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volcano · Oʻahu

Pūowaina

“hill of sacrifice”

poo-oh-VYE-nah

Punchbowl, and what it was before.

Hill of placing

Pūowaina is read as the hill of placing or of sacrifice. Accounts describe it as a place where those who broke kapu were offered, and the name preserves that.

It is a tuff cone about seventy-five thousand years old, sitting above downtown Honolulu.

The cemetery

Since 1949 the crater has held the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, where more than fifty thousand are buried, including many from the Pacific campaigns of the Second World War and the war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

The continuity is not lost on anyone: a place of sacrifice that became a place of sacrifice.

Sources the Pukui and Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, Place Names of Hawaii, Nānā i ke Kumu, wehewehe.org, Wiktionary's Hawaiian given names and U.S. Social Security baby-name records. How this site is compiled · Send a correction