|
Shortly before the outbreak of the Pacific war, Abraham Piianaia was back for a second tour manning the windswept U.S. outpost on Jarvis Island. One morning he smelled something in the wind. "What is that?" he said, and the boys stood around sniffing. Boys of the Panala’au
Setting the scene: Teenage boys were recruited from Kamehameha Schools in the late 1930s to man remote outposts in the South Pacific, establishing American possession of islands that might become valuable in the event of a Pacific war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Navy began to bombard the islands.
SECOND OF TWO PARTS
By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com"Smells like teriyaki!" joked one, but to Piianaia it did smell like Japanese cooking. Soon they saw a gray warship pull up alongside the island -- Piianaia described it as looking like a cross between a destroyer and a freighter, probably a seaplane tender -- with the flag of Japan on her stern. The ship put over a launch, which began pulling for shore. The boys decided that the ship couldn't see their shack, called a "Government House," very well, so they ran up a large American flag on a pole. Immediately, the launch turned around and went back to the ship, and the Imperial Navy hastily departed the Equatorials.
The Japanese didn't forget about the strategic islands. In December 1941, the boys on Baker Island were Walter Burke, Blue Makua, James Coyle and James Pease. On Howland Island, the colonists were Richard Whaley, Joe Keliihahanui, Thomas Bederman and Elvin Matson. By then, too far from established flying routes, Jarvis Island had been abandoned.
On the morning of Dec. 8, 1941, Burke went outside to raise the American flag and saw a Japanese RO-boat just offshore, ungainly in the water. The submarine fired a round and ripped off the top of the Government House. Burke dashed inside and told the dazed colonists that they'd "better skeedaddle out of there." The four ran across the island in record time, and sought shelter by digging foxholes. Burke ordered the others to disperse across the island, so that a single shell wouldn't get them all. The RO-boat walked shells across the island, methodically demolishing the building and other facilities, including the light station they had dedicated to the lost Amelia Earhart.
The Bishop Museum will present "The Panala'au Years: Hawaiian Colonists of the South Seas 1935-1942," running May 18 through June 16. The museum-designed "traveling exhibit" tells how young Hawaiian men occupied remote, uninhabited islands in the equatorial Pacific. The exhibit includes oral histories, photographs, artifacts and programs. Information: 847-3511. Panala'au exhibit
That night, the boys went back to survey the wreckage. Pieces of tin were scattered from the Government House roof, which they used as sunshades the next day. At noon, a four-engine H6K "Mavis" flying boat passed over the island, and let go a salvo of bombs.
The boys piled brush atop their foxholes for camouflage. The bomber came back nearly every day from its base in the Marianas or Marshalls, gutting the atoll with explosives. Little of the food was saved, and rats got into the rest, but there was a little coffee, and palolo leaves to chew on, and the ocean provided fish and squid. The U.S. flag that the boys had never managed to raise on the morning of Dec. 8 was wrapped in a gunny sack and buried, marked by a cairn of stones.
They settled in to wait, cut off from the rest of the world. Christmas dinner was lobster under a full moon and carols into the dawn. They kept a low profile, going to ground when a Japanese submarine or destroyer came by. After weeks of bombing, they expected the Japanese to land any moment.
Imperial Navy submarine I-74 spied on Howland Island between Dec. 23 and 25, and its crew mistakenly thought it "recognized installations for ships."
At Baker Island, a warship showed up on Jan. 28. The teenage colonists hid in their foxholes and watched the gray destroyer put over a boat, which began pulling for shore. "Oh, boy, we've had it now!" said Burke.
|
They saw a blond head among the sailors and realized that the boat must be American. It was destroyer Helm, making the dash from Pearl Harbor to retrieve the colonists. "We found those guys living like Robinson Crusoe," remembered Victor Dybdal.The boys threw off the brush cover and rushed to shore, where the boat halted just at reef's edge. In his haste, Walter Burke cut his foot on a piece of jagged shrapnel buried in the sand. Blood poured out, and he was concerned the scent would attract sharks. The Navy officer in charge of the boat refused to row to the other side of the island, where the waters were quieter.
Blue Makua swam back to shore and convinced Burke to swim for the boat. Even sharks were better than the daily bombings from the Japanese Navy.
Aboard Helm, the Hawaiians learned that Richard Whaley and Joe Keliihahanui had been killed by the shelling on Howland, and were buried there. Thomas Bederman and Elvin Matson were still in shock, their adventure turned tragic.
Skipper Chester Carroll secured from general quarters as the destroyer moved away from Baker, and he came down to quiz the survivors. Just as they told the lieutenant commander that a Japanese bomber came over every day promptly at noon, they heard the sound of feet running on deck, always the first sign of impending danger on a destroyer. Dybdal looked at his watch: noon. As he gained the deck, a pair of bombs bracketed the destroyer; Dybdal could see the "Mavis" flying boat circling around for another run.
The aircraft made three passes, missing each time. By the third run, the destroyer's anti-aircraft guns were hosing the sky around it. The plane fled. Helm turned around and raced back to Pearl.
By the beginning of 1942, radar was in operation on these isolated islands and Japanese submarines couldn't get close without tipping their hand. After the month of aggressive shellings, Japanese submarine attacks against the islands thinned out.
Burke returned to Baker Island in 1943, and located the flag he had buried two years before. He took it home, where it remained until he passed away in 1990. The Amelia Earhart Lighthouse was restored to operating condition by the Coast Guard in 1963, part of a nationwide observance of Earhart's 65th birthday. In the 1950s, the bodies of Whaley and Keliihahanui were exhumed on Howland and reburied in the military cemetery at Schofield Barracks.
"When I reminisce about those times, I realize that we were young and naive," recalled Piianaia. "I realize now that we were there to strengthen our position in the Pacific, and I'm only beginning to appreciate how important that was.
"The opportunity to be left in nature is something youngsters don't have any more. Our companions were the birds. All we had were the four of us and nothing else. Perhaps that's how Adam and Eve could have felt in the Garden of Eden. Everything was ... so pristine."
Piianaia later became head of the Hawaiian Studies Department at the University of Hawaii and director of Hawaiian Home Lands. The surviving members call themselves "Hui Panala'au," or society of colonizers.
Occasionally, the veterans of the brief colonization of the Equatorial Islands meet to remember their boyhood friends, and they unroll the American flag and let it fly over the graves of Whaley and Keliihahanui.
Portions of this story are excerpted from "Advance Force -- Pearl Harbor" by Burl Burlingame, Naval Institute Press, 2002.