Big Island plans Memorial Day ceremony at Hilo veterans cemetery
Hilo’s Veterans Cemetery No. 2 will again anchor the Big Island’s Memorial Day observance, with flowers, lei and the Hawaii County Band honoring the fallen.
Fallen service members will be honored at Hilo’s Veterans Cemetery No. 2, where the County of Hawaii has long centered Memorial Day observances at 110 Laimana St. with music, wreaths and floral arrangements.
The county previously listed a Memorial Day Program there for Monday, May 26, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. A prelude from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. featured music and the presentation of wreaths and floral arrangements at monuments and flag poles. The program also included music from the Hawaii County Band.
That band, directed by Paul Arceo, provides music for special community functions and concerts throughout East and West Hawaii. Its role has made it a familiar part of public ceremonies on Hawaii Island, where the County of Hawaii Parks and Recreation Department says it operates and maintains 20 cemeteries.
Memorial Day falls on Monday, May 25, 2026, and the County of Hawaii Mass Transit Agency lists it as a county-observed holiday. Hele-On buses will run on a Sunday schedule that day, a practical detail for families and veterans groups traveling to Hilo for the observance.
The Hawaii Department of Defense is also asking the public to help honor the fallen by donating fresh flowers and lei for Memorial Day ceremony honors. The request, issued May 14, reflects how the ceremony depends on community participation as well as official observance.
The Big Island’s remembrance also sits within a broader statewide tradition. In Honolulu, the City and County of Honolulu says its 75th Mayor’s Memorial Day Ceremony will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, May 25, 2026, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Pūowaina. The city says the first Memorial Day ceremony there was held in 1949.
On Hawaii Island, Veterans Cemetery No. 2 remains one of the clearest public touchpoints for that tradition. The cemetery, the band, the flowers and the steady return of names remembered there give Memorial Day a distinctly local shape in Hilo.
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