J. R. Kealoha
J. R. Kealoha (died March 5, 1877) was a Native Hawaiian and a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, who became a Union Army soldier during the American Civil War.
Participating in the siege of Petersburg, he and another Hawaiian soldier met the Hawaiʻi-born Colonel Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who recorded their encounter in a letter home.
With the 41st USCT, Kealoha was present at the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
[1][2][14] During the campaign, Kealoha and another Hawaiian named Kaiwi, of the 28th Regiment United States Colored Troops, came across Samuel Chapman Armstrong, a son of an American missionary posted in Maui.
[9][12][15] Armstrong wrote of the encounter in a letter home that later, was published in the Hawaiian missionary newspaper The Friend in 1865: Yesterday, as my orderly was holding my horse, I asked him where he was from.
He died on March 5, 1877, and was buried with eighteen other Native Hawaiians in an unmarked grave in Section 1, Lot 56 of the Oʻahu Cemetery, Honolulu.
[1][18] For 137 years, Kealoha's burial site remained unmarked until a Hawaiian group affiliated with the organization Hawaiʻi Civil War Round Table, consisting of Anita Manning, Nanette Napoleon, Eric Mueller, and Justin Vance, started an effort to give him a grave marker.
[13][20][21] Dressed in period costumes, members of the Hawaiʻi Civil War Round Table and others took part in the dedication ceremony at Oʻahu Cemetery.
"[22] The marker is inscribed with his name, regiment, death date, and the Hawaiian and English text: "He Koa Hanohano, a brave and honorable soldier".
[13][24] Of the 48 identified Native Hawaiian combatants, including James Wood Bush and Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman, Kealoha is the only one buried in Hawaii whose gravesite is known.
[2] According to Hawaiian news reporter Chelsea Davis, Kealoha has come to "[represent] all the men of Hawaii who took up arms in America's Civil War but who have been forgotten.
