Veterans' headstones treated 'like rubbish'
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By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
This Veterans Day, Auntie Lei Kahanu Girelli will plant small American flags on the graves of World War I service members who few remember, but she is determined not to forget.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Decades ago, there were row after row of the tall white markers on the uppermost part of state-run Puukamalii Cemetery, the 74-year-old recalls.
Lei Girelli of Nanakuli says what's become of the graves of World War I veterans at the state-run Puukamalii Cemetery in 'Alewa Heights is "sacrilege."
Today, there is mostly grass and trees, and therein lies a mystery: What became of the veterans graves that she and others remember being up on the hill in the old graveyard, which has since fallen into disrepair?
Girelli, who has extended family connections to some of the veterans, believes the graves are still there, no longer marked or remembered except by a few, an affront to the respect they deserve.
"That whole hillside was covered with headstones — all World War I," Girelli said on a recent visit to the 'Alewa Heights cemetery.
Just 15 feet or so away from her own family's plot, five of the veterans' gravestones lay broken and discarded in a pile. Most of the names — Palakiko, Kahuli, Punilei and Kaninau — speak of Hawaiian participation in the Great War overseas many years before.
"I feel bad because I think it's sacrilege," Girelli said. "Those guys did time for the country, and the headstones, that's the last of them. And to have them thrown around like rubbish. ... "
For several years, the Nanakuli woman has been trying to find some answers to what happened to the graves and markers.
She has met with politicians and state officials, but no one seems to know, and records before 1987, when a survey was completed, seem to be nonexistent.
Girelli, who has been visiting the cemetery since she was a young girl, believes graveyard maintenance crews removed the deteriorating headstones to make it easier to work around the site, "and they didn't bother with the bones."
Frank Roddin, a World War II veteran and member of VFW "Diamond Head" Post 8616, said if the veterans graves are still there unmarked, "it's something that should never have happened. It's disrespect — especially now when we have brothers fighting in Iraq."
According to "Hawaii in the World War," published in 1928, about 500 Hawai'i men served in the Navy during World War I, 9,100 in the Army, and 200 in the British military.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Despite the fact Hawai'i's military units were not called away, the territory was represented in practically every theater of action, the book notes. A total of 102 Hawai'i troops were killed during the war.
Frank Roddin, himself a World War II veteran, casts a shadow over the discarded headstones of World War I veterans Alexander Kahuli, Moole Punilei and John Palakiko.
James Hisano, Central Services manager with the Department of Accounting and General Services, said he has no knowledge of the five headstones, or whether they were the result of a previous disinterment.
Neither the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific nor the Hawai'i State Veterans Cemetery have any record of the veterans being reinterred.
The five names on the discarded headstones are: George Kaninau, Edward Coronwy Owens, John Palakiko, Alexander Kahuli, and Moole Punilei.
All are identified as World War I veterans, and all but Owens, identified as being part of a medical department, have "Hawaii Inf" for infantry on the tombstones. All died between 1925 and 1942.
The headstones, which refer to "World War I" service, may have been replacements for earlier markers. Before World War II, the fighting between 1914 and 1919 was called the Great War.
Since the Civil War, the government has provided markers for veterans.
Mary Margaret Rose, 80, who lives in Pennsylvania, said she never got to know her father, Alexander Kahuli, who died when she was 7. Rose's mother had died when she was several days old.
"You know, when my mother died, my father ... he just couldn't get over the death," Rose said.
Family members here, who have the World War I vet's death certificate and know he was buried in Puukamalii, looked in vain for his grave in the mid-1980s.
Girelli's brother, George Kahanu, 86, also remembers the graves up on the hill.
"There were a lot more then (in 1939), because when my dad passed away, we had to walk our way down with the casket between the rows of graves there," the Maui man said.
According to a 1987 state report, Puukamalii cemetery land was leased to the Territory of Hawai'i in 1901 by the Bishop Estate for inmates who died at a government insane asylum. The cemetery also was previously known as Kalaepohaku before being re-named Puukamalii.
Nanette Napoleon, who studies historic graveyards in Hawai'i, said thousands of graves are unmarked because of deteriorating markers or carelessness as development has encroached on graveyards.
Napoleon remembers a gas station being demolished in Waipahu in the early 1980s that had been built over an old graveyard. Workers had dug up remains.
"I saw a whole pile of markers that they had, and they said, 'Oh, yeah, this is an old graveyard and we're going to build a new gas station here,' " Napoleon said.
Laws are now in place requiring property owners doing digging to stop the project and bring an archaeologist in if remains are found, she said.
Girelli believes more cast-off headstones may be buried in a pit near the others. She wants them dug up and returned to the general area where the graves were. Today she plans on placing American flags in the area.
"Families have come to look for their family member and they haven't been able to find them because the headstones have been taken away," she said. "The main thing is they do right on the wrong that they did."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
