'(Activists) can't speak for us.
By Trish Moore
We know what we want
and we're for it'
Star-BulletinPUUWAI, Niihau -- Niihau residents say the Navy's proposal to add missile launch sites to their island will benefit them, providing jobs and the opportunity to continue their isolated and traditional lifestyle.
Henry Kaipo Kanahele, a village elder, said of the project: "It's good. It helps us, gives us jobs."
Yesterday journalists were allowed to visit the village at Puuwai and meet the island's 180 native Hawaiian residents.
Until now, Niihau voices have been missing from debate over the Navy's proposed use of the island for its Theater Ballistic Missile Defense program based at Kauai's Pacific Missile Range Facility. The Navy wants to launch target rockets -- which would simulate enemy missiles -- from Kauai, Niihau, Tern Island at French Frigate Shoals, and Johnston Island.
Environmentalists and native Hawaiian activists oppose the project, saying it encroaches upon wildlife and Hawaiian culture.
"It's frustrating," says Niihau resident Luana Kaohelaulii. "They (Hawaiian activists) can't speak for us. We know what we want and we're for it."
"There's no voice to let everybody know that we're in favor of this," said Ala Kaohelaulii, who, raised on Niihau, is one of three Department of Education teachers for the island's 58 kindergarten through 12th-grade students.
She sees the project as "something different for our kids to do. We know it's for our own benefit."
The lives of the people who live on this privately owned island have been shrouded in mystery for generations. Residents' sparse contact with the outside world is their own choice.
Luana Kaohelaulii, 40, attended Kamehameha Schools on Oahu in the 1970s. She occasionally visits her mother on Kauai and shops at Cost-U-Less and Kmart. But ever since her children were born, she says she "wouldn't live anywhere else in the world."
Most residents speak English, but Niihau is the last place where Hawaiian is the daily language.
Keith Robinson, co-heir of Niihau, says "this is a very strong and devoutly Christianized island. The old heathen gods and ways are not appreciated here."
Outsiders romanticize Niihau as the last bastion of a dying culture, but outward cultural signs of ancient times are not apparent.
For several decades the community has been subsidized by the Robinsons with income from their share in the Gay & Robinson sugar company. Niihau Ranch, which most recently employed 12 to 15 residents, operated at a loss for 40 years until the Robinsons shut it down several months ago.
The Robinsons say revenues from other businesses are now being used to pay land and estate taxes. The situation has become so dire the family said last week they are considering starting over on the mainland.
The Navy's proposal for Niihau includes construction of one or two small rocket launch sites, a tethered balloon launching site and infrastructure improvements such as roads and a 6,000-foot airstrip on the island.
Niihau residents would be employed in the construction projects and provide support services during test rocket launches.
"These are desperate, desperate times. You won't get a lot of dissent from the people," Robinson said earlier this week. "Folks who don't like it are free to leave."
Today, Niihau residents live rent-free in modest, well-maintained homes, largely powered by wind and solar energy. They have use of Niihau Ranch trucks to roam the island, hunt wild pigs and sheep and collect shells for leis. Off-island supplies are transported free of cost. In most cases they have free medical care. Their cherished privacy is maintained by a strict policy that allows visitors by invitation only.
In return they are expected to live by certain rules, foremost of which is a ban on speaking out against Robinson business activities on the island.
A group of 12 residents last week toured the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai's west side and got an overview of the Navy's proposed plan.
Much of the Niihau community plans to travel to Kauai today and tomorrow to attend a public hearing on the project's draft environmental impact statement to be held Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Waimea United Church of Christ.
Not your ordinary Navy
By Trish Moore
re-enlistment ceremony
Star-BulletinPUUWAI, Niihau -- Navy Chief Henry Kaipo Kanahele Jr.'s parents, four sons and daughter watched him re-enlist for another four years yesterday.
The ceremony, honorably discharging and re-enlisting the 16-year Navy veteran, was held at his childhood home in the village of Puuwai on Niihau.
Kanahele says he wanted to have the ceremony here because it's probably the last time he'll re-enlist, and he wanted to share it with his family.
Kanahele has been stationed at Pearl Harbor his entire career and is a supervisor on the nuclear-powered submarine Santa Fe.
Cmdr. Tom Bayley officiated the ceremony, attended by about 80 Niihau residents.
"I've spent a lot of years looking at this island from a periscope. It's great to finally see this beautiful island," Bayley said.
Niihau Church minister and village headman Gilbert Paholehua gave a prayer and led the community in an emotional hymn in Hawaiian. Kanahele talked in Hawaiian for about 15 minutes.
Niihau feared Japan attack
By Trish Moore
during WWII
Star-BulletinPUUWAI, Niihau -- Military presence on Niihau dates back at least to Dec. 7, 1941, when a Japanese Zero bomber made a crash landing not far from here.
The plane, riddled with bullets, had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
The pilot had no choice but to land in a rock-stubbled pasture because the Robinsons had spent eight years plowing 2-feet-deep cross-hatched furrows in the flatlands throughout the island.
Keith Robinson, co-heir of Niihau, says an Army Air Corps major warned the family in 1933 the Japanese might try to seize the island as an advance base for a takeover of the Hawaiian Islands.
Mules pulled the plow for four years until a tractor was purchased. The project was completed the summer of 1941, Robinson says.
The bomber's landing gear was destroyed and Niihauans captured the dazed pilot. He was locked in a storage room until a second-generation Japanese schoolteacher on Niihau set him free and gave him a gun. The pilot terrorized the village for several days until he was killed by a Niihauan.
Most of the plane was quickly confiscated by U.S. forces, but remnants of the wing remain hidden under lantana trees. The cross-hatchings in the land are still easily visible from the air.
Over the years Niihauans have stripped off the plane's aluminum skin and re-fashioned it into eyes for their fishing nets.
