The soccer ball, now faded and fraying with faint remnants of handwriting still inscribed on the surface, carried Ellison Onizuka’s dreams back into space.
It had been a gift from his daughter’s soccer team at Clear Lake High School. He had helped coach the players, and they’d written him signed notes ahead of his scheduled Challenger mission. He’d placed the ball in a locker within the shuttle’s cabin before the flight. Onizuka would bring a piece of home with him into space.
When he died with the rest of the crew, the ball, somehow, survived. It was recovered from the wreckage of the cabin. His family donated the ball to the school, where it lived for three decades.
In 2016, Onizuka’s memento was placed in another spacecraft, this time by astronaut Shane Kimbrough, whose son attended the same high school. Kimbrough brought the ball with him aboard the International Space Station and returned it to Clear Lake following the mission.
This was just one way to honor Onizuka’s legacy, with the ball’s flight serving as a symbolic completion of his Challenger mission.
Onizuka’s name can be found on the last page of every U.S. passport alongside a poignant quote: “Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds…to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.”
He was a pioneer in his own right, marking a series of firsts on his initial flight aboard Discovery in 1985: first Asian American, first person of Japanese descent, first Hawaiian, first Buddhist to go into space.
Born in 1946 in a rural region of Kealakekua, Hawaii, Onizuka was one of four siblings. His parents were second-generation Japanese Americans. Growing up, he participated in 4-H club, student council, National Honor Society, yearbook and more. He played basketball and baseball. Onizuka was also a Boy Scout.
After graduating with honors from Konawaena High School in 1964, he studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado, where he also pursued a Master of Science in the same field.
Then, Onizuka’s dreams took flight when he joined the Air Force in 1970. After four years of active duty as a flight test engineer and a test pilot, he attended Air Force Test Pilot School and stayed on, rising up to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Competing against around 8,000 applicants, he joined NASA’s Class of 1978, comprised of 35 individuals selected to fly in the space shuttle age that awaited.
Onizuka felt the significance of the uncharted territory he and his colleagues were preparing to explore.
“There are a lot of outcomes from these projects which will affect both our society and the rest of the world,” he told Hawaii News Now in an interview during his NASA days.
His first mission, which took place in January of 1985, was classified by the Department of Defense. He spent 74 hours in space before returning to Earth.
Then, a year later, the 39-year-old prepared to fly as part of the Challenger crew. He was a mission specialist and an “expert on the tracking relay satellite,” as his commander, Francis Richard “Dick” Scobee, described him in a pre-flight interview.
“The mission is a great mission,” Onizuka shared at a press conference ahead of the scheduled flight. “We’re looking forward to it, and I think we’re ready to go fly.”
He told the American public that he’d been looking forward to the flight for a long time.
“I hope to stay with the space program, fly more missions,” he added.
Onizuka was survived by his wife, Lorna, and his two daughters, Janelle and Darien, who were 16 and 10, respectively.
Fellow astronaut Richard Covey remembers him for the light he brought to every room.
“He found humor in everything,” Covey said in a Netflix interview.
Beyond his passion for space and flight, Onizuka enjoyed running, hunting, fishing, and sports.
Members of the Space Shuttle Class of 1978 recall his delight in sharing food with others.
“He prided himself on Hawaiian food, and specifically, roasting a pig,” astronaut Frederick Gregory said in a Netflix interview.
Onizuka is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Following his death, he was posthumously awarded the rank of Colonel in the Air Force. His name lives on, especially in Hawaii, at the Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole and the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy. The Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka Space Center, geared towards education, is part of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai’i in Oahu.
Multiple Air Force locations have been named for him, and the Onizuka Memorial Committees hold yearly Space Science Days in Hawaii and California to spread his love of space with younger generations.
Other places that hold his name include streets, schools, libraries, an asteroid, a Moon crater and a bridge in Ukiha, Japan, the hometown of his grandparents. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” featured a shuttlepod called Onizuka. Five years ago, his name flew into space on a Northrop Grumman automated Cygnus spacecraft called the S.S. Ellison Onizuka, designed to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
