Hawaii · Culture
Every Memorial Day, tens of thousands of people pack Ala Moana Beach to send handwritten messages into the Pacific — one paper lantern at a time. It sounds serene. Parts of it are. The rest is organized chaos. All of it is worth doing.
This isn't a generic festival — it has a specific origin and a specific purpose. The ceremony was created by Shinnyo-en, a Japanese Buddhist organization, and it traces back to when the founder, Master Shinjo Ito, visited Hawaii in 1970. He paid his respects at Punchbowl and the USS Arizona Memorial and was moved enough to dream of a ceremony where people could float lanterns and share hopes for peace. His successor carried out that wish, and in 1999 the first Lantern Floating Hawaii ceremony was held at the water's edge on Memorial Day.
The word "shinnyo" itself refers to a Buddhist concept — the idea that there is a light within every living being. The translucent paper lanterns, each lit from inside with a candle, are meant to carry that light. When you write a message and float one, you're sending it out with love, gratitude, and remembrance for someone who has passed. The ceremony theme is "Many Rivers, One Ocean." That phrase lands differently when you're standing on the beach watching thousands of lights drift away from shore.
We went in 2024 — the 25th anniversary of the event. Around 6,000 lanterns hit the water that night.
The tote you get when you pick up your lantern. Inside is your lantern kit.
This is the first thing anyone needs to know: do not try to park at Ala Moana Beach on Memorial Day. The lot is either full by midday or gated off entirely to manage the crowd. We pulled up and confirmed it — entry closed.
The entrance to Ala Moana Beach Park — gated off for the day. Not your parking option.
We parked at Ala Moana Shopping Center. Plenty of capacity, short walk to the beach. That's the move. There's also a shuttle that runs from Kakaʻako if you're coming from farther out, but the mall is the easy call. Give yourself time — the crowds build steadily throughout the afternoon, and if you want a decent spot near the water, you need to be there well before the 6:30pm start.
When: Every Memorial Day — ceremony runs 6:30–7:30pm
Where: Ala Moana Beach Park, next to Magic Island
Lantern pickup: Same day, 10am–5pm (or until supplies run out)
Cost: Free — lanterns are complimentary, first come, first served
Parking: Ala Moana Shopping Center — skip the beach lot entirely
This is the part that catches people off guard: your lantern doesn't get handed to you at the ceremony. You pick it up earlier in the day from a dedicated tent at Ala Moana Beach Park. They start distributing at 10am. The catch is supply is limited — when they run out, that's it. There's no reservation, no online pre-order. You just show up and hope.
The Remembrance Lanterns tent setup — organized by volunteers in pink shirts.
The Lantern Pickup tent — arrive early or risk going without.
We picked up in the afternoon and there was still inventory, but I would not push it. Go in the morning and take care of it. The tent operation is well run — volunteers staff it, the line moves, and when you come out the other side you have a cream-colored tote bag with the event branding and your lantern kit inside. The kit includes the paper lantern flat-packed, a candle insert, and panels on the lantern itself where you write your message.
There's also an option if you can't attend in person: submit a remembrance message online beforehand and they'll print it out and affix it to a collective lantern floated from a canoe during the ceremony. Nobody gets left out if they plan ahead.
This is the quiet part of the day — the part that matters most.
Before the ceremony, you find a spot and write on the lantern panels. The paper folds open and you write directly on it. Whatever you want to say to whoever you're remembering. There are volunteers and tables set up if you need a flat surface.
Maile writing her message to her Osaka grandpa.
I wrote to my dad, who passed away in 2020. Maile wrote to her Osaka grandpa. Jace did too. We didn't talk much about what any of us wrote — you don't really need to. The point is the act of writing it, of holding the lantern and putting words down, and then eventually letting it go.
As the afternoon shifts toward evening, everyone starts moving toward the water. The crowd that felt manageable at the tents starts to reveal its full size. We walked along the lagoon path that runs beside Magic Island — tall coconut palms, calm water on one side, the Honolulu skyline ahead. It's a good walk. It eases you into what's coming.
Jace leading the walk in along the lagoon as the crowd builds toward the beach.
By the time we reached the beach, the scale of the thing was already obvious. You could see people staking out patches of sand in every direction, lanterns in their bags, kids running, older couples standing quietly, tourists figuring out where to look. The sun was starting to lower. The energy was somewhere between a concert and a memorial service — which is exactly what it is.
The ceremony begins at 6:30pm and runs about an hour. It opens with the blowing of the pū — the Hawaiian conch shell — which carries across the entire beach. Taiko drums follow. There's Hawaiian chanting, hula, and then the bringing in of six ceremonial lanterns thought to carry the prayers of all living and passed beings. A fire is lit — the "Light of Harmony." From there it builds through prayers, flower petals, and Buddhist chants.
And then everyone walks to the water.
The crowd as the sun dropped behind the city. Tens of thousands.
Golden hour on the beach — the quiet before the lanterns go in.
Standing there in the middle of 40,000 people, shoulder to shoulder, watching the sun drop behind the clouds over the Pacific while you're holding a paper lantern with your dad's name on it — that hits differently than most things I've done in Hawaii. I live here. I've seen a lot of sunsets at Ala Moana. This one was something else.
When the lanterns go in, the ocean transforms. Within minutes, thousands of glowing orange lights are drifting out on the water — slowly, quietly, carried by the current. The horizon fills up with them. From where we were standing, you could see them spreading out toward Magic Island and beyond, into open ocean, the glow getting softer and more spread as they moved away.
The moment the ocean fills up with light. Nothing quite like it.
Mom, Jace, and Maile watching their lanterns go. You can read the messages right there on the water.
It's one of those rare experiences where the visual is genuinely hard to describe to someone who wasn't there. Photographs get close — they don't quite get there. You have to be standing on the sand, having just let go of something, watching it drift away with everyone else's somethings, to understand what the ceremony is actually doing.
Then everyone has the same idea at the same time: get out. And you remember that 40,000 people all leaving one beach simultaneously is its own kind of experience.