About 667 individuals were remembered at Hawaiian Memorial Park, but only a portion of the names were read because of time restraints. Officials said that in future services all the names would be read. There were many unnamed patients on the list.

Among those being honored was the kupuna of Leigh Case, a patient at the hospital for seven years. Case, 47, blew the pu, a shell trumpet that announced the beginning of the service. He said Kapa'ole Hussey was his kupuna and, like others, may have been locked away and forgotten.

"I've learned in the rooms of (Alcoholics Anonymous) and (Narcotics Anonymous) about the low bottom drunks and how they were dealt with in the past," he said. "They were put in an asylum and that's it. That was the end of their life right there."

Case said he came to honor his kupuna. "I feel the mana of the patients that went before me."

Magilla Sumida, 31, a patient at the hospital, said he was saddened that there are people at the burial site who are unnamed, but because of what they endured, he is in a system that is helping him get better.

Sumida was part of the program, dancing with the halau, announcing the names of the deceased and reading a blessing.

"I do this for my peers," he said. "And also to grab hold of the challenge that I face and make people realize that I'm an OK person."

That there were some identified by only a number is something state officials said would not happen again. The focus of the remembrance was to bring people together, said Thomas Hester, chief for the Adult Mental Health Division of the state Department of Health.

"It's not a remembrance of anger, of past injustices, but it's a remembrance of respect and love," said Hester after the service, which was attended by about 100 people including Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, hospital staff, and patients and community members.

Hester, who said he listens to the patients in making decisions about their care and needs, was instrumental in a movement across America to remember deceased mental-health patients. It all started when he was head of mental-health hospitals in Georgia. The focus then was on the plight of 30,000 mental-health patients who had died under the state's care and whose burials were desecrated or dishonored, he said.

Hester said that when he came to Hawai'i in 2001, he was told of a similar problem.

Between 1930 and 1960, the then-Territorial Hospital of Hawai'i frequently had more than 1,200 patients. When patients died and no one claimed their bodies, they were cremated and their ashes were placed in cardboard or metal boxes and stored in a building at the hospital.

Eventually, news reports moved the Legislature to authorize money to bury the remains in a respectful manner.

On July 1, 1960, a service was held. Last year, Hester and the patients initiated another memorial service and decided to make it an annual event.

"What I learned is not only could people recover from mental illness but systems can recover because they come together and acknowledge the injustices of the past," he said.

Aiona said in his address that the patients honored yesterday were the pioneers for people challenged by mental illness.

Seclusion and restraint of patients, and the negative stigma attached to mental illness must be resolved to ease the burden on patients, Aiona said, adding that a goal is to change the public's perception of the mentally ill so they can lead normal lives.

"We need to make sure that we give them the opportunity to go back into the community to have jobs, to live in a home, to be as independent as they can," he said. "We know that's possible, but it's only going to become possible if we deal with those two issues."