Hawaii County honors fallen officers, park ranger at Police Week ceremony

Rifle shots cracked across the Hilo Police Station grounds as an honor guard fired a 21-gun salute, opening Police Week in Hawaii County with a reminder that public safety carries a lasting human cost. Hilo High School Junior ROTC students carried the U.S. and Hawaii flags into the ceremony and planted them beside Ka Malu Aloha, the curved lava-rock memorial wall where families later lit candles in front of framed portraits wrapped in blue-and-white ribbon leis.

The ceremony honored Captain T.N. Simeona, Officer Michol Octobre, Officer Manuel Cadinha, Officer William Red Oili, Officer Ronald Shige Jitchaku, Officer Kenneth Keliipio, Park Ranger Steve Makuakane-Jarrell and Officer Bronson Kaimana Kaliloa. Mayor Kimo Alameda and Police Chief Reed Mahuna were among the officials who spoke, underscoring that the wall is not just a list of names but a record of sacrifice carried by officers and their families across generations.

Ka Malu Aloha means “The Shelter of Aloha,” and when it was unveiled and blessed at the South Hilo police station in 2016, it honored four Hawaii Police Department officers killed in the line of duty since 1918: Manuel Cadinha, William “Red” Oili, Ronald “Shige” Jitchaku and Kenneth Keliipio. The memorial was the brainchild of Jitchaku’s sister, Momi Cazimero, after her brother was killed on May 7, 1990. The design was meant to speak for itself, with a granite center representing the fallen officers, surrounding rocks symbolizing open arms and a thin blue light representing police officers.

The memorial has continued to grow as the department’s understanding of its own history expanded. Hawaii Police said in 2024 that a new name would be unveiled on the wall, and later identified Michol Octobre as an officer murdered in Kalopa on Dec. 8, 1916, while working undercover as a laborer during the search for Maxime Bondad. That addition pushed the remembrance back another generation and showed how Police Week in Hawaii County keeps rewriting the county’s police memory as old cases are revisited and names are restored.

National Police Week traces to President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 proclamation setting May 15 as Peace Officers Memorial Day. In Hawaii County, that national observance has become deeply local, tied to families who return to the station year after year and to current officers who stand at attention beside the names of those who did not come home.