Guided tours take visitors into Honouliuli internment camp’s ‘Hell Valley’

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Other than brush, overgrown grass, some birds singing in the distance, and perhaps a gust of wind coming in, there’s really not much going on in Honouliuli Gulch these days.

More than 80 years ago, it was a different story.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a hasty prisoner of war compound was built in this barren area of Oahu and named the Honouliuli Internment Camp.

Some of the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned here had another name for this place: “Jigoku dani,” or “Hell Valley.”

“There is a reason why the Japanese Americans nicknamed it Hell’s Valley. It’s a very rugged environment. It’s deep in the gulf to the valley,” said Christine Ogura, superintendent of the Honouliuli National Historic Site.

Now, for the first time, the public will be able to understand the “hell” internees experienced through guided tours into what is now known as the Honouliuli National Historic Site.

“You’re going to have an opportunity to actually walk original historic roads that people who were incarcerated there, their family members walked as well,” Ogura said. “Even though the camp was closed and we don’t have any original structures left, because when the military closed in 1946, they actually took everything down. But we do still have original, like the concrete slab foundation of the mess hall, where families were able to reunite with their mothers and their fathers during visitation.”

The internment camp opened in 1943 and was the largest and longest-used incarceration site in the islands. At its peak, Honouliuli held over 4,000 prisoners of war from Italy, Taiwan, Korea, Philippines and had the largest contingent made up of Japanese Americans.

For Superintendent Ogura, what happened here is personal since she is a second-generation American of Japanese ancestry.

“When I found out that this happened here and being Nisei myself and my parents are Issei, I reflected: had I been born a generation earlier it could have been me and my mom,” she said. “I think locally it’s an important history to conserve and perpetuate because it is important that our communities know that this happened locally.”

Tours at the Honouliuli National Historic Site will begin on July 18, and demand has been overwhelming with every tour fully booked and waitlists in the hundreds.

“I will say the response has been humbling when we released the dates. It booked up within 25 minutes and we currently have a waiting list of over 1,700 people,” Ogura said.

The park is working toward more availabilities for next year.

Officials are looking for volunteer docents to help expand tour capacity.