National Park Service Opens WWII Detention Site Honouliuli to Public Tours

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, martial law led to the rapid establishment of detention facilities across Hawaii, and in March 1943 the remote Honouliuli gulch opened as the territory’s largest camp, later nicknamed “Hell Valley” for its oppressive heat. Over its three-year operation the camp housed roughly 4,000 people, many of whom were not Japanese soldiers but conscripted Koreans, Okinawans, and European nationals suspected of disloyalty, while only a small fraction of Hawaii’s Japanese-ancestry population was incarcerated.

After the war the army demolished the structures and the location faded from public view until the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi identified the site in the late 1990s. President Barack Obama declared it a national monument in 2015 and Congress made it a National Historic Site in 2019. The National Park Service now offers free, docent-led tours on a monthly basis, transporting visitors via a shuttle to the gulch’s entrance and guiding them along a restored trail that passes former camp features such as a mess hall slab and an old aqueduct. Volunteers hope the program will personalize the broader narrative of Japanese American incarceration and preserve the memory of those who were detained.