Tents and structures stand in the prisoner-of-war compound of the Honouliuli Internment Camp on Oahu, Hawaii, in this image from the 1940s. (Hawaii's Plantation Village)
The National Park Service on Thursday announced the first public tours of Honouliuli National Historic Site, offering visitors access to the site of a prisoner-of-war and internment camp on Oahu that remained largely forgotten for decades after World War II.
Guided tours will be offered July 18, Aug. 22, Sept. 19, Oct. 17, Nov. 14 and Dec. 12, according to an announcement posted on the agency’s social media accounts.
The free tours, which begin on the 80th anniversary of the camp’s closure, will last about three hours. Each tour date is limited to 22 people because of the small number of available staff and volunteers. Tour dates for 2027 will be announced later this year.
Only the barest remnants and artifacts remain of Honouliuli, which operated from 1943 to 1946. They include concrete slabs that supported showers and a mess hall, a guard tower inscription, a stone staircase and an incinerator.
Located in a gulch in central Oahu, the camp held roughly 4,000 POWs and 400 civilian internees, according to the Park Service. The occupants dubbed the camp “Hell Valley” because of the stifling heat that blanketed the windless gulch.
A soldier walks out of the prisoner-of-war processing station in Compound VI, from which the U.S. Army operated the Honouliuli Internment Camp on Oahu, Hawaii, in this photo from the 1940s. (Hawaii's Plantation Village)
Those confined there were separated into five compounds. Most of the POWs were Okinawans and Koreans who had been conscripted into the Japanese armed forces, according to the Park Service.
Just over 300 Japanese nationals were also held at the camp. Unlike Japanese Americans on the U.S. mainland who were incarcerated under Executive Order 9066, those held at Honouliuli were interned under martial law imposed in Hawaii following Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Oahu.
Honouliuli also held Americans of Irish, Danish, German and Italian ancestry, although they made up a small portion of the camp population.
Among the few features remaining from the Honouliuli Internment Camp on Oahu, Hawaii, used from 1943 to 1946 to primarily hold prisoners of war, is the foundation of the mess hall in Compound V. (National Park Service)
After the war, the camp was abandoned and gradually reclaimed by dense vegetation.
Its location was largely forgotten until 1998, when the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii received a call from a local television station seeking information about the camp. Staff members, unaware such a camp had existed, launched what became a four-year search.
The site was identified in 2002 with the help of local farmers who examined historical photographs for recognizable landmarks, according to the Park Service.
Interest in preserving the site grew over the following decade. In 2015, President Barack Obama designated Honouliuli a national monument under Park Service management.
Congress redesignated it a national historic site in 2019.
Tour reservation information is available on the Park Service’s website.
