From the rim of Punchbowl Crater, you are looking into a volcanic tuff cone that has held deep significance for far longer than any written record can capture. The ancient Hawaiians called this place Puowaina — 'hill of sacrifice' — and it served as a site where human sacrifices were offered to the gods in rituals connected to the ali'i, the chiefly class. The crater's dramatic, bowl-shaped interior, rising above the rooftops of downtown Honolulu, made it an obvious site of spiritual and strategic power.
In the twentieth century, Punchbowl became the setting for a very different kind of memorial: the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, established in 1949. The volcanic walls that once witnessed ancient Hawaiian ritual now shelter the graves of over fifty thousand American veterans, their white marble markers laid out in perfect rows across the flat floor of the crater. From this rim you can see the full sweep of Honolulu below you — the harbor, the downtown skyline, the distant glimmer of Waikiki — and understand why this elevated place, this ancient volcanic wound in the earth, has always drawn human beings seeking to mark what matters most to them.