Paniolo’s Corner: All it takes is a baby grand piano, and $10,000 in gold
WAIMEA, Kauai – On the Westside of Kauai lies Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF). It’s been there since 1940 and sits on a pristine stretch of Hawaiian aina that boasts white sands for miles. There’s a great restaurant at the base and once a year the naval facility opens to the public, usually on July 3 for “Freedom Fest.”
The restaurant is called Shenanigans and offers the best views of Niihau from Kauai in my opinion. But, there lies a sense of what is lost when you stand viewing from 16 miles away, the only remaining intact Hawaiian civilization in Hawaii. It’s rumored there are around 50 native Hawaiians still living there to this day. The blue helicopter from Jurassic Park is the Robinson’s helicopter, and it can be seen weekly making trips to and from Niihau.
The island of Niihau itself was purchased by the Sinclair family from King Kamehameha V on January 23, 1864. The Sinclair’s reportedly made the purchase for $10,000 gold and a baby grand piano they had on their ship. Part of the purchase agreement was that the Sinclair’s (now Robinson’s) could not develop the island until the last remaining Hawaiian inhabitant had moved off the island. The family has held true to their word for going on 180 years and now the island has the name “The Forbidden Island.”
If you don’t know the story of Niihau and how it became the Forbidden Island, you probably should. It’s filled with lore, like the time a Japanese Zero crashed there after it got a bullet hole in the gas tank during the second wave in Pearl Harbor on December 7th,1941. Shigenori Nishikaichi, who was the pilot of the infamous Zero that is still on Niihau, couldn’t make it back to the aircraft carrier and headed towards the designated crash landing spot of Niihau, flying past Kauai before making a rocky landing that knocked Nishikaichi out. Whoever found him, and there is much debate on that, relieved him of his pistol and papers while he was unconscious.
Nishikaichi and his company had been told the island of Niihau was uninhabited and he quickly found that information to be incorrect as there were around 136 residents of the island at that time.
There’s much debate about what happened in the coming days after Nishikaichi landed, including a story of how the Niihauans put on a luau for their guest, not knowing what happened at Pearl Harbor earlier that day on December 7, 1941. They found out via a radio report and decided to house the pilot under guard with a Japanese family that was two of three Japanese-speaking individuals on the island.
The pilot confided in his hosts, the Haradas, and told them all that he had experienced in the attack on Pearl Harbor that morning, and that a Japanese submarine would rescue him there. The sub never came, but Nishikaichi and his host Yoshio Harada ended up taking the island hostage for four days as the Navy put on a no-sailing order in the channels directly following the attack on Pearl Harbor, essentially leaving the residents of the island at the mercy of Nishikaichi.
It’s debated how the conclusion of the famous Niihau incident took place, which technically was the second attack by a foreign power on American soil, but we do know how it ended.
One account has it that Ben Kanehale was shot three times by Nishikaichi as he attacked him out of defiance. Some say Kanehale’s wife was the one to end Nishikaichi’s life with a lava rock to the head, and others say it was Kanehale who delivered the fatal blow. Kanehale was awarded a Purple Heart officially and his wife was not, that much we do know. And we know that Yoshio was faced with the decision of having to fight off the Kanehale’s, or take his own life with the shotgun he had stolen from the Robinson farmhouse. Harada chose the latter, shooting himself in the abdomen to take his own life after Nishikaichi died.
Ironically enough, both the Haradas and Kanehale families reside on Kauai to this day. I have even met one man who claims he is a descendant of both families, suggesting that at one point in history, the families procreated together after the Niihau Incident.
This desperate struggle for survival termed “The Niihau Incident” has been made into a film and there have been several books written on the subject.
I can’t help looking at the island as the sun sets behind it and wonder what they are doing on Niihau and I can only imagine. But for now, watching the sunset behind the island is good enough for me and my imagination.