Taking flight

A Dec. 7 opening date motivates volunteers at the aviation museum

If there's a secret password floating around the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor these days, it's likely "Yorktown."

Yorktown was the American aircraft carrier that limped into Pearl Harbor, badly hammered by Imperial navy dive bombers during the battle of the Coral Sea in the spring of 1942. Repairs were expected to take at least three months, but it was wartime, and energized Hawaii shipyard workers worked around the clock, readying the ship for sea in only three days.

The Yorktown sailed directly from the shipyard to the turning-point Battle of Midway, playing a decisive role.

That kind of get-'er-done attitude is necessary these days at the museum, going up in former Navy hangars on Ford Island.

Aircraft are in various stages of restoration, massive vistas of drywall construction still being primed and sanded, concrete being poured, electrical lines being wired, signage being written, security measures being hammered out, a gift shop and a restaurant to be completed and supplied, educational venues to be established, computers to be booted, trolleys to be gassed, docents to be trained ... a big job, one of the largest museum building programs ever in the state of Hawaii, and they've got a deadline.

The first phase opening is Dec. 7.

This year. No kidding. In six weeks.

"It's a lot of painstaking effort, because you have to get it right," said museum Executive Director Allan Palmer. "But we'll get it done. We take our aviation history seriously here because it's been so critical to the modern history of the islands."

Pearl Harbor, in addition to being the place where America entered World War II during a devastating aerial assault, is arguably the cradle of aviation in the islands, ranging from the Geiger Detachment setting up the first hangars on the shore in 1913 to Amelia Earhart's flights to the Pan Am liners to the cooperative use of Ford Island by both Army and Navy aviators. After the war, the airfield in the middle of the harbor became a well-known training aid for thousands of student pilots.

Hawaiian Airlines pilot Paul Wallis, a volunteer at the museum, soloed on Ford Island a few decades ago.

"Usually, I'm flying modern 767s, so it's a treat to fix older airplanes. I'm learning a lot. We have to restore this stuff so it won't disappear -- when you preserve the past, you're protecting the history of the islands for those in the future. It's a big responsibility."

A couple of other volunteers were helping maneuver a Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter atop a bed of pierced-steel planking. "I saw an ad looking for volunteers, and I was interested, so here I am," said retired shipyard electrician Ron Nakamura, who also builds detailed scale-model airplanes.

Doug Kohlan, a retired Navy dentist, helped a mainland friend restore a rare Fairey Firefly and caught the old-airplane bug. All the volunteers praised the contributions of restoration director Syd Jones, a notoriously quiet and competent technician.

"He's full of information; I'm learning a lot," said Kohlan.

"A fabulous guy to work with," said Nakamura.

We caught Jones with a tiny paint brush in hand, preparing to replicate the delicately printed maintenance information on the engine cowl of a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter. The airplane, with a real A6M2 airframe and a DC-3 engine, was retired from flying air shows on the mainland and had been cleaned up and repainted as the plane flown by Shigenori Nishikaichi during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Nishikaichi belly-landed the fighter on Niihau after the attack, and pieces of the plane were still rotting away on the mystery island until Jones organized an expedition to recover the aluminum remains. Details from the existing wreck helped Jones replicate the exact color painted on Nakajima-built Zeros. The museum's Zero may be the most accurately painted aircraft of its type in any museum.

Jones shrugged. "You have to get it right. That's all there is to it. These aircraft are touchstones to our past. My wife (museum education director KT Budde-Jones) and I started out working on shipwrecks in Florida, stuff that's hundreds of years old, fascinating treasure hunts. But they didn't have the same impact as these aircraft, I guess because we can still talk to the people who flew these great planes."

He turned back to the Zero and made a near-imperceptible correction to the maintenance calligraphy.

Busy guy. Let's let him get back to work.

The museum could use more help and is looking for more volunteers. The only sticking point is that volunteers will eventually need on-base passes issued by the Navy, as the museum is housed on an active-duty facility.

Docent training starts soon. Call KT Budde-Jones at 690-0169 or 836-7747, or e-mail kt@pacificaviationmuseum.org. The password is "Yorktown."