Sneak Attack: Small Arms at Pearl Harbor - The Ayoob Files

American Handgunner, Jan-Feb, 2002 by Massad Ayoob

Eminent historian John Toland notes, "Mrs. Claire Fonderhide, whose husband was at sea in a submarine, sat with a .45 automatic and waited." They were among thousands in Hawaii who found the presence of a firearm in the home enormously reassuring in a moment when they had every reason to believe they would be invaded by land forces in the wake of the bombing.

But for some other private citizens in the Hawaiian Islands, the need to defend against invading troops with deadly force, face-to-face, was not merely a possibility. It was about to become a reality.

Flight Petty Officer First Class Shigenori Nishikaichi had attacked Oahu from the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Soryu and left the fight with his fuel tank leaking from bullet holes inflicted by American gunfire. Knowing that he wouldn't make it back, he landed his plane near the village of Puuwai on the tiny island of Niihau, the westernmost in the Hawaiian chain.

Owned by an American family named Robinson, the primitive island had no phone, radio, or other modern communication. It functioned as a ranch for cattle and sheep, and was populated by some 136 citizens of Polynesian descent in addition to the Robinsons.

The plane came down hard, and Nishikaichi was still stunned from the impact when he looked up and saw the first responding Islander, Hawila Kaleohano, opening his cockpit to rescue him. The pilot drew his issue Nambu pistol, but Kaleohano grabbed the invader's head and smashed it against the plane's instrument panel, then snatched the Nambu away from him.

He pointed the gun at the pilot and, though he had no idea how to fire it, ordered the man out of the plane.

Kaleohano, a citizen of an American territory, had just captured alive one of the perpetrators of the sneak attack. He marched the man back to the village.

The villagers sought out one of two men on the island who spoke Japanese, a Nisei named Yoshio Harada, age 37. It appears that almost immediately that a bond formed between Harada and the Japanese pilot who had attacked Oahu. Not realizing that their resident translator had been suborned by the invader, the villagers, with no other form of communication, decided to wait for the weekly boat from the larger nearby island of Kaui.

On a pretext, the captured Japanese pilot asked to see the translator Harada, and was escorted to meet him at a storehouse. It was a set-up: Harada had stolen a shotgun and a revolver from the Robinson estate in the interim, and he and the captured Japanese pulled guns on their captors.

What followed could be made into a three-hour movie itself, but being true would seem too fantastic to film. Nishikaichi and Harada attempted to take over the island, seizing the machineguns from the downed Japanese combat plane and setting fire to the house of Kaleohano, who had captured Nishikaichi, but not before retrieving the pilot's papers and Nambu pistol. They threatened to destroy the village and began to take hostages.

As the night wore on, villager Beni Kanahali and his wife Ella managed to find, take, and secure the ammunition for the machineguns the Japanese pilot and his newfound cohort had threatened to use to destroy the village, but they were captured by the pair and taken hostage. Kanahele'asked Harada, "How can you do this to us?"