of Oahu to hold internees from the Sand Island camp.[4] It opened in March 1943.[5] The isolated location in a deep gulch led Japanese American internees to nickname it jigoku dani (地獄谷, literally "hell valley").[6]
The camp was set up to hold as many as 3,000 people, though it never held more than 320 at any one time.[7] It was divided by barbed wire into sections, intended to separate internees by gender, nationality, and military or civilian status. By August 1943, there were 69 Japanese and 160 Japanese Americans interned there, according to the report of a colonel from the Swedish Legation who inspected the camp under the Geneva Convention. The camp would come to hold not just Japanese, but Italians, Germans, and Koreans as well. The first Korean prisoners were believed to have arrived in late 1943 or early 1944; they comprised non-combatant laborers captured during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign. A Korean-language newsletter, the Free Press for Liberated Korea (자유한인보), was written and mimeographed by three Korean soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army interned in the camp; it continued publication until December 1945.[5]
Closure and aftermath
After the camp's closure, the land was purchased by the Oahu Sugar Company, which already grew sugar on adjacent lands.[1][8] However, they did not grow sugar on the camp land itself, but rather rented it out as a dumping ground for wrecked cars.[8] Campbell Estates later acquired the land and rented it out to farmers for cultuvation.[1] Some former barracks were converted into vacation cabins.[9] The fact that the land had once held an internment camp was largely forgotten until the late 1990s, when Jane Kurahara, a volunteer from the Japanese Cultural Center, began a search for it; she located it in 2002 by tracing an aqueduct in the background of an old photo.[1] The efforts to learn more about the camp's history attracted the attention of archaeologist Jeff Burton, an expert on Japanese American internment in the mainland; he visited the camp site in February 2006 to map the foundations of old barracks.[2]
Notable internees
- Sanji Abe, legislator for the Territory of Hawaii[6]
- Thomas Sakakihara, legislator for the Territory of Hawaii[6]
- Pak Sun-dong, Japanese Imperial Army draftee who later worked for the US' Office of Strategic Services and wrote an award-winning memoir[5][10]
Notes
- ^ a b c d Gordon, Mike (2005-11-27), "Wartime stain in history retraced in O'ahu's brush", The Honolulu Advertiser, retrieved 2009-12-10
- ^ a b Gordon, Mike (2006-02-05), "Under Honouliuli brush, dark history", The Honolulu Advertiser, retrieved 2009-12-10
- ^ Hirose 1993, p. 167
- ^ Kashima 2003, p. 84
- ^ a b c Choe 2009
- ^ a b c Chun, Gary C. W. (2009-12-07), "Exhibit shows the harsh life of Honouliuli internment camp", Honolulu Star-Bulletin, retrieved 2009-12-10
- ^ Gordon, Mike (2008-03-03), "WWII internment camp revisited", The Honolulu Advertiser, retrieved 2009-12-10
- ^ a b Kashima 2003, p. 86
- ^ Wilson, Christie (2008-02-17), "Clues sought to Honouliuli's dark past", The Honolulu Advertiser, retrieved 2009-12-10
- ^ Pak 1967
Sources
- Pak Sun-dong/朴順東 (1967), 侮蔑의時代/An Era of Humiliation, Seoul: 知文閣/Chimunʼgak, OCLC 40497594
- Hirose, Stacey (1993), "Honouliuli", in Niiya, Brian (ed.), Japanese American history: an A-to-Z reference from 1868 to the present, Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG, ISBN 9780816026807
- Kashima, Tetsuden (2003), Judgment without trial: Japanese American imprisonment during World War II, The Scott and Laurie Oki series in Asian American studies, University of Washington Press, ISBN 9780295982991
- Choe, Yong-ho (2009), "Korean Prisoners-of-War in Hawaii During World War II and the Case of US Navy Abduction of Three Korean Fishermen", Japan Focus: The Asia Pacific Journal
{{citation}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help)