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. Considered one of the "Hawaiʻi sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than one hundred documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was an independent nation.

Kealoha enlisted in the 41st United States Colored Infantry, a United States Colored Troops regiment formed in Pennsylvania. 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. After the war, Kealoha returned to Hawaiʻi. He died on March 5, 1877, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Honolulu's Oʻahu Cemetery.^[1][2]

The legacy and contributions of Kealoha and other Hawaiian participants in the American Civil War were largely forgotten except in the private circles of descendants and historians, but in later years there was a revival of interest in the Hawaiian community. In 2010, these "Hawaiʻi sons of the Civil War" were commemorated with a bronze plaque erected along the memorial pathway at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.^[3] In 2014, through another local effort, a grave marker was dedicated over J. R. Kealoha's burial site, which had remained unmarked for 137 years.^[1][2]