As America stumbles toward our 250th, let’s celebrate the 80th birthday of an exemplary American. Ellison Shoji Onizuka was a Hawaii native, a CU-Boulder superstar and the first Asian American and first person of Japanese ancestry to fly (and die) in a NASA spaceship.
Born June 24, 1946, Ellison grew up on the leeward (Kona) side of the Big Island of Hawaii. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, roughly one‑third of Hawaii’s population was of Japanese ancestry, and on the Big Island, Japanese American citizens like the Onizukas suddenly lived under restriction and suspicion.
In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 handed the U.S. Army a blank check to brand an entire population a “security risk,” uprooting more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and herding them into remote camps without charge or trial.
“Your vision is not limited by what your eye can see, but by what your mind can imagine.”
— Ellison Onizuka, CU-Boulder alum (Aero’69; MS’69; HonDocSci’03)
Authorities arrested several hundred local Japanese across Hawaii, including Buddhist priests, language‑school officials, newspaper editors and other community leaders, and eventually detained more than 2,000 men and women at 13 confinement sites.
Concurrently, Colorado’s Granada Relocation Center, better known as Amache, operated as a sprawling inland incarceration facility for many thousands of Japanese American citizens from western states. This harsh treatment was unsuccessfully opposed by Colorado’s Republican Gov. Ralph Carr, a principled politician, who’d earned his law degree at CU-Boulder in 1912.
Gov. Carr ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1942 while still serving as Colorado’s 29th governor. On the campaign trail, Carr explained to often hostile crowds that “the Japanese are protected by the same Constitution that protects us,” that “an American citizen of Japanese descent has the same rights as any other citizen,” and that “if you harm them, you must first harm me.” By 1943, Carr was out of public office.
One generation later, a non-white, working‑class kid from a rural Hawaii public school attended CU-Boulder and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering while participating in CU’s Air Force ROTC. Ellison Onizuka became a flight test engineer, a U.S. Air Force test pilot and ultimately, a NASA astronaut.
In Colorado, Onizuka met fellow Big Island-born Japanese American Lorna Yoshida, who attended UNC in Greeley. Ellison and Lorna were married on June 7, 1969, at the Tri‑State/Denver Buddhist Temple, a longtime religious and social hub for Japanese Americans across Colorado and the surrounding region.
On his successful 1985 shuttle mission aboard the orbiter Discovery, Onizuka joyfully joined the handful of humans who have looked back at Earth with their own eyes. From that vantage point, Onizuka described seeing a single, borderless sphere. No fences. No state lines. No neat outlines of nations. Just a fragile blue planet where Colorado and Hawaii were not all that far away. The distance between Japan and America looked minuscule from outer space.
Speaking as an astronaut at his alma mater, Konawaena High School, Onizuka encouraged graduates not to limit their vision to what their eyes could see. He reminded them that the everyday things they took for granted had once been “unrealistic dreams” for their parents and grandparents. He talked about freeing minds “for a look at new worlds.” He told graduates that “the world will be a better place because you tried.”
That wasn’t airy inspiration. It was a roadmap from someone who had already accomplished so much. Onizuka was a member of an ethnic and religious minority who rose above any obstacles based on race, religion, ethnicity, class or geography.
When the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart and broke America’s heart on Jan. 28, 1986, Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka perished. He was promoted posthumously to full colonel. Onizuka left behind his wife, Lorna, and two daughters, who were living the astronaut family life in Houston, Texas.
Ellison Onizuka had never forgotten Colorado, even in orbit. Among the personal items he packed for his shuttle flights was a football, embossed with the word “Colorado.” That football flew with Onizuka on the Challenger and was recovered from the Atlantic.
Today, Onizuka’s football resides at CU-Boulder’s Old Main Heritage Center. Onizuka’s name now adorns CU-Boulder’s largest residence hall and spaces at CU-Boulder’s Aerospace Center and Air Force ROTC.
Ten years ago, the Big Island’s major airport was renamed Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole. Higher up the Big Island, ascending massive Mauna Kea, sits the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy and Visitor Center, 9,200 feet above sea level. The Onizuka Center staff encourages visitors to acclimate to the altitude before climbing to Mauna Kea’s frequently snowy summit, just shy of 14,000 feet.
This June 24, 2026, Onizuka would have turned 80. As America gets ready to blow out 250 candles, his well-lived life and advice deserve attention. Don’t let your eyes and the obstacles you see set the limits of your world. Give your mind permission to imagine something wider, kinder and braver.
Make your life count. Humans can do great things. Aim for the stars.
Craig Silverman is a former Denver chief deputy DA. Craig is columnist at large for The Colorado Sun and an active Colorado trial lawyer with Craig Silverman Law, LLC.
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