Lantern Floating for Memorial Day

Photo by mujitra via Flickr (Creative Commons).

If the pictures are anything to go by, the Memorial Day Lantern Floating ceremony at Ala Moana Beach Park in Honolulu was the kind of visual feast that makes you think you’re in a dream.

2,000 candlelit lanterns are sent off into the ocean at sunset, each bearing “healing prayers for victims of conflict, famine, disaster and disease as well as our hopes for the happiness of all past and present.”

The Hawaiian tradition is based on the Japanese ceremony, Toro Nagashi—the lanterns are supposed to help guide the the dead back to wherever it is we come from. It must be touching to stand so close to Pearl Harbor and watch the bay fill with those small lights.

There’s a short documentary coming out about the ceremony called “Where the Ocean Meets the Sky”—there’s a very pretty trailer on the producer’s website and some beautiful images in the Lantern Floating Hawaii Flickr pool.

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