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Monday, January 22, 2001

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
The mailbox at Ocean View Cemetery belongs
to the caretaker of the property.

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The easy answer would be, that's the address for the dead-letters file at the post office.

But no. The thing is, cemeteries don't take care of themselves. Especially not cemeteries that are inactive. When the Hiram Fong family acquired the property in 1935, it had formerly been a city property where indigents were buried, and later a going concern that specialized in Hawaiian and Portuguese burials, at least going by the names on the headstones.

Burials in Ocean View Cemetery stopped in the '50s, which was about the last time the property actually had an ocean view. Freeway Overpass View Cemetery doesn't have the right ring does it? And the old Waialae Drive-in was nearby. All the graves would have had to have been realigned to view the movie screen.

The property is still kept up by the Fong family, who are planning to "beautify" the site. There is a caretaker who lives in a house on the property, and that's his mailbox. We peeked in through the mail slot and saw junk mail. So, to death and taxes, add junk mail as one of the only sure things in life.

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