A rare invitation allowed KHON2 onto the private island of Niihau for a series of special reports. But the island has had its share of uninvited guests.
The most dramatic incursion on Niihau came right after the attack on Pearl Harbor. An Army Air Corps General had warned in the 1920s Japan would someday try to attack Pearl Harbor and use Niihau as a landing strip.
The Robinson family took to digging thousands of miles of trenches, first by mule, then by tractor, to put a wrench in that plan.
As the Robinson family's helicopter prepared to land KHON2 on Niihau, remnants of those furrows could still be seen in the dry lakebed. the pilot tells how on December 7th 1941, those grids foiled the plans of a Japanese zero pilot who had run out of gas.
"Finally he had to land. he had to land in a spot where there were no furrows," says Dave Nekomoto, helicopter pilot.
Japanese airman Shigenori Nishikaichi crash landed on the forbidden island.
"He didn't speak english, and so Harada, a resident that was a beekeeper actually spoke back and forth to the pilot," says Kenneth DeHoff, Pacific Aviation Museum. By week's end the pilot made another attempt to radio for a submarine rescue, and he took the machine gun off the wreckage of his plane, and returned to the village to try to find his papers. He burned down a house and tried to take the towering Ben Kanahele prisoner. The residents had taken the papers of the Japanese pilot, had taken his weapon also, and again kind of treated him well during that first week," says DeHoff.
Kanahele was awarded the purple heart and a medal of honor. The zero was the first the Army was able to study and reverse engineer for two months into the war. Its wreckage sat where it crashed on Niihau until the Robinson family allowed it for display at the Pacific Aviation Museum.
"And we have a hero who is a Hawaiian and really when we get Niihau students here, they look at this exhibit and say wow, that's our Uncle or our Grandfather and he's a hero."
And Ben said well I've had enough of this, and the pilot actually shot him three times in the belly, and Ben still picked him up and crushed his head against the wall."
Join us for a half hour special, Niihau: past present and future. June 25th at 9 p.m.
