One aspect on all of their minds was the connection of law enforcement units to the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The two main units involved, the Sheriffs and HPD, both trace their founding to the reign of King Kamehameha III, and their ties to the Kingdom are very important to them.

In selecting the members of the unit, Koa felt strongly that that both the Sheriffs and HPD needed to be involved along with the Department of Land and Natural Resources and ʻIolani Palace staff. He wanted them to have a deep commitment to Hawaiʻi and to our history. Most were Hawaiian, but Mike Oakland’s family came here in the late 1800s and his connection to our past is very strong and personal. They all had to be very strong physically to carry the casket. And as Koa put it, “they had to be able to handle the weight -- not just of the weight of the casket but also the weight of this moment in our history.” 

When the members of the units first got together, they were, as one person said, “a little standoffish.” In their day-to-day work, they have different areas of responsibility, which sometimes overlap and cause tension between them. Seeing themselves as a single unit was new to them. In addition, some of them did not have a lot of experience in the Honor Guard role and were learning that role through practice sessions. There was also however, as Kauahi pointed out, a core of experienced honor guards and Hawaiian men, including Kauahi, Ben Lloyd, Eric Castro, Daniel Del Toro and Cameron Tuitele, who could anchor the unit.

Both Kauahi and Oakland said that the unit really began to bond when they started to practice at the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard Training Facility. (Due to the number of ceremonies, and especially the number of burials of veterans that the armed services have in Hawaiʻi, there are dedicated color guard units with practice areas so that their actual participation in those events can be done with a very high degree of professionalism.) Our honor guard was given the opportunity to use the U.S. Air Force facility, for which they are all very grateful. And Oakland noted, “they were very patient with us.”

And the Honor Guard began to build strong personal relationships with each other, often finding meaningful family, school, and other connections By the end, they were truly a single team. And, as Koa said, “Abigail made us brothers.”

The unit started off practicing with an empty casket and hearse lent to them by Borthwick Mortuary. The unit would pull the casket out from the hearse, lift it, and carry it up and down the Palace steps. 

There were decisions that had to be made along the way.

The biggest single decision involved how to carry the casket; to leave it on the mortuary “truck” (the rolling platform on which the casket is moved), to carry it by the handlebars on each side of the casket, or to carry her on their shoulders. They chose the last – to carry her on their shoulders. When they were with the military honor guard trainers, they were told that carrying caskets on shoulders was not done anymore. They chose to carry her on their shoulders anyway.

So why did they insist on this? Around the time that they were practicing for their honor guard role, Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral services were all over the news. And in those films, the Queen’s casket was being carried on the shoulders of the military honor guard unit. As one of our honor guard members said, “if the British can put their Queen on their shoulders, we are putting Princess Abigail on ours.”

They also made the decision to move the casket from the platform of the hearse truck up to their shoulders in a single motion. It is very difficult maneuver and requires a significant level of physical strength and agility. It was also visually stunning when we saw them do it. And it turned out to be the only way to actually handle the weight.

They also made the decision to have all the commands for their movements said in the Hawaiian language. This was significantly a matter of fitting into the history of Hawaiʻi and the way that Royal Family members’ funerals were conducted. The responsibility for these commands was entrusted to First Deputy Sheriff Koa. He first looked at the Hawaiian translation of normal commands and quickly came to the conclusion that a direct translation of English to Hawaiian would not work. Koa then reached out to the Royal Guard. He also reached out to Paula Akana of the Palace, who took his commands in English and gave them to an expert in the Hawaiian language. When that translation came back, he gave it to one of his deputy sheriffs and she adjusted them to honor guard command steps. Even then, he had to make some final adjustments as they actually moved with the casket. 

Every member of the unit learned the Hawaiian commands. Koa, in leading the unit, had to handle the cadence, the spacing, and to constantly make adjustments in the moment, which the team needed to follow.

They practiced regularly at the Palace, especially up and down the Palace steps, and at the U.S. Air Force facility. They realized they would need to lift the real casket at least once before the actual day of the service, so they traveled up to Oʻahu Cemetery, where she was resting until the date of her services at the Palace and at Mauna ‘Ala.

(While the practice casket they used was a real one, made of mahogany, it was not her casket. Her casket, and that story is told elsewhere, was made from a single piece of curly Koa from the Island of Hawaiʻi.)

Princess Abigail, in her Koa casket, was brought into the Chapel of the Oʻahu Cemetery. She had been told in advance by Mary Voeller of Oʻahu that the Honor Guard would need to get a sense of the weight of her and her casket so they would not be surprised when they lifted the casket at the ceremony. Mary said that she felt the Princess’s support of her men getting ready to do this service, and she let the Guard members know that. 

When the men lifted her, they were stunned. The practice casket had probably weighed around 400 pounds; her Koa casket probably doubled that. And when they put it up on their shoulders, the bottom edges of the casket base dug painfully into their shoulders.

The Honor Guard was then given the option not to carry her on their shoulders and instead to carry the casket by its side handlebars. Koa said that as soon as they were by themselves, he looked at every person there and said, “she is going on our shoulders” and he got total support. That decision was affirmed as they again watched the video of the Queen Elizabeth funeral on the screen at the Oʻahu Chapel. Again they said that if the Queen was carried on her honor guards’ shoulders, Princess Abigail would be on theirs. A bottom panel was added to her casket by its maker, Martin & MacArthur, so that it could be carried more easily by the Guard.

In sessions after that, the practice casket had 500 pounds of Olympic weights inside it. 

On the day of the Lying in State ceremony, the grounds of ʻIolani Palace were filled with members of the Royal Societies, Kawānanakoa family members, and members of the public waiting to sign the koa guest books and enter the Palace to pay their respects to the Princess. As the hearse reached the foot of the Palace steps, the Honor Guard stepped forward and lifted the casket out of the hearse and began their slow march to the foot of the stairs and then up them, commanded entirely in Hawaiian.

Kauahi was at the very back because of his size and strength and he said that as the angle of the casket increased as they went up the steps, the weight in the back was staggering. Kauahi remembers whispering to her casket, “I won’t let you drop; I promise you Princess, I will not let you fall.” He also noted that the back of the casket was held up by Bo Kanekoa of the Palace staff and Benjamin Lloyd of HPD, and others, all very strong men and none of them would have let her fall. 

The Honor Guard carried her up the front steps of ʻIolani Palace and into the Throne Room where she lay in state. At the end of that ceremony, they carried her down the back stairs and into the hearse, which drove up to Mauna ʻAla, where her funeral service would be the next day. The Honor Guard was waiting for her at MaunaʻAla and took her from the hearse and into the Chapel, placing her on its altar. She was then guarded overnight by the members of the Royal Societies. The next day, after the funeral service and the crowd had left, the Honor Guard took her from the altar and into the hearse for a return to Oʻahu Cemetery where she would rest until her tomb was completed.

When the tomb was done, a very private burial service was held. The Honor Guard were at Oʻahu to accompany her the short distance to Mauna ʻAla. Once there, they carried her from the hearse to her tomb, which had a small opening in the heavy dome that would seal it. The Honor Guard members moved the casket inside the tomb and then aligned her in a precise East-West configuration as was her desire. 

There was one more task to be carried out. It is traditional for honor guards on occasions like this to place their gloves on the casket, never to be used again. On the day of her lying-in-state at the Palace, when her casket was brought up to Mauna ʻAla, the members of the honor guard, after carrying her into the Chapel and placing her on the altar, with all the dignity and care that they had afforded her that day, laid their gloves on her casket. And there they lay during the overnight vigil. In the morning, prior to the arrival of the family members and guests for the funeral service, the gloves were lifted off the casket and placed in a koa box made from the same block of curly koa used to make her casket. At the burial ceremony, that box of gloves was fittingly placed by Koa next to her casket in her tomb. They then exited her tomb. After the brief acknowlegements and service, the Honor Guard assisted in pushing the two halves of the thousands of pound tomb cap together, sealing the Princess in her tomb for all time. 

When talking about this final service afterwards, Kauahi said that when they lifted her casket from the hearse to carry her to her tomb, she “felt oddly light. She was not heavy at all, and we all noticed it.” The Princess was finally home.

Only then did the Honor Guard consider its work done. When asked why they followed her through every step of the process, they were clear it was the commitment of an Honor Guard and the commitment that each of them had made to her personally. 

A service well and truly done.

Members of the Princess Abigail Kawananakoa Honor Guard:

• Lead Escort: Lieutenant Michael Oakland, Sheriff Division

• Left Front: Sergeant Adrian Kanoa, Sheriff Division

• Right Front: Deputy Scott Namuo, Sheriff Division

• Left #2: Sergeant Daniel Del Toro, Honolulu Police

• Right #2: Officer Cameron Tuitele, Honolulu Police

• Left #3: Officer Henry Haina, DOCARE

• Right #3: Officer Errol Kane, DOCARE

• Left Rear: Officer Bo Kanekoa, ʻIolani Palace

• Right Rear: Corporal Benjamin Lloyd, Honolulu Police

• Rear Escort: Lieutenant David Kauahi, Honolulu Police

• Left Flank Escort: Officer Eric Castro, Honolulu Police

• Right Flank Escort - Honor Guard Commander: Chief Deputy Lanikoa Dobrowolsky, Sheriff Division

Honor Detail – Throne Room

• Deputy Deven English, Sheriff Division

• Deputy Andre Jackson, Sheriff Division

• Officer Preston Kamauʻu, DOCARE

• Officer Jasion Lee, DOCARE

Honor Guard Commands in Hawaiian:

[It turns out that there were no records that could be found of the commands in Hawaiian used by honor guards during the Kingdom. Koa therefore is preserving the commands used for the Princess in the event that future units are interested in looking at them.]