Opana Radar Site

A National Historic Landmark. Built in 1941. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

From the record

“The Opana Radar Site is a National Historic Landmark and IEEE Milestone that commemorates the first operational use of radar by the United States in wartime, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is located off the Kamehameha Highway just inland from the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, south of Kawela Bay.”
Wikipedia article Opana Radar Site, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 154 National Register listings published here for Honolulu County · listed in 1991 · category: Site · built in 1941 · a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Off Kamehameha Hwy. S of Kawela Bay, Kawela, 96712
When was it listed? September 1991
Category. site
Census division. Koolauloa
When was it built? 1941
National Register reference number. 91001379 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

148 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 148 fires within 5 miles of Opana Radar Site between 1992 and 2015, burning about 156 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	146
Equipment and vehicle use	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 September 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
8 September 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
7 September 2007	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
4 September 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	City and County of Honolulu	not named
30 September 2003	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	City and County of Honolulu	not named
28 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	City and County of Honolulu	not named
28 September 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	City and County of Honolulu	not named
28 September 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.0 acres	City and County of Honolulu	not named

Every fire recorded in Honolulu County

Storms near this property

1 since 2007

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Kawela, the town this property stands in, in 1 storm report in 2007: 1 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
January 2007	Heavy Rain	Kawela	-	Heavy showers in northern and windward sections of Oahu caused small stream and drainage ditch flooding, and ponding of roadways. There were no reports of serious property damage or injuries.

Every storm recorded in Honolulu County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

3 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Marconi Wireless Telegraphy Station	2.7 miles	2013
Puu o Mahuka Heiau	4.4 miles	1966
Kawailoa Ryusenji Temple	7.1 miles	1978

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 91001379 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Honolulu County	All 154 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.