The place called “Hell Valley” was forgotten. Even by the locals.
March 1, 1943: Honouliuli Internment Camp opened in a remote gulch on O‘ahu. It would become the largest and longest-used confinement site in Hawaiʻi during World War II.
Many assume Hawaiʻi avoided mass removal. It didn’t — although the numbers were smaller than on the mainland.
Under martial law from December 7, 1941, to October 24, 1944, civil liberties were sharply curtailed. Japanese residents were barred from certain areas of Oʻahu, and about 1,500 were forced to relocate within the islands. Of more than 150,000 people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaiʻi, 2,263 were eventually arrested and imprisoned across as many as seventeen sites.
Those taken into custody received individual hearings and are therefore often referred to as “internees,” a system structurally different from the mass removal of 120,000 people on the West Coast — though justice remained constrained under martial law.
Some were later transferred to mainland incarceration camps or Department of Justice sites.
Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Behring Center
December 7, 1941. The Honolulu Star Bulletin announces martial law in Hawaiʻi. Civil authority was suspended. Military rule would remain in place for nearly three years.
Courtesy of the National Archives
Barbed wire lined the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikīkī. The hotel was taken over by the U.S. Navy and restricted to military personnel under martial law.
Honouliuli Internment Camp opened on March 1, 1943, in a remote gulch on Oʻahu. It would become the largest confinement site in Hawaiʻi during World War II.
Photo by R.H. Lodge, courtesy of Hawaii's Plantation Village
Honouliuli was built in a deep gulch where heat lingered and air barely moved. Internees later called it Jigokudani — “Hell Valley.”
Jigokudani, or the “Hell Valley”
Honouliuli was not a self-sufficient community like the War Relocation Authority camps. It was constructed on 160 acres (0.65 km2) of land near Ewa and Waipahu on the island of Oahu. It opened on March 1, 1943, when remaining incarcerees who were incarcerated at Sand Island were moved to Honouliuli Internment Camp along with thousands of prisoners of war.
An 8-foot (2.4 m) dual barbed-wire fence enclosed the camp, and a company of military police stood guard from its eight watchtowers. The site included at least 150 buildings, and over 170 tents. The large natural gully had no views out of the area and trapped the searing heat. People there reported there was no wind, and the area was infested with mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies. Worse than the heat was the isolation. Worse than the isolation was the monotony.
It led Japanese American internees to nickname it Jigokudani, or “Hell Valley.”
Civilians in Hell
The camp was designed to hold 3,000 people, mostly POWs. It was divided by barbed wire into sections, intended to separate internees by gender, nationality, and military or civilian status.
At one point, 320 U.S. civilians were held there — more than half of them American citizens. They were selectively chosen because they were considered influential to the Japanese communities, including Japanese language teachers, priests, and politicians. The list included territorial legislators Sanji Abe and Thomas Sakakihara.
Eight Japanese-American women interned. They were selected because they studied Shintoism and did not possess a mastery of the English language, according to an essay by Amy Nishimura in Breaking the Silence: Lessons of Democracy and Social Justice from the World War II Honouliuli Internment and POW Camp in Hawai‘i (Social Process in Hawai‘i, Volume 45; University of Hawai‘i Press).
Courtesy of U.S. Navy Photo
Under the Geneva Convention, POWs were allowed to work for small wages and use that money to buy goods. Many volunteered for work details simply to pass the time.
Courtesy of Nippu Jiji Photograph Collection
Sanji Abe was a territorial legislator in Hawaiʻi when he was taken into custody and confined at Honouliuli under martial law. Even elected officials were not immune.
Courtesy of Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i
Haruko Takahashi, a Shinto priestess in Hawaiʻi, was arrested and confined at Honouliuli under martial law. She was a civilian.
Courtesy of Okinawan Prefectural Archives
A group of Okinawan boys brought to Hawaiʻi in 1945 and confined at Honouliuli as prisoners of war. They were children caught in a war between nations.
These young Koreans were forced to fight for Japan. Captured, they volunteered to fight for the United States. When the war ended, they were sent to Honouliuli as POWs.
AP Photo
Japanese POWs at Guadalcanal, 1942. Some captured in the Pacific were eventually sent to confinement sites such as Honouliuli in Hawaiʻi.
Diversity at Honouliuli
Over time, more than 4,000 Okinawans, Italians, German Americans, Koreans, and Taiwanese passed through Honouliuli. Caucasian internees were placed in separate compounds.
Interestingly, the military guards at Honouliuli were mainly comprised of African American and Japanese American segregated units from the Mainland.
Beginning in 1943, the Japanese American internees were either released on parole or transferred to Department of Justice camps on the mainland. After the third transfer in November 1944, twenty-one U.S. civilians remained in Honouliuli and the camp served primarily as a holding center for POWs.
At the end of the war, some 4,000 POWs were confined at Honouliuli; repatriation efforts began in December 1945 and continued into 1946. Some had found themselves partners and decided to return to or stay in Hawaiʻi to begin families and start anew.
The End of the Largest and Longest Hawaiian Camp
After three years in operation, Honouliuli internment camp finally closed its doors and released the people held there.
Although they returned to their families and communities, re-integration was a long and emotionally painful journey. Unlike the mainland, where entire families were removed together, only select individuals were taken in Hawaiʻi. Those few were often met with suspicion for being taken, born out of the assumption that if you had been taken you must be a traitor.
In 1998, television station KHNL called the Japanese Cultural Center while doing a story on Schindler’s List (set in German concentration camps), asked where Honouliuli was located. When no one could be found who knew, interest snowballed into an effort to acknowledge, find, excavate and commemorate the camp.
Courtesy of the Nishimura Family
Sam Nishimura was arrested in April 1942 and confined at Honouliuli for nearly two years. For decades, the valley was forgotten. But the stigma of internment remained.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
When KHNL called the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi in 1998 asking about Honouliuli, even they did not know where the camp had been.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
President Barack Obama greets Jane Kurahara, who helped rediscover Honouliuli after identifying the long-buried aqueduct that led back to the camp.
Photo by R.H. Lodge, courtesy of Hawaii's Plantation Village
Honouliuli operated until 1946. In 2015, it was designated a National Monument. The valley was remembered.
Where The Hell Was It?
After the camp’s closure, the land was leased by the Oahu Sugar Company from the Campbell Estate and sugar cane was grown on adjacent lands. In 2007, the Monsanto Corporation purchased the land.
The fact that Honouliuli Gulch had once held an internment camp was largely forgotten as fast-growing vegetation filled the gulch and the flimsy structures deteriorated. At first, no locals even knew about the Honouliuli site.
Until Jane Kurahara, a volunteer from the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi, located it in 2002 by tracing an aqueduct in the background of an old photo. The site was designated Honouliuli National Monument by Presidential Proclamation on February 24, 2015, by President Barack Obama.
This time, let’s try not to lose it again.