The Niʻihau incident occurred on December 7–13, 1941, when Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi crash-landed on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Imperial Japanese Navy had mistakenly designated Niʻihau as an uninhabited island suitable for damaged aircraft to land and await rescue. This miscalculation set in motion a sequence of events that would unfold on the remote Hawaiian island over the course of six days.
Initially, the Native Hawaiians who encountered Nishikaichi were unaware of the Pearl Harbor attack and treated him as a guest, though they took the precaution of removing his weapons and brought in a resident born in Japan to interpret. That night, after learning of the attack, the Hawaiians apprehended Nishikaichi and placed him under guard with the Haradas, two of the only three residents of Japanese descent on the island. However, Nishikaichi revealed details of the attack to the Haradas, and they agreed to assist him. Nishikaichi and Yoshio Harada overcame a guard and escaped to destroy Nishikaichi's plane and papers. They then took Niihauans Benehakaka "Ben" Kanahele and his wife Kealoha "Ella" Kanahele prisoner.
The incident concluded when the Kanaheles overcame their captors and killed Nishikaichi. Ben Kanahele sustained wounds during this confrontation, and one of Nishikaichi's collaborators, Yoshio Harada, met his end as well. The incident demonstrated the complex circumstances that arose in Hawaii immediately following Pearl Harbor and the role of island residents in responding to Japanese military personnel.
~3 total
Subscribe and explore the deep local history of any place in the US, as many locations as you like, with new discoveries added over time.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.