Relics and Stories From The World War II (Part1.)

Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 — the date that would live in infamy — there began a peculiar and violent episode that has more or less lived in obscurity ever since.
Japanese pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi was flying his Mitsubishi Zero over the Pacific. The 22-year-old was escorting several bombers that were part of a second wave of attack on Pearl Harbor, with Bellows Field, an Army airbase, as their target.
But the Japanese no longer had the element of surprise on their side. On their way back to the aircraft carrier, they were met by a squadron of American P-36 Hawks. The Zeros were far superior aircraft, enabling the Japanese to outrun and outgun their adversaries, but still not all of them escaped unscathed.

Nishikaichi had shot down an American plane, but he was hit, and the bullet hole in his fuel tank was leaking badly. The aircraft carrier was 200 miles away, and he wasn’t going to make it.

The Japanese military had outlined plans for emergency landing in advance, recommending pilots touch down on the presumably uninhabited island of Niihau, where they could be rescued by submarine.
Niihau is the second-smallest and westernmost of the eight major Hawaiian islands. It has remained privately owned and lightly populated since the Robinson family purchased the island from King Kamehameha V in 1864. Permission to visit is mostly reserved for relatives and friends of natives. The 2010 census counted a population of 210, a small increase from the 136 living there in 1941.

Japanese pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi thought he’d be rescued. He was wrong. (Wikimedia)
Nishikaichi soon discovered the island was not deserted. Approaching the ground, he saw buildings dotting the landscape. In fact, he would come into abrupt contact with civilization while making his landing: Nishikaichi’s landing gear collided with a farmer’s fence, sending his plane’s nose into the ground, mangling the propeller and bending the fuselage.

Residents on Niihau were mostly Polynesian natives who worked the farms, cultivating livestock like sheep and cattle, and keeping bees.

Hawilo Kaleohano saw the crash landing and rushed to the scene. He identified the aircraft as Japanese, and dragged the semi-conscious pilot from the wreckage. Noting the bullet holes on the craft, and drawing from his awareness of escalating tensions between the U.S. and Japan, Kaleohano confiscated the papers and gun from the semi-conscious pilot.

Kaleohano called over a 61-year-old Japanese beekeeper named Ishimatsu Shintani , but he was a reluctant aid, as an immigrant who wanted little trouble. The pair spoke, and Shintani appeared visibly shocked. Shintani kept it a secret, and left soon afterward, but he had heard the news: The Empire of Japan had attacked the United States and declared war.

A more cooperative Japanese couple, Yoshio and Irene Harada, were summoned to talk to the pilot in his native language. They heard the tidings of war, and they too kept them secret.

The rest of the island’s residents were in high enough spirits that they threw a luau for the pilot, who sang a song over a guitar. Nishikaichi expected to be rescued soon by submarine, as the the emergency plans said, but unbeknownst to him the submarine in the area had been commanded instead to patrol for American ships.
Then came word from elsewhere. The island did not have an electrical grid nor telephones, but it did have a single battery-powered radio. That night they found out about the morning’s assault on Oahu. The inhabitants now realized they harbored a foreign enemy.

They sheltered him overnight, and transported him by tractor to the shore the next day where they expected the return of island owner Aylmer Robinson, who made weekly trips to the island. But a temporary ban on sea travel kept him away.
I
n the meantime, the stranded Nishikaichi persuaded the Haradas that Japan would inevitably win the war, enlisting them as allies.

Nishikaichi’s most urgent concern was to reclaim the papers taken from him in the crash. They contained maps, codes, and battle plans that he was warned must not fall into the hands of the enemy. Tensions heightened in the following days, when on December 11, Shintani, the beekeeper, went to Kaleohano’s house with $200 to plead a case for the papers’ return, explaining the pilot’s life was on the line and danger awaited him if he declined. Kaleohano refused to return them, and kicked the man off of his property.

After the confrontation, Nishikaichi and the Haradas agreed that the pilot was to meet his end in honorable death, likely by suicide. Yoshio Harada and Nishikaichi broke into a shed and stole a shotgun and the pistol Kaleohano had confiscated from the pilot. The armed group then made way to Kaleohano’s house to find the papers.

When they arrived, Kaleohano was nowhere to be seen. The two broke into his house and searched for the papers, but nothing turned up. Kaleohano had been hiding in his outhouse, and made an escape, though not before one of the raiding party shot at him with the shotgun. Luckily they missed. Kaleohano ran, and dropped off the papers at his mother-in-law’s. He assembled a few islanders to accompany him on a 10-hour boat trip to the neighboring island of Kauai to get reinforcements.
I
n the meantime the frustrated and emboldened pair set fired to Kaleohano’s house. They took a guard and another resident of the house hostage and paraded though the town, firing their weapons. They later took two more in the form of Benehakaka Kanahele and his wife, Ella.

Niihau residents Ben and Ella Kanahele stopped the Japanese pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi and his local accomplices from escaping the island.

Ben spoke to Yoshio Harada in Hawaiian, asking for help in taking the pilot’s gun away from him. During the exchange, Ben lunged for the pilot, but Nishikaichi was too quick. He fired his pistol at Ben, striking him in the chest, hip, and groin. But the agitated and burly man charged on.

“Then I got mad,’’ he later told a newspaper. “I picked up the flier and threw him against the stone wall and knocked him cold.’’ His wife joined in, bashing the pilot’s skull in with a rock. Ben followed after by setting his hunting knife into the pilot’s neck. In the frenzy, Harada grabbed the shotgun and shot himself in the gut.

When reinforcements from Kauai came to the island, they arrested the remaining individuals involved. Shintani was sent to an internment camp and became a U.S. citizen in 1960, while Irene Harada was imprisoned on Honolulu for three years.

Ben Kanahele was later awarded the Medal for Merit and the Purple Heart, and Hawila Kaleohano was awarded the Medal of Freedom and a compensation package for the property he lost in the fire. Ben’s wife Ella received no official recognition for her role in subduing the pilot.

The Niihau incident is sometimes cited as a cause of America’s Japanese internment program. The case rests on little more primary evidence than the concerns of one Naval intelligence officer Irving Mayfield, who said, “The fact that the two Niihau Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot … indicates likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan.” As recently as 2004, the event was cited by Michelle Malkin in her apologia for the American domestic response, In Defense of Internment.

Others are more skeptical of the peculiar episode’s supposed influence. “A few latter-day apologists for Japanese American confinement have described the Niʻihau incident as key in prompting President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066,” wrote historian Greg Thompson. “This appears to be unfounded speculation. There is no evidence that the Ni’ihau incident influenced later policy — in none of the mountains of transcripts and memoranda of War Department and White House discussions regarding Japanese Americans on the West Coast that I have reviewed is the Ni’ihau incident even once mentioned.”

After a 75-year journey, a handful of World War II relics recently went home to Japan, thanks to a campaign launched by Pacific Beach’s Jim Armstrong.

Seven engraved wooden sticks belonging to Shigenori Nishikaichi, a pilot who died in the war, were returned to family members during an emotional gathering on the Japanese island of Shikoku.

“It’s amazing,” said Armstrong, who inherited these items from his father. “Everyone is just thrilled to death.”

Known as nafuda, the sticks carried the names of Airman 1st Class Nishikaichi’s colleagues, the identifying markings of his Zero, and his administrative command.

On Dec. 7, 1941, his Zero crashed on Ni’ihau, a Hawaiian island, after strafing Bellows Field during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Days later, he died in a fight with a Ni’ihau resident.

His nafuda would be collected by another warrior, U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Jack Armstrong — Jim Armstrong’s father.

World War II remains the most violent war in human history, devastating dozens of nations and killing more than 60 million people. Millions more were physically or emotionally wounded, and these scars still mar relations between people and nations.

In that light, a few artifacts passed from one family to another — even families once dedicated to each other’s destruction — may seem insignificant.

Yet Ken DeHoff, a Vietnam War veteran who played a key role in this yarn, said the repatriation profoundly moved a wide circle of Americans and Japanese.

“Everyone who has gotten involved in this is experiencing a whole new level of appreciation for peace and reconciliation and moving us forward,” DeHoff said.

“It’s like these are jewels of healing.”

A pilot’s fate

Airman Nishikaichi grew up on Shikoku, an island in the Inland Sea about 400 miles southwest of Tokyo. Months after receiving his wings, the pilot boarded the Hawaiian-bound aircraft carrier Hiryu.

Before that fateful mission, Nishikaichi soared over his younger brother’s elementary school in Shikoku.

“He circled several times,” said DeHoff, executive director of the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. “He rocked his wings back and forth and waved.”

That was the last time Yoshitada Nishikaichi saw his older brother.

Inside the Pacific Aviation Museum, a diorama illustrates Airman Nishikaichi’s fate. The exhibit shows a shattered Zero, which crashed on Ni’ihau after an American bullet pierced its fuel tank. Cooperation between aviator and islanders, few of whom realized that war had erupted, ended when Nishikaichi took a local woman hostage.

In the ensuing fight with the captive’s husband, Nishikaichi was killed. A Ni’ihau resident of Japanese descent who had assisted Nishikaichi was another casualty, killing himself.

Days later, Lt. Armstrong arrived on Ni’ihau to collect intelligence from the downed plane. He took the dead pilot’s nafuda as keepsakes.

After the war, Armstrong pursued careers in the Air Force and NASA. Eventually, he became convinced that his wartime souvenirs should be returned to Nishikaichi’s relatives.

When the veteran died in 1985, though, this remained unfinished business. His son inherited the nafuda, and his mission.

“It was my father’s quest,” Jim Armstrong said last year, “and now it’s mine.”

Overwhelmed

In a 2015 interview with the Union-Tribune, Armstrong discussed his parents, both eyewitnesses to the attack on Pearl Harbor; the nafuda; and his father’s desire to return these objects to the pilot’s family. The story caught the attention of the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles and the Pacific Aviation Museum.

Mark Edward Harris also took notice. A photojournalist, he had once shot a portrait of Yoshitada Nishikaichi. Harris contacted a friend, a lawyer based in Osaka, Japan, and told her of Armstrong’s wish to return the nafuda to the Nishikaichi family.

The lawyer informed the Nishikaichis. The Pacific Aviation Museum contacted Armstrong and offered to facilitate the exchange.

Last December, Amstrong took the nafuda and his own father’s flight suits to the museum for the ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

DeHoff organized a service where the relics, tucked into a box of koa wood, were blessed by a Buddhist monk and a Hawaiian Christian kahu, or priest.

Last month, DeHoff and his wife, Tanja DeHoff, packed the koa box and flew to Japan. By jet, train, ferry and rental car, they traveled to Shikoku. Around 2 p.m. on June 22, they arrived at the home of Yoshitada Nishikaichi.


Through an interpreter, DeHoff presented the nafuda and charted their long, tangled journey. Nishikaichi seemed interested, but not emotional. Then DeHoff showed him photos relating to the Ni’ihau incident.

“When we got to the crash site,” DeHoff said, “Nishikaichi started crying.”

“That moment,” Tanja DeHoff said, “my heart broke for him, just imagining how sad it must have been to lose the big brother he was so proud of.”

Together, the Japanese and the Americans visited a small cemetery, paying respects to a dead pilot who had helped push the United States into a global conflict.

Similar paradoxes cast shadows over other stops on this trip. The DeHoffs toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which honors the estimated 135,000 who died as a result of an atomic bomb dropped by an American plane. Reflecting on those deaths, Ken DeHoff also thought of the many Americans who perished at Pearl Harbor and other battlefields, as well as the millions of Chinese killed by Japan’s imperial forces.

“I had real mixed feelings,” he said. “I won’t say we righted a wrong, but we completed a circle.”

The visit also seemed to overwhelm Yoshitada Nishikaichi.

“Here was this big country, America, taking the time to bring these artifacts, his family’s personal property, all the way to this little island,” DeHoff said. “He seemed somewhat in awe that we had really done this.”

Yet this is exactly what Jack Armstrong wanted, his son said.

“I’m very happy about this,” said Armstrong, who was unable to make the trip but received regular email dispatches from the DeHoffs. “It’s so amazing that everything fell into place the way it did.”

---

Please FOLLOW AND UPVOTE!

---

Sources(images inclusive):
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/93987102-132.html