TOM FINNEGAN / TFINNEGAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Mana's Japanese cemetery, with graves dating back 150 years, sits just off a military runway.
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Cemetery revivifies old Kauai village
Graves at missile range get Kauai talking story
STORY SUMMARY »
MANA, Kauai » Some of the spooky tales involve children giggling and mischievously turning electrical equipment on and off.
Ghost stories are not new to the area around Barking Sands, by many accounts a "spiritual place."
Part of that spirituality resides in the old plantation town cemetery, long abandoned and maintained for years by the Navy, a neighbor at the Pacific Missile Range Facility.
Now the Navy's efforts to gather history on the cemetery have resulted in a trove of information on old Mana town, once a thriving community with camp houses, a store and a freshwater swimming pool.
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TOM FINNEGAN / TFINNEGAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
The Japanese cemetery at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, with graves dating back to 1858, sits just feet from the PMRF airplane hangar.
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MANA, Kauai » The sugar plantation town of Mana, the westernmost camp on Kauai, has not existed since the 1980s.
The camp houses have been removed, the freshwater swimming pool was filled in and the store has been razed.
The land sits, relatively inaccessible, surrounded by scrub, planted seed corn and the Pacific Missile Range Facility, the front lines of U.S. tactical missile defense programs.
But interest in a Japanese graveyard just off the missile range airstrip has brought to life stories about the missing town on Kauai, the history of sugar and a little bit about the ghosts that might still inhabit Barking Sands Beach and the surrounding area.
Capt. Aaron Cudnohufsky, Pacific Missile Range Facility commanding officer, was sitting in the airport hangar soon after taking command last April when he looked north and saw a cemetery less than a hundred yards from the runway.
He took a closer look, said facility spokesman Tom Clements, and became concerned about the condition of the gravestones, some dating back 150 years.
The inquiry into the graveyard has led to a tremendous overflow of information about the west side of Kauai and especially about Mana.
THE CEMETERY, just 190 by 120 feet, has abided Kauai's development from the sugar era to the space age. The base serves as a testing ground for both the Navy's and the Army's missile defense systems.
It was the Japanese cemetery for Mana Camp. It sat near the main gate when the Army took over Barking Sands during World War II, said Dan Momohara, director the base's threat simulation branch.
In 1940 or 1941, when the Army began building the airstrip, they asked relatives of the deceased if they could move the bodies, said John Burger, environmental coordinator for the base. Some moved, but about 30 gravestones are still in place.
For years, facility commanders have maintained the site and promoted it as a historical site. A few members of the Japanese armed forces have stopped by to perform rituals and pour sake at the graves, Clements said, but no relatives have visited the graves since security tightened following Sept. 11, 2001.
Cudnohufsky and his employees are trying to change that.
Cudnohufsky, Clements, longtime base employees Keiko Puu and Vida Mossman, as well as Momohara and Burger, have led the charge to find relatives of the deceased.
FIRST, THEY held a ceremony, inviting about a dozen former residents of Mana camp as well as the ministers of the Hanapepe and Waimea Buddhist churches. They translated the characters on the graves into English and began circulating media releases, trying to find information on the people who rest within the shadow of the airport hangar.
The result has been a flood of stories about the people and the town of Mana, once a thriving town with stores, doctors, a school and a freshwater swimming pool fed by a mountain stream.
"People have so much to say," said Mossman, longtime public affairs officer at the base. "They have given us some wonderful oral history."
The original goal, according to Clements, was to let relatives know that they are welcome to come to the base to respect their ancestors. What will eventually come out of it, no one is sure.
"We're having fun with it," Burger said. "It's taken on its own life."
The gravestones, carved of granite and sometimes sandstone taken straight from nearby beaches, have begun to fade, especially on the sides exposed to the ocean and the airfield, said Momohara.
The Navy would like to protect them, maybe put up plaques about who these people were, said Burger.
"One lead leads to another lead," Clements added. "Because of the graveyard stories, we have received a tremendous amount of history."
But no one, so far, has come forward to ask to take care of their relatives.
Puu said that the translations, and the information that a number of children have been buried in the cemetery, might explain some of the stories people tell of seeing children giggling and electrical equipment being turned on and off on occasion.
"This place is very, very spiritual," she added.
Whatever comes of it, Clements said, the inquiry "has blossomed into something special."
Memories of Mana town
Names and other information translated from gravestones at the Pacific Missile Range Facility courtesy of Spc. Johnny Michael, PMRF Public Affairs:
Name: Tateyama family
Date of death: March 14
Era of death: Tamana Gun
Remarks: Husband and wife
Name: Katsuji Mayekawa
Date of Death: April 26
Era of death: Taisho 4
Name: Jintaro Hayashi
Date of death: March 23, 1867
Era of death: Meiji 45
Prefecture: Kumamoto
Name: Sanjiro Hori
Date born: 1861
Era of death: Meiji 39
Prefecture: Kumamoto
Remarks: oldest daughter
Name: Chosaku Fukunaga
Era of death: Meiji 1860's
Prefecture: Kumamoto Tamana Gun
Name: Isohachi Shintani
Date of death: 1859
Era of death: Meiji 36
Prefecture: Fukuoka
Name: Shizuo Kumagai
Keitaro (father)
Deate of death: November 3rd
Era of death: Taisho 8
Prefecture: Fukuoka
Remarks: Shizuo -- #2 son
Name: Kango Hamada
Prefecture: Hiroshima Saekigun
Name: Koike Kazusaku
Era of death: Taisho 8
Prefecture: Nagano P
Name: Megumi Kumagai 'chogan'
Remarks: Keitaro's eldest son
Prefecture: Nagano
Name: Koide Fukuoka
Era of death: Meiji 28
Remarks: Child's grave
Name: Yame
Date of death: May 21st
Era of death: Meiji 45
Prefecture: Fukuoka
Remarks: Child girl's grave
Name: Sada or Jo
Date of death: April 19
Era of death: Taisho 23
Remarks: 2-year-old
Name: Kyoiku Kai
Date of death: 10 July
Era of death: Showa 10
Remarks: Ed. Assoc.
Japanese School
Memorial of 30-year anniversary
Name: Suetaro Miyamoto
Date of Death: July 30th
Era of death: Showa 5
Prefecture: Yame Fukuoka
Remarks: 66-year-old
Name: Toyokichi Noda
Era of death: Mejii 39
Prefecture: Gumma
Kawayo -- 2nd girl
Name: Tamijiro Horiguchi
Gumma Prefecture
Tanogun
Name: Mitsugi Uemoto
Date of death: December 8
Era of death: Menjii 42
Prefecture: Hiroshima Ken Asaguy
Mitsukawa Village
Name: Mitsuga Tomita
Date of death: Oct 2nd
Era of death: Taisho 5
Prefecture: Hiroshima -- Asa Gun -- Hara Village
Remarks: Father Shichigowan
Kichi -- boy's grave #2 boy
Name: Nakamoto
Date of death: March 10
Era of death: Taisho 7
Prefecture: Yamaguchi Ken
Remarks: 52-year-old
Name: Seichi Oda
Date of death: Dec 18
Era of death: Taisho 10
Prefecture: Hiroshima
Remarks: 45 years old
Name: Nagotaro Numashime
Death of death: Jan. 2, 1923
Prefecture: Hiroshima ken
Remarks: 61 years old
Name: Bunjiro Doi
Date of death: April 16
Era of death: Meiji 42
Prefectire: Torii? Miyagi?
Name: Bunji Shishido
Prefecture: Miyagi
Name: Yaichi Yoshida
Date of death: Feb. 6
Era of death: Taisho 9
Prefecture: Hiroshima
Remarks: 63 years old (built by Mana Japanese community)
Name: Shinano Suke Okayama
Date of death: March 4
Era of death: Taisho 9
Remarks: 46 years old
Name: Tsuruko Yamaguchi
Date of death: March 3
Era of death: Taisho 9
Prefecture: Okayama
Names: Ken Yamaguchi, Ine Yoshii, Magogiku
Remarks: #2 girl, Ine (mother), Magogiku (father)