It’s a rare sight from the shoreline of Ala Moana Beach.
Six thousand floating lanterns, each carrying several written commemorations to those who have died, bobbed along the mellow Honolulu waters and turned its turquoise ripples to a shimmering orange for a mere 20 minutes Monday evening.
One of the lanterns commemorated Tehani Hi‘ilei Kealoha, the 17-year-old Moanalua High School senior who suddenly died of a medical emergency after a swim meet in 2023. Her family was among the estimated 45,000 attendees of the 27th annual Shinnyo-en Lantern Floating Hawaii, the nation’s largest annual Memorial Day tradition.
Kealoha’s mother, Jamie, and father, Walter, sporting commemorative dry-fit shirts printed with their daughter’s swimming photos, adorned the foam float with ti leaf lei made by Walter’s cousin Zavier Hi‘ilei Kealoha.
Jamie and Walter Kealoha described their daughter as “full of life.”
“It’s always so emotional,” Jamie Kealoha said. “You think you’re OK, and then you put (the lanterns) in the water and you send them out, it’s very emotional.”
Hawaii first lady Jaime Green, Gov. Josh Green’s wife, and their two children, Maia and Sam, were also in attendance.
Jaime Green told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that her family attended to commemorate the victims of the January fireworks accident that killed five people, continued remembrance of the victims of the 2023 Maui wildfire and the nation’s fallen soldiers.
In the Buddhist Shinnyo tradition, lantern floating is “a ritual of healing, of love, of light and of renewal,” meant to “spread the light of Shinnyo to both those who are still with us and those who have passed,” according to the Shinnyo-en website.
Monday’s event brought hundreds of practicing Shinnyo followers from Japan, many of them bowing to the direction of the main stage at Ala Moana Beach where Her Holiness Shinso Ito, the head of Shinnyo, engaged in traditional rituals including “sanrai” (three bows) and an offering of rice.
But the event has been known for its spiritual and unifying qualities, rather than its Buddhist roots, according to Shinnyo practitioner Eugene Tanashiro.
“The founder of the church said that no matter who we are, where we live, where we come from, we all suffer the same consequences when we lose someone dearly that we care for,” Tanashiro said. “Lantern floating helps the people who cannot let go. When you release that thing in the water, it helps you let go of whoever they cannot let go of.”
It’s a form of release for writer Stuart Coleman, whose father, the Rev. Edwin Coleman, who was an active member of the civil rights movement in the 1960s in the South and once called Martin Luther King Jr. on the phone, recently died at the age of 95.
“For me it’s letting go,” Stuart Coleman said. “As a writer and poet, it’s so symbolic, the light and the passage into the spiritual realm.”
This year the organization hosted a dedicated military line for lantern pickups with the intention of expanding participation for active-duty, retired and veteran service members.
Max Haubrich, 27, originally from Chicago, works for the Navy Reserve in the Honolulu shipyard. He said in addition to honoring his grandmother who died in 2024, he was putting in a prayer for his classmates from the military academy who are actively serving “everywhere in the world right now.”
“It’s just good to come here show support, give my thoughts and prayers to them so they’re safe and good, because they were really good friends back in school,” Haubrich said.
Monday’s event continues the Hawaii tradition that began 27 years ago when the first Shinnyo-en lantern floating was held at Keehi Lagoon off Nimitz Highway.
While lantern-floating ceremonies have long been a traditional form of honoring death in East Asia for thousands of years, the impetus of Hawaii’s ceremony began in 1970 when the founder of Shinnyo-en, Master Shinjo Ito, who established the school of esoteric Buddhism in Japan in the 1930s, visited Hawaii and paid his respects at Punchbowl Cemetery and the USS Arizona Memorial.
Moved by the reflective experience, Ito dreamed of hosting a lantern floating in the islands, similar to the first Shinnyo-en paper lantern floating ceremony in 1936, held at a small stream to honor the death of his infant son Chibun.
When Ito’s daughter Her Holiness Shinso Ito succeeded him in the ’90s, she fulfilled his wish and established the first Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawaii on Memorial Day in 1999. Since then the mellow waters of Magic Island have become synonymous with other international Shinnyo lantern floating ceremonies held in Taiwan, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Hawaii’s event remains one of the largest in the Shinnyo tradition and ties in Native Hawaiian elements to the Buddhist philosophies, incorporating the blowing of the pu and hula performance into the ceremony.
For Native Hawaiian and volunteer of 20 years Hercules Huihui, 65, the event connects him to his kupuna. He said helping others do the same is what has kept him coming back to Ala Moana Beach every year.
“It goes back to the first day we came,” Huihui said. “When we let go of the lanterns and stood back, I watched the commingling of spirits in the backdrop of the lights. It was like you could see the spirits. It was beautiful. I’m back every year and I never missed one year.”
