Cemeteries of Hawaii

As the blog name shows I do love to search for long gone relatives. Even though I was not kin to anyone in Hawaii, I still liked seeing the different types of cemeteries around the islands. The photos show the diversity of the burial grounds. One of my favorites was at the Valley of the Temples outside Honolulu where all the rows and rows of Japanese family graves lined up in stark gray marble rows. Very beautiful. Another favorite was on the Big Island way in the back country where a family’s graves are lined up on a large, flat area of lava. The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl is dedicated to the sacrifice made by the men and women in the United States Armed Services. There are 776 casualties from the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor buried here as well as WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam veterans in graves marked with permanent flat granite markers. It is located in Punchbowl Crater and has a beautiful overlook of all of Honolulu. I was fortunate on this trip that all three guides and my son-in-law were willing to pull over for me to photograph these beautiful places. I know, not everyone likes the cemeteries, but after all, I am known as Ancestor Seeker. MA