Punchbowl Cemetery

 This afternoon we fly from Honolulu back to Atlanta.  Since the flight leaves in the afternoon and arrives tomorrow morning, we were in no hurry getting to the airport.  This gave us time to visit the National Veterans Memorial of the Pacific, commonly called the Punchbowl Cemetery.

The Cemetery was established by act of congress in 1949 and, since then, more than 53,000 veterans of WW II, Korea, and Vietnam are buried there. Close family members as well as veterans themselves can also be buried in the multi-level gravesites.

White the grave plots are almost all filled with at least one set of remains, later dying family members are still being buried here frequently. There are also new structures for cremains in multiple columbaria.

In addition to graves and cremains, there are numerous memorials for missing and deceased veterans.  There are memorial listings of more than 18,000 missing veterans from the WW II Pacific action and over 8,000 missing from Korea and 2,500 from Vietnam.

Down in the Punchbowl you see only the cemetery, but, from the top edge you can look down on all of Honolulu.  Trish and I were very moved by our visit here, our last stop on our Hawaiian vacation.