Gravesite of Ellison Onizuka, Challenger astronaut - Space Flight Memorials and Exhibits on Waymarking.com

Ellison Onizuka's gravesite is in a place of honor in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl Crater, near Honolulu, Hawaii. As the hallowed resting place of many American service personnel lost in the Pacific Theater of World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam Conflicts, it is appropriately located in a crater known to the people of Hawaiia as "Puowaina", or "Hill of Placing Human Sacrifices," the site of many royal burials.

Onizuka, Hawaii's first astronaut who died aboard Challenger on January 28, 1986, and who was interred on June 2, 1986, is next to war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was buried there on July 19, 1949, the cemetery's opening date.

The cemetery covers 116 acres in the remnant of an extinct volcano. Immaculately maintained, it is usually only accessible by tour busses which drive slowly past the Pyle and Onizuka gravesites without stopping. In addition to a breathtaking view of Honolulu, there are mosaic map galleries illustring the history of the war in the Pacific, a multi-denominational chapel, and ten Courts of the Missing: 12-foot-high Italian Trani marble walls engraved with the names of almost 29,000 names of those missing in action or lost and buried at see in the Pacific Theater, in Korea and in Vietnam

2177 Puowaina Drive,
Honolulu
808-532-3720

(visit link)

Hours: Open 8am-6:30pm daily. Fee (if no fee, enter 'none'): None. How Long a Hike: Busride only, unless special arrangements are made. Amount of time an average person would spend here: Less than an hour Accessible?: yes Location is wheelchair accessible?: Yes

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