I always thought this was a great unknown story about the Pearl Harbor attack. In honor of Friday's anniversary of the event, I offer this as my sign of remembrance.
--john
The Ni'ihau Incident
In the morning of December 7, 1941, Shigenori Nishikaichi and seven other pilots took off in their Zeros from the carrier
Hiryu to escort bombers to Pearl Harbor during the second wave of the attack. On the way back, the flight got attacked by P-36 Hawks. The U.S. fighters were shot down and Nishikaichi’s plane was damaged and losing fuel.
Nishikaichi's Zero after crashing on Ni'ihau
The Japanese had a plan for such an event. The small island of Ni'ihau, the westernmost and smallest of Hawaii’s seven main islands, was designated for emergency landings and a submarine was to pick up downed pilots later. Once Nishikaichi got there, however, he saw that their intelligence was mistaken and the island was not uninhabited, after all. It had a population of 136, mainly Polynesians who worked as farmers, sheep and cattle herders and beekeepers for the island’s owner, Aylmer Robinson, whose ancestors had bought the island from King Kamehameha V in 1864.
Having no other options, Nishikaichi attempted to land but his plane got snagged on a wire fence and its nose plowed into the ground. A nearby local, Hawila Kaleohano, ran to the pilot’s aid. News of the attach on Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu hadn’t reached Ni'ihau yet, but Kaleohano noted the plane’s Japanese markings and was aware of the diplomatic tensions between the two countries. Therefore, he took the dazed pilot’s gun and papers from him as a precaution. He then took him into his house and gave him breakfast.
Hawila "Howard" Kaleohano, who first took in the crash landed pilot
A Japanese-born immigrant, 60-year-old beekeeper Ishimatsu Shintani was summoned to act as a translator. After a brief exchange, Shintani turned pale and left the house without a word. There were two other people of Japanese descent on the island, a married couple: Yoshio and Irene Harada. They, in turn, were called on. Nishikaichi told Yoshio that Japan had just attacked America and demanded that his pistol and his papers (maps, codes and attack plans on Pearl Harbor) be returned to him. He convinced them that Japan will win the war and the couple decided to keep the information the pilot had just provided to themselves.
The locals threw a luau for Nishikaichi, who even sang a song while accompanying himself on a borrowed guitar. He assumed that the Japanese sub would arrive to rescue him shortly, unawares that the vessel was given a new mission in the meantime.
Ni’ihau had no telephone, but the island’s single battery-powered radio brought the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor in the evening. The game was up and the islanders decided to hand over the pilot to the landlord, Aylmer Robinson. He lived on another island but made weekly visits, the next of which was due the following day.
Residents of Ni'ihau at one of the island's small settlements in 1885
Nishikaichi was escorted to the shore in the morning but Robinson didn’t show up. Unbeknown to the islanders, the Japanese attack resulted in a ban on boat travel and now they had to deal with the enemy pilot on their own.
After several days of staying on the island as an unwanted guest under loose guard, Nishikaichi recruited the beekeeper Shintani. The latter then showed up at Kaleohano’s house with $200, a huge amount on the island, offering to buy the pilot’s papers. Kaleohano refused. Shintani started threatening the man, who threw him out. Meanwhile, Harada went to Robinson’s ranch house and stole the pistol that was stored there, along with a shotgun. The man guarding Nishikaichi was overpowered and locked in a warehouse.
Airman 1st Class Shigenori Nishikaichi, the Japanese pilot who crash landed on the Hawaiian island of Ni'ihau
Late at night the pilot and Harada went to Kaleohano’s house for the papers but didn’t find him at home and moved on to the crashed plane nearby, taking hostage the 16-year-old boy guarding it. Kaleohano, who was hiding in his outhouse, used the chance to slip away, avoiding the usurpers’ fire. He rushed to the village, warned the residents, then took a boat with some other men to make the 10-hour rowing trip to the nearest island and get help. Meanwhile, Nishikaichi removed one of the plane’s machine guns to give himself more firepower and set fire to Kaleohano’s house after realizing the man probably took the compromising documents with him when he escaped.
The island of Ni'ihau as seen from the north
Nishikaichi forced another local to go search for Kaleohano. While making a show of looking for Kaleohano, who he knew was already off the island, the man secretly enlisted the aid of a friend, shepherd Benehakaka “Ben” Kanahele, to steal the pilot’s machinegun. They took the weapon from the wagon Nishikaichi stored it on, but Kanahele himself and his wife were captured by the pilot in the morning. As they were turning the now-abandoned village upside down for Kaleohano and the papers, Nishikaichi started to get extremely agitated and threatened Kanahele with killing him and everyone else on the island.
That was the last straw for the 6-foot-tall shepherd. He told Harada in Hawaiian to take the pilot’s gun from him. The turncoat refused to do so and called out to the pilot for the shotgun, probably to defend himself against Kanahele. The moment the gun was being handed over, Kanahele and his wife Kealoha (“Ella”) sprang into action and leapt at Nishikaichi. The pilot shot Kanahele several times but the enraged islander lifted him up into the air and hurled him against a wall. Ella grabbed a rock and hit the dazed man on the head, then Ben cut his throat with a knife. Seeing the failure of the takeover attempt, Harada killed himself with the shotgun, ending the brief Japanese reign of terror on Ni’ihau.
Kealoha and Benehakaka Kanahele, the couple who
finally confronted and killed Nishikaichi
Ben Kanahele was awarded the Medal of Merit and the Purple Heart. Kaleohano received the Medal of Freedom and was compensated for the loss of his house in the fire. The beekeeper Shintani was interned on the mainland but received his American citizenship in 1960. The widowed Irene Harada was suspected of being a Japanese spy and jailed for three years. It’s been speculated that the incident, and the troubling ease with which Nishikaichi turned the island’s Japanese residents to his side, was a major factor in the establishment of internment camps for Japanese Americans during the war.
Ben Kanahele at the presentation of his awards
You can learn more about the lesser-known confrontations of World War II and the many, often heroic, ways common men served their country on our historical tours to
Western Europe, the
Eastern Front and the
Pacific Theater.