Kakaʻako Waterfront Park will soon be home to an AIDS Memorial and Community Memory Site.
Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, co-founders of Lei Pua ʻAla Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Lei Pua ʻAla Queer Histories of Hawaiʻi, told Aloha State Daily on Friday that the purpose of the site is for people to gather, reflect and remember those impacted by HIV/AIDS and other epidemics.
The project got its start in August 2023 when Qwaves LLC, an independent film production company founded by Hamer and Wilson, received funding from the Mellon Foundation through the Hawaiʻi Council for Humanities to document and memorialize queer and sexual history in Hawaiʻi through Lei Pua ʻAla Queer Histories of Hawaiʻi.
The need for a site like this one became more evident after Hawaiʻi Health and Harm Reduction Center (HHHRC) and Capitol Modern partnered to display Hawaiʻi panels of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt in December 2024, Wilson said.
According to Hamer and Wilson, Hawaiʻi’s initial response to HIV/AIDS was set apart from the rest of the country. HHHRC, formerly Life Foundation, became the first HIV/AIDS service organization in Hawaiʻi upon its founding in 1983. The state adopted universal testing, sex education in public schools and needle exchanges early on, Wilson said.
Hamer notes that they explored six or seven other sites, but Kakaʻako Waterfront Park quickly rose to the top for its history and beauty. The area once functioned as a quarantine camp for smallpox, Hansen’s Disease and the bubonic plague, Wilson said. Now, it’s a city park next to the Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine.
“It was known as a place of suffering and pain,” Wilson said. “In our view, this place is now it’s a place of healing, of community and celebration, and reflection and inspiration.”
The foundation partnered with the City and County of Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation in October 2024 to adopt the park. Since then, they’ve cleaned up trash, painted over graffiti and hired a contractor to repair the stone walls.
The Honolulu City Council approved a gift valued at $97,081 from Lei Pua ʻAla Foundation to design and create the site on Nov. 5. The ʻOahu Historic Preservation Commission approved the project in May and the Kakaʻako Neighborhood Board approved it in September.
Phase one of the project, which will be completed in 2027, will place interpretive signs about the memorial and Hawaiʻi’s response to HIV/AIDS at the high point of the park, install a reflection bench at the center, install wayfinding signs at the entrance of the park and along the path, paint a mural and stain a lei pattern onto the sidewalk leading to the memorial. There will be a memorial rock garden to honor people who were impacted by HIV/AIDS, including those who died, caretakers and community activists. HHHRC will host a digital component to the memorial and eventually serve as the caretakers of the site.
“We don’t want it to feel like a graveyard,” Hamer said. “We want it to be more of a place that’s looking forward to the future and reminding people to treat epidemics with science and compassion and rationale.”
Both Hamer and Wilson lived in Washington, D.C. during the 1980s and 1990s, and Wilson said that their experiences during that time drive their work today.
Wilson adds that it was “unbearable” witnessing friends experience health challenges, and the “painful ritual” of reading the obituaries in fear that he’d recognize someone he knew.
Hamer said, “I remember how frightening this was, this disease, to have one after another of your friends become sick and pass away,” adding that there was “a real feeling of helplessness.”
Hamer and Wilson said that while the site will remember those who were lost or suffered in past epidemics, they hope it relays the importance of public health.
“People don’t understand how the affected communities, primarily gay men, rallied to help people fight to survive and that had a radical and important impact on public health infrastructure,” he said. “It’s not just remembering individual loss, it’s remembering the collective energy that went into the response.
Wilson said that it’s important for people who are marginalized to see their stories in public spaces.
“It’s really important for people from our community to see our stories,” he said. “On one hand, it’s a mirror so that we can see ourselves reflected. But for other people, places like this are a window, they can look through and see things that they might not otherwise see.”
Haley Lehman can be reached at haley@alohastatedaily.com.
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