Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 116 - The Niihau Incident

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

The one time a downed Japanese pilot started a small civil war on a remote Hawaiian island. *correction* A pronunciation guide was used for the word Niihau, which said it is nee-how. Others have told us this is incorrect and it is instead Nee-ee-how. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://www.historynet.com/the-niihau-incident.htm https://timeline.com/this-japanese-wwii-fighter-pilot-thought-he-crash-landed-on-a-deserted-hawaiian-island-wrong-635d898b08d0 https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/niihau-incident-hawaiian.html https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/the-niihau-incident/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. That show that we do that makes people increasingly angry. I'm Joe, and with me today is Nick. What up? Oh, nothing much. You know, chilling. I am the most sunburnt I have ever been in my life. Really?

Even through all your deployments? Yes. Wow. The UV level in Hawaii is incredibly high, it turns out, which apparently means you get sunburnt faster. Science. You know how you get sunburned and the next day you're like, wow, I didn't even realize I was getting that sunburnt.

I wouldn't know. Fair enough. Well, so for pasty white people such as myself, what happens is you go out to the lake or the ocean or whatever and you wake up the next day like, wow'm very burnt i didn't expect to be this burnt um in hawaii you can feel yourself burning as it's happening it's incredible you just yeah the sizzle yeah like i was sitting i was at the beach this morning uh nursing my hangover as one does on the island and i like i actually brought sunscreen this time and um it it lasted for like an hour and then i could feel my skin just

literally on like i got fucking tear gassed what's up seattle pd um so i i talk about sunburn yeah what up portland um i talk about hawaii my sunburn every day because we're talking about Hawaii today. That's right. We're talking about a good old chunk of Hawaiian history. And that is the Niihau incident. As it is now commonly known. Nick, you may have heard of a little thing called the attack on Pearl Harbor. I don't think that's controversial

for me to say. Yeah, kind of minuscule in history. Yeah, it's a blip. Happened about 20 minutes away from where I'm sitting right now. Also, fun fact, apparently in Schofield Barracks, which is a U.S. Army base here

on Oahu, it was strafed pretty heavily by Japanese fighter aircraft. And so whatever building they hit is apparently considered a historical site. Oh, wow. So that means that people...

The base is a mired shithole because they're all in buildings from World War II. That's awesome. I have not heard a single good thing about Schofield because they're all in buildings from World War II. That's awesome. I have not heard a single good thing about Schofield Barracks other than the fact that Hawaii is cool and it happens to be there. The barracks suck, but, you know, Hawaii. Yeah, and you could literally, I don't know,

but it's really close to the ocean, not as close as I am, because suck it, Army, but it's close. But, you know, so this is a small side story to that historic event known as the attack on pearl harbor uh which kind of sort of led to a japanese pilot starting a second civil war on a very small hawaiian island known as nihao uh have you ever heard of this before? It's kind of not talked about. It's not in detail, but I've definitely heard of it. So it's known as one of those fun facts. Like, oh yeah, Japanese guy crashed there and then attempted to seize the island. Which isn't exactly what happened.

It also ignores a lot of the shit that happened during it and why it happened. For instance, at the time, there was a very large Japanese population. Well, there still is a very large Japanese population on Hawaii, but back then, if you were a Japanese immigrant, you could not

have citizenship. So that meant a large number of people who came over to work on plantations like the sugar plantations and stuff uh most of them uh management uh some labor but yeah um couldn't have citizenship so they ended up staying pretty much in their own communities without assimilating i'm not saying assimilation is great, but it does mean that they were pretty estranged to the feeling of being American. So they didn't really have

a ton of loyalty to the country because the immigration policy purposely alienated them from their own nation. Some of these people lived here for 40 fucking years at that point, but they still weren't citizens. So those are some of the people we're going be talking about today to include uh so another definition note i'm going

to be using the term hawaiian a lot um in hawaii um you are only hawaiian if you are native hawaiian um we don't really use the term native hawaiian it's just hawaiian right um if if you are if you live in the state or you're from the state, you're a local if you're not Hawaiian. You're Californian. I'm a Michigander, I guess is the term. What the fuck do you call yourselves?

Michigander works. I guess I'd be more specifically a Detroiter. It's not good. No matter how long I live here, the most I'll ever be as a local so when i say hawaiian i mean like actual hawaiian people um small note there like if i the guy who has a summer house there and only goes a few times a year uh the seasonal mainlander yeah yeah that's also known as my neighbor

um so before we get to that point we do have to talk a little bit about the background of this incident everyone seems to kind of want to forget about or just straight up has never heard of because it involves a lot of racism uh and then it leads into one of the biggest crimes america's ever done uh so like people don't like to dwell on it too much. Yeah. I figured they wouldn't. Yeah. It leads to camps, which isn't great. Niihau Island is the second smallest and most western island of Hawaii's 137 islands. Holy fuck.

It's about 70 miles. Yeah. A lot of them are very small. And some of them are uninhabited. But yeah, it's it's about 70 square miles it's a pretty small island um and it only has a population of around 100 people um and those aren't full-time uh like the population generally sits at around 50 and that's including like today uh and uh nihao is privately owned it is owned by a single family

known as the Robinsons and it still is currently I know this because I attempted to get in contact yeah notice that's not a Hawaiian name so it sounds kind of weird it harkens back to the time

before the annexation of the kingdom of Hawaii by the United States, which is a subject to a future episode or series at some point. But Hawaii was a flood of very rich white guys who would buy large tracts of land from the kingdom of Hawaii.

A lot of this goes back to what's called the Great Mahaeli, which is when King Kamehameha, I believe it was the fourth or the fifth, I don't know, did a whole bunch of land redistribution. Which, if you listen to this show a lot,

land redistribution almost never pans out great for people. Because it's almost, it's never done the way it should be done. In this case, it was supposed to be given out to Hawaiian commoners, it's never done the way it should be done. And this is, in this case, it was supposed to be, uh,

given out to like Hawaiian commoners. And it was like supposed to give them a slice of the ocean so they could fish a slice of the inland so they could farm. Um, you know, it was hypothetically is great, but really what happened was the King hoarded vast tracts of land, like millions upon millions of acres, uh, which he then sold to white people

to manage sugar plantations and pineapple plantations. Ah, yes. Which directly led to the annexation and the deposing of the kingdom of Hawaii. Good move. Whoopsie doodle. Now,

these plantations were terrible. They normally employed Hawaiians and also a lot of filipinos and uh chinese and japanese uh but mostly for the hawaiians the conditions were absolutely horrible uh for very little pay i think the easiest way to think of it here is like sharecropping in the south or maybe even like slavery with extra. And that was when 1863, Aubrey Robinson of New Zealand traveled to Hawaii and purchased the entire island of Niihau for about $10,000 from King Kamehameha V. Now, this is normally where I make some kind of crazy conversion, like, that's actually $100 bajillion in 2020 money, but it's not.

It's actually $165,000. That's a good deal for an island. For 70 miles of island. Just for a comparison, you cannot buy a house of any size in the entire state for that amount of money currently. Yeah, that's a good deal. I fucking looked.

I couldn't find shit. That's why you're living in a shack. That is why I'm living in a shack. Now, the Robbins family, since the time they purchased the island, since the day they bought it, unless you were expressly invited to the island, everybody is banned from it, with the exception of their workers. Namely being herders and plantation workers.

And I know this because there's a small side story here. There's a memorial about this entire incident there. So I wanted to visit it. You know, I live in the state. There's no longer any intra-island quarantine, though that might be reimposed soon because Oahu keeps blowing up with the coronavirus. But like, I wanted to go visit it.

So you send an email um which there is a site for it and uh you know you ask uh if you can come come on the island and they you have to give them a pretty good reason i lied and said i was a journalist which i'm very clearly not and i was writing about the nihao incident um they emailed me back within three hours and forbid me to go on the island. Forbid you? This is cancel culture run amok. I'm banned from an entire island of the state of Hawaii. Are you using your name?

I should have not. I assume they were going to ask for ID. I assume they were going to ask for proof of who I am at some point. They're white plantation owners. I figure they have the suppression shit down to a science but you know i am i am not allowed on nihil island i will get there somehow though i'm going to i'm going to boat my way over there but there was a clause uh involved in the robinson purchase of the uh of the of the island and that

is ownership passes down along familial lines which you might recommend as like a thief uh like not a private business he it is literally a fiefdom uh but yeah but the robinson family itself does not live on the island um i believe they live in a nearby island called kawai, but I'm not entirely sure anymore. But yeah, the island is so remote and is still pretty remote to this day that inhabitants had no idea of the attack on Pearl Harbor when it began the morning of December 7th, 1941. At 6 a.m., the first wave of 183 Japanese planes took off from their carriers about 230 miles from where I'm sitting right now. That being Oahu, in case people weren't tracking that. That's where Pearl Harbor is.

And the attack began around 7.55 in the morning with bombs landing not too far away from where I'm sitting in Ewa Beach. Everything is just not too far from where you're sitting like there was buildings in eva that were blown up uh i believe they strafed the school as well um because you know that's clearly a military target uh and and should be fair there's military bases all fucking over oahu uh and most of them have been here a very long time uh so like there's a good chance if they attacked a town or a city, there was a base there. And they're strafing from Japanese zero,

so they're going to hit everything. Right. But this story isn't about the first wave. It's about the second wave, kind of. That's where 22-year-old airman second class Shigenori Nisikachi took off from the carrier Hiryu flying escort for bombers before peeling off and attacking multiple targets of strafing

runs around Pearl Harbor. I believe he also attacked Pearl City and was it Aiea before his attack was called off but he wasn't hit with anything like his attack went off without a hitch mostly because that's how surprise attacks work.

And the seven planes that he flew off, he flew into Oahu with, turned around and started flying back to the carrier to rearm and refuel. None of them had been shot down. Way to go, guys. While they were out there, they were ambushed

by a wing of American P-36As, which is an incredibly outdated fighter plane compared to the Japanese Zero. It was pretty much a suicide attack. So, like, props to those guys, I guess. Nisikachi and the boys fought them off really without any problems, but they did take some damage. He was struck with a few bullets. His plane, I mean, if he was struck by a few bullets, he'd be fucked. Yeah, a few bullets

is still a lot. It's too many. Shameful display! At first, he didn't think that the damage was too bad, so they just kept flying back towards the carrier. And then when he glanced down at his fuel levels, he realized that he was, like, loosing fuel at an alarming rate. I thought you were going to say he glanced over and his wing was gone.

He's missing a leg. Oh, god damn it. But yeah, he was losing a ton of fuel, because it turns out he'd been shot around a dozen times all along the fuel tanks. Nailed it. Small detail. Yeah, small detail.

And he was quickly running out of fuel and realized he was not going to make it back to the carrier. That's okay. The Japanese Imperial Navy had him covered. During the morning briefing aboard the Hiryu, the pilots had been told that any crippled aircraft or damaged aircraft, whichever, should attempt to make an emergency landing on a tiny island known as Nihao, which the Japanese intelligence thought was completely uninhabited.

Way to go, guys. It is not. Nor has it ever been. At least they fucking had a backup plan like, land here. Yeah, yeah. I mean, at least they went there. I assume that the Japanese Imperial Navy was like, turn around and crash into a building or something. Because to be fair,

that happened a lot. There was more than one pilot that had their plane damaged during Pearl Harbor that just crashed into a hangar or something. Fuck. Yeah. The idea was that

he could land his crashed-ass plane somewhere on the island if he could land at all, and then the survivors would wait along the coast for the arrival of an Imperial I-class submarine to pick them up that was put on rescue duty. Nisikachi made a quick calculation based on his rate of fuel consumption and reduced airspeed caused by the engines that were now kind of on fire a little bit, which is a problem. See, Nick, in case you didn't know, your engine should not be on fire if you're flying a plane. No, they should explode inside. Unless you're on Spirit Airlines, in which case that is normal.

Yeah. He decided to try for NEHA, which is about 130 miles away to the west. And he thought he could at least, he at least had a better chance of making the island rather than crashing into the ocean. Fuck that. Yeah, and remember, at this point, the aircraft carrier that he landed on

is almost certainly further away than it had once been because they'd be pulling back away from Hawaii. As he was doing this, another damage zero appeared. This one was trailing smoke, but this one started following Nishikachi back towards the island. After a few minutes of flying, he and the other pilot were

over the island, and they quickly discovered that the island was not deserted at all. What'd they see? Like, whoop! Way to go, Japanese intelligence! Random dudes? Well, like, they saw towns and stuff and roads. Oh, makes sense. I'm sure that

large field full of sugar cane didn't just grow that way. Ah, yes, the natural blacktop road. Ah, yes, one of nature's most brilliant things. A plantation.

Approaching the ground, he saw buildings dotting the landscape and people walking around at work. Because remember, they had no idea that their country was now at war. And also, to be fair, the people on this island were not Americans yet.

This is like, Hawaii's not a state yet. So like, there's a fair amount of people in Hawaii now that don't consider Hawaii to be a state because it was illegally annexed. So they definitely didn't think of themselves as American then. For sure, dude.

But they also had no idea that a giant carrier strike force had just attacked Oahu because they had one radio on the whole island and they were all at work. But yeah, as they were approaching the ground he realized that he really had nowhere to land so they circled back around.

The other Zero, however uh the pilot glanced over at nishikachi gave him a thumbs down and crashed into the ocean what yep i wish i had like the sand the sad trompones for that like i need to get a sound board that's a lot of fucking commitment to go you know what I'll just take my chances with the ocean yeah like I understand that the Japanese were the common Japanese pilot is probably

is brainwashed into thinking Americans were going to kill and consume them or whatever were they not brainwashed into thinking Americans were going to like kill and consume them or whatever. Were they not brainwashed into thinking that the ocean would beat their ass? I think he would just rather die than get captured. So like if he crash landed on Nehow, he probably thought like, oh God, these people are going to capture me and I'm going to be tortured.

When in reality, like those people are probably just like, hey, look, planes. Yeah. Like they don't know what's going on never saw those kind before yeah they have no idea what's going on uh but Nishikachi finally found a relatively level uncluttered stretch of pasture near an isolated

house so he eased the zero into a shallow approach to glide and brace himself for a hard landing which actually was a giant fucking crash because he apparently sucked at emergency landings. Yeah, I don't practice emergency landings. The Zero's wheels struck a wire fence and the plane's nose crashed first.

He hit so hard that his safety harness tore loose and he slammed against the instrument panel, busting his face wide open. That would happen to us. Yeah, absolutely. I'm surprised you didn't get, like, just catapulted out and, like, land headfirst, sticking out of the dirt

like Wile E. Coyote or something. The entire thing was witnessed by nearby villagers who immediately rushed to the scene to help. Because remember, they have no idea they're at war and this guy immediately thinks that they're all enemies. One of the first people to meet Nishikachi was Howard Kalolano.

Sorry, Kili Ohano. That's the right way to say that. Howard Kili Ohano. So he was one of the few locals who was fluent in English on the island, because there's a large japanese population also the hawaiian simply spoke hawaiian so like yeah um he was fluent in english so he pulled the man out of the down plane saw the man had a gun on him that didn't really concern him too much he did take the gun away because like the guy was just kind

of shit rocked and like when someone like knocked unconscious, you want to take their weapon away from them in case they wake up and see everybody around them as the enemy. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't think it was a good idea for a guy to be... Your head is pretty scrambled after a goddamn plane crash. Maybe you shouldn't have a sidearm. But he also saw some papers and maps that were in the cockpit. Probably thought that they were important

like he's like oh he'll probably want these when he wakes up so he took him and uh like put him in his pocket or whatever he did not leave him in the plane now um nishikachi had a very rough grasp on english but he was able to ask kili ohano if he was japanese to which he told him no i'm hawaiian um he then brought nishikachi to his home, and Keilyohano's wife made him breakfast. Oh, nice. Yeah. Sweet.

That's a good deal so far. See, the dude that landed in the ocean? Stupid. He could have had breakfast. Real dumb motherfucker. Yeah. Turns out, like, welcome to the... This island is friend-shaped.

Now, it quickly became obvious that the two people weren't going to be able to talk to one another due to the language barrier. So Kili Ohana went and grabbed a local Japanese guy, Ishimatsu Shintani, uh, who was, happened to be the beekeeper, but he spoke,

uh, fluent Japanese. Huh? Uh, this kind of pissed, uh, Shintani off who was not an American citizen, uh, because he was

born in japan but he lived in the u.s for 40 years and all of his kids have been born and raised there but he was a little bit worried like he realized some sideways shit was going on he's like you know what the last thing i need is like the feds on my ass because i'm not a citizen so i'm outtie good instincts on him yeah solid move really because he's like i i don't want to do this i don't want any part of this yeah uh no but he shintani did spoke to nishikachi for a very short amount of time um and according to kiyo hano who witnessed the whole thing but couldn't understand it uh shintani's face like went pale like when when uh when nishikaki was very open it's like yeah we just attacked fucking pearl harbor uh like he would he had no reason to lie so he told shintani

everything which shocked him because he's like oh fuck we're at war uh and i'm japanese i definitely don't want to be here now uh but he only translated a few unhelpful words to Kili Ohano because, again, he didn't want to get involved. So he just bailed out. But he did not tell Kili Ohano, like, oh, this guy just attacked Pearl Harbor. He did the old Homer Simpson through the bushes? Probably. So Kili Ohano went off and found another Japanese guy from the Harada family to translate for him again. Nishikachi told the Haradas about the attack on Pearl Harbor and also demanded his sidearm and papers back.

The Haradas didn't tell anybody and kept that little nugget of info for themselves. Meanwhile, Kiyohano was just trying to be like the nicest guy on earth. And he just keeps, like he's apparently friends with the shadiest motherfuckers known to man like nope not gonna tell you that one bro uh after this still nobody knew that there was a war going on and the haradas uh were dicks and didn't tell anybody about what they what they were told by uh nishikachi uh so that's what you get a weird scene where the uh hawaiians threw their new guest a luau um because hawaii like hospitality is like super important to hawaiian culture so like well fuck it let's throw a party bro uh this included ishi kach yeah yeah like i've witnessed this like my neighbors have like delivered me beer and stuff when i was on quarantine and like talked to me through the

windows to keep me company like there's everybody's super friendly uh and i could totally see something like this happening um i mean great i'd probably be a little weirded out by a guy falling from the sky and being armed to the teeth and being from another country especially like battle damage yeah like oh those are like bullet holes weird and like i think someone pointed out that like shintani kept his mouth shut because relations between the united states and japan have been going bad for quite some time now mostly based on like in the u.s banning oil exports to japan due to their war in china so like shintani is like uh this looks bad i want nothing to do with this but like the hawaiians

didn't fucking know why what did geopolitics have anything to do with it? Why do you care about them if you work in a plantation? This doesn't affect me. Well, it's about to, unfortunately. But it turns out Nishikachi seemed to really enjoy his new friends as well because he had a Hawaiian guy play ukulele.

Yeah, he had a Hawaiian guy play ukulele and then he sang Japanese songs along with everybody and drank with them it wasn't out yet damn it brother IZ had not quite done his cover yet

now if you're wondering like what about that Navy rescue submarine right it wasn't coming at all he was not going to be rescued by a sub because the navy had abandoned him to die so a submarine had been in the vicinity but by 1 30 p.m hawaiian time its commander had been ordered to sail towards oahu so like nobody was rescuing him he was just left there what happened to his buddy that fucking went off into the ocean?

Oh, he died. He's dead as hell. Yeah. So that night, the word of the attack on Pearl Harbor finally reached the island via radio broadcast. Fuck. That's an awkward situation. Dude, we threw you a party.

That's so awkward I am sorry I thought we were friends no that's that's way to get thrown out of the ohana right there my man the cat's out of the bag yeah who would have known the rice

fell out of the bowl oh I think the pig fell out of the luau I'm not sure like imagine throwing a giant party for someone who was like kind of being standoffish and then fighting out like you probably killed

my cousin the island had no electrical grid or phone lines and that radio was a single battery power like it was powered was a single battery power. It was powered by a single battery. And there was so linked to communication to the outside world. The battery was occasionally replaced.

But they went weeks at a time without a radio. So if that would have happened... So yeah, if that happened to be one of those times, Nishikachi could just fucking stay there forever. He could have just been a fucking local. Yeah. Yeah, he's actually gonna fucking run for like state house or something soon probably. And still nobody knows.

Yeah. Weird. He says he's part of the Imperial Japanese Navy Party. That's strange. Now that one little bit of communication finally told the Hawaiians and the locals what exactly had happened. They decided to question the pilot again,

but weren't exactly sure what to do. So they just put him up for the night at the house of the guy who had hosted the luau, and the Harada brothers stayed with him with the excuse of, well, if you need to talk to him, we can translate. But in reality, they were just like shooting the shit. Nice.

Now, the next day, Nishikachi was taken via tractor to Kai Landing, which is the northern tip of the island. So what they were trying to do is the Robinson family patriarch of the day would occasionally stop by the island. And it was like a weekly inspection and he was due to arrive December 8th for that so they're like gonna pawn him off on their boss like look man you fucking figure this out but there's a problem

Robinson was not coming because unbeknownst to everybody on the island a newly imposed wartime restriction on intra-island travel had suspended all non-essential intra-island traffic. Oh, wow. Whoopsie doodle, boss isn't coming. Yep.

While waiting for the boat to show up that was not coming, Harada and Nishikachi started shooting the shit. Nishikachi could tell that the Harada's loyalty were questionable and pressed them on the issue. He told them about just how much damage they had done to the American Navy at Pearl Harbor and how it was only a matter of time before Japan invaded Hawaii and won the war.

So, like, it pretty much boiled down to, you know what, you want to be on the winning side, don't you? Like, might as well throw your lot in with me, bro. I bet you he's also asking, so when's the next party to? And go have these on a half keg you know he'll like fucking

skip out of that too like bro I thought we were going halfsies on a pony keg he just shows up with like a six pack like whoa this is all I got he shows up with like a fucking you know how the liquor stores sometimes got the individual cans yeah shows up with a can you know how the liquor stores sometimes got the individual cans? Yeah.

Shows up with a can. Sorry, they don't take yen on the island. Yeah. But that conversation was enough to win over the Harada family over to his side. Really? Yeah, which is not great. The conversation is like, come on. You saw that shit plane i just landed in you have you saw that sweet gun that he just took yeah like i don't know man you say we're gonna win the war but you're the only

japanese fighter pilot i have seen in a long time you think that they're like the navy would be coming uh but yeah uh now on december 11th nishikachi was still being treated as a guest but everybody was kind of tired of having him around because they realized like yeah this guy's the enemy uh it's like when your friend's like yeah can i sleep on your couch only for like a day or two like nishikachi it's been a month man you got you really gotta put it start putting out job feelers or something. Yeah, you think you could help us out on the plantation? Not feeling it today.

You know, that plane crash. I really think, you know, if I just get my novel published, I'll get back on my feet. What stage is it in? Now he lives on a shack. I'm outlining it. Yeah, now he, like me, lives on a beach shack.

So that's actually how that happened. I'm also a Japanese Imperial Navy fighter pilot. So the Haradas were watching Nishikachi at their house and invited Shintani over to see if he was on their side or not. And it turned out that he was. Jesus. Jesus.

Yeah. The next day, Shintani confronted Kiliohano and demanded the fighter pilot's belongings back. He offered him the princely bribe of $200 to sweeten the deal. Really? Yeah. Kiliohano refused. Yeah, maybe.

Kiliohano refused. It's probably a fair amount of money for someone who works in a plantation on a privately owned fucking island. I have a job. I will take $200. Without a doubt. New Patreon level. If you donate $200 for our Patreon, we will in fact aid the Imperial

Japanese Navy in their attack on Pearl Harbor. I'm pretty sure I'm getting deported out of Hawaii. Yeah, that's kind of... That was... The princely sum of two... I don't know how many yen that is. We'll take it in yen, too. It's fine. I think it's... That's where we're going to be spending it.

2,000 yen? Okay. Yeah, it sounds a lot better that way. But Yakeyama refused. And he literally physically chucked shintani out of his house because like shintani was getting his face and keely ohana is a big fucking guy yeah he's a fucking hawaiian he's a hawaiian plantation worker this dude probably has fucking bare mitts for hands that dude wrestles fucking wild hogs probably

um so like Shintani's like getting in his face so Kiyohana just like grabs him like I assume it's like out of a fucking sitcom and just like by like the seat of his pants he's like yeet and just like chucks him out of his house uh after

like but Shintani like after he got chucked out realized like he's not going to confront keely ohano anymore um and uh the haradas realized that he was a fucking pushover and then they weren't friends anymore jeez and one fails you just lose your friends imagine being such a fuck up you don't get invited over the treason hangouts anymore damn it but they did manage to steal a shotgun that someone kept in their house for, like, hunting pigs and a pistol from one of Robinson's homes

that he, like, just left there. They, like, broke into his house. Like, the rich white guy probably has guns. And they were right. The rich white plantation owner probably has firearms. Is that everybody ever? And then they hid them in the

local honey warehouse, which is ironic because Shintani was the beekeeper they weren't cool with anymore. Yeah, it's like the last place I'd want to hide it. Maybe you can weaponize the bees like fucking Bioshock. Oh dude, could you imagine that? Imagine if

Nishikachi could harness the power of bees. I mean, he still would have lost, but, like, it would have been way cooler. Yeah. That attack would have been super annoying. More than anything. I'm going to kill you even harder for this. Spoiler alert. Motherfucker gets killed.

But we'll get there. It's not by bees. It's actually even better. Actually, I'm not sure if it's better than bees we'll let you decide that but by this point the Hawaiians were pretty much over Nishikachi's shit and put him under guard by four unarmed people but nobody like he wasn't showing

he wasn't trying to escape he wasn't trying to like hurt anybody so like the guard was pretty relaxed um so like most of the time there's only like one guy there uh sometimes two but like his guard is pretty lax you know just chill and like what every once in a while like when he went out to the bathroom like they wouldn't even follow him and they had to go like go all back to use an outhouse uh but he usually he asked to use the outhouse and for some reason that nobody

rose any questions like Harada went with him and one of the guards so like weird I don't think he needs a translator to take a shit but like how bad is this guard he's like the friendliest guard on earth like oh you want to go with your buddy to poop alright bud let's do it that's fine

sounds good to me. It's the most agreeable POW guard known to man. It was just a fucking civilian. What's that? You want a gun? Alright, I'll get one, bud. Alright. Here's where the guard goes from being the friendliest guy on Earth to being

a dumb NPC from a bad action game game because once outside Harada's like I have to attend something in the warehouse and like Nishikachi went with him and the grub's like okay and just followed after them you think he took a fucking like a slash wound and he

was like how's it going you still need to go there he just keeps saying the same line over and over again yeah like a really bad Skyrim fucking NPC I used to be a fighter pilot like you until I took an arrow in the knee so after he leads him to the

warehouse they all go inside for reasons that are again completely unknown as to why the guard was the Spanish job. And they retrieve the weapons and then lock the guard inside. So, I mean, I guess give him points for not just shooting him. Do you think the guard was just like, oh, yeah, all right. Yeah, I'll just hang out in here.

No big deal. Yeah. Stay in here. Okay. That seems fine with me. A lot of honey in here. like honey where are you guys going uh but just as they thought they were gonna be smooth the guard's wife showed up who was driving a horse-drawn wagon uh so they like stole it they horse jacked her i that sounds dirty but like they

carjacked her they carjacked her horse driven cart and then they forced her at gunpoint to drive them towards Kiyo Yohano's house huh at that point they discovered Kiyo Yohano was not home um so the pilot and Harada made a quick trip to the nearby down plane which is now guarded by a 16 year old

boy for some reason Nishikachi attempted to get the radio but which by the way the guard did nothing he's just like oh you want the plane okay he's like he's 16 um nishikachi tried to get the radio to work for some reason uh which seems to me is like something he would have tried like after he crashed but whatever i guess he was knocked out so it doesn't really matter but yeah he tried to use the radio, which, like, surprise, surprise, didn't fucking work, so he gave up.

They then forced the young guard at gunpoint back to Kili Ohano's house, so they now have, like, a small horde of, like, captives with them. That is when Kili Ohano appeared. He wasn't missing. The entire time this had been going on, he had been in his outhouse taking a dump

oh it was one of those good ones he's he he walked out like you know they weren't quiet when they went into this house the first time like people screaming in Japanese and they're taking a dump he's like I'm sure that's nothing that needs me uh but like

he stepped out right into armed men he's like oh god damn it. Get a man's shit in peace. Hirata took a shot at him and missed. So Kiyohano took off running into the bushes. Dumbass. That doesn't fucking suck. He had to be like two feet away.

Kiyohano got to the main village area and warned everybody something was going on, which meant all the people immediately took off into the woods, which is what they normally would have done if they were in danger, scatter out into the woods. He then grabbed a horse and rode it to the northern tip of the island

to light a signal fire to alert the authorities of trouble. I'm going to assume they did not have a specific fire in case of Japanese infiltration. Could you imagine if they did? Quick, light the treason fire! Yeah! But that's when Kiyo Yohano decided that

this isn't something that should depend on the fire. This is something that needs immediate intervention, right? Well, it turns out, immediate doesn't mean a whole lot when you're in a remote island because the only thing he could do is jump into a fucking life raft and paddle across open ocean to the nearest island which took him 10 fucking hours fuck that that dude's arms have to be the size of fucking tree trunks man just like paddling against wind and surf for 10 hours yeah no dude whenever i swam in the ocean yeah whenever i swam in the ocean i went like halfway across the pier and then i tried to get back i thought i was gonna die yeah i'm like wait it's a 10-hour trip to get help? Fuck, I guess I'm swearing allegiance to the emperor now. Once there, Keely Ohana was able to call Robinson on a nearby phone,

who was then able to convince the military to launch a rescue party under Niihau. How? Like, there's a fucking Japanese fighter pilot holding people at gunpoint on this island. Oh, dude, I can imagine the American army at that time hell yeah brother yeah uh but unfortunately that would be uh they would not show up until long after everything was over and this is why uh it turns out nishikachi is about to get some fucking hawaiian justice well all this was happening, the guard that Harada at Nishikachi locked in the warehouse broke free and ran into town to warn people

that had not run that they have fucking guns. Run. Or maybe they didn't believe Kili Ohano's the fucking British are coming or whatever, but like finally, pretty much everybody ran now. I imagine he showed up and everybody's already running.

He tries to tell them, he's like, hey, you're late. He's already started shooting. Nishikachi and Harada recaptured him as he's walking through town. And then they held him at gunpoint. The luck on him. Yeah, this guy's luck fucking blows. Harada recaptured him and walked him through town at gunpoint and forced him to scream for everybody to come out of hiding,

which they didn't. But one guy did. A guy named Kahakila Kalima, who came out of hiding to see what was going on. Like, hey, maybe my buddy needs help. Yeah, he was captured too. Do you think that they locked him in the same spot where he escaped from? Back to the honey warehouse with you.

They returned to the downed plane and took the machine guns and ammo off of it. What? Bounded it on the horse-drawn wagon and then returned to town and began wildly spring automatic weapons fire at all the houses and into the air. Holy shit. The whole time

they were demanding that Kiliohano surrender despite the fact he was gone. I think this is like Harada just had a personal beef with Kiliohano. It has to be. Yeah, you kicked him out of your place, dude. They then broke into Kiliohano's house looking for Nishikachi's papers,

found nothing, so they burnt down his house in anger. Fuck. Furious, Nishikachi said that if Kiyo Yohano did not show up with his papers, and soon, he would start shooting people. Which, to be fair at this point, has not happened, and it was not from a lack of trying.

Remember, well, I mean, the first person to actually fire anything anybody was fucking the haradas not like even nishikachi's like damn dude too far yeah dude through all this um the through all this the

hawaiians were welcoming and kind of uh like passive hoping that like this guy would just kind of go away but this threat finally made them decide that Nishikachi had been fucking around and he was about to find out what'd he do speaking so

this is when they realized like wait Nishikachi doesn't actually understand what most of us are saying so like we can openly plot right in front of them and nobody would have any idea what was going on. So that's when a guy named Ben Kanahale spoke in Hawaiian to Harada, said that, like, hey, you need to take the gun away from him or people are going to fucking die. So that's when apparently Harada decided if he couldn't kill Kili Ohano, he didn't want anything to do with it anymore.

Harada decided if he couldn't kill Kili Ohano, he didn't want anything to do with it anymore, because he asked Nishikachi for the shotgun with the idea, like, I'm gonna use it to shoot people. And the pilot gave it to him. He's like, well, yeah, he's my buddy. That's a lot of trust. Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't he? At this point, he's already

fucking alienated himself from the entire island. I mean, why wouldn't you, like, trust him, I guess? I don't know. And everybody involved is just really dumb. I'm gonna go with that, too. After that, Kanaheli and his wife attacked Nishikachi. Jesus.

But Nishikachi still had a pistol and managed to draw and shoot Ben Kanaheli three times in the chest, groin, and hip. Small problem, though. Japanese pistols during World War II were known for being giant pieces of shit and Kanaheli was the biggest, strongest

dude on the fucking island. Oh, you just pissed him off. Yeah. He got peppered with gunshot wounds and he didn't even slow down. Could you imagine that? Or to quote Ben Kanaheli himself, quote and then I got mad.

He's just a fucking Hulk. You just get fucking rugby tackled by this guy? This is a fucking minor disagreement until he shot me, then I was mad. So he picked Nishikachi up over his head and spiked him into a wall head first. Oh god. And then Kanaheli's wife grabbed a rock and began beating his skull and just Oh my god.

Just repeatedly braining him over and over and over again until he stopped moving. And then because you could never be too sure. If that crash didn't make you stupid, I will. And then because you could never be too sure if someone's dead when their skulls smashed a fucking ether, Ben drew a knife

out and cut Nishikachi's throat so deeply he nearly decapitated him. Jesus Christ. Almost had me in the first quarter, Chief. Not gonna happen. Yeah, you know, your offense was pretty good in the first quarter, Chief. Not gonna happen. Yeah, you know, your offense was pretty good in the first half, but second half was all mine.

Yeah. You might have all those firearms, but we have been. Have you met this horse of a man? Yeah. It was about then that Harada realized that he had well and truly fucked up. Seeing that he had cast his lot in with the wrong side, he upended his shotgun and shot himself in the stomach.

Really? Just the stomach? Yeah, he like gutted him. It's the most American way to commit seppuku. Because AR-15s had not been invented yet so true it's fucking outstanding also like the whole point of this was like there was like a conversation before uh the haradas and uh and nishikachi went into town with all the guns and that was like nishikachi realized that he was fucked and like the Americans

were definitely going to come and capture him so like he's like I need a soldier's way to kill myself and I will kill myself by like in battle and by like riding into town this horse drawn wagon with a fucking machine gun on top like some kind of Red Dead Redemption

and I don't think he saw himself getting brained to death by a Hawaiian woman and then getting his fucking throat sawn in half but like he got what he wanted he definitely pictured something else like you know how have you ever pictured

something happening like totally awesome or fucking cool and it just turns out like does a whole 180 on you it's exactly like what like every last stand in history everybody thinks like yeah they they held them off for 20 minutes and then you know they they got slowly wounded and died heroes but in reality like they died in 15 seconds because getting shot in the chest fucking kills you and it's not like the movies he saw himself like leading a goddamn

cavalry charge into Nihao village and like hosing down Hawaiians until someone shot him or beat him to death or whatever instead he's got fucking brained with a rock that has to be like the most anticlimactic charge in human history

but so after this whole thing happened there would be some fallout the most anticlimactic charge in human history. But so after this whole thing happened, there would be some fallout. Ben kind of recovered. He recovered from his wounds pretty quickly. And he was honored by the president for his actions with a medal of merit and a purple heart, which is weird because he was not in the military, but whatever.

Cool. He fucking deserved it. But you would think that the US would be like, yeah, good job. Pat on the back. There you go. They actually gave him more than what I thought they would ever give him. It is shocking that they honor the Hawaiians at all.

Because the US does not have a great relationship giving credit to brown people. Kili Ohana was awarded the Medal of Freedom and the government reimbursed him for his house that burnt down. Nice. Unfortunately, Ben's wife, Ella, never received any official recognition for her almighty stoning, which she

absolutely fucking should have. You think she was in the back like, hey, I did something too, and they're like ah yeah we got you this painted rock it's like from the waterfall that would be pretty baller like just like give her a fucking like a coin but in the shape of the rock that she

used to brain this dude to death with and like now she's in charge of like the unarmed combatives for the military to just her swinging a rock downwards over and over again um so while this story is fucking

hilarious and talking about enemy pilots being brained by a whole bunch of villagers is great this story does have an unfortunate downside god damn it every time sorry the US lost the war? Yeah, and that's actually why I'm broadcasting

from the greater East Asia fucking co-conspiracy sphere, or whatever the fuck it's called. I can't remember. Now, there's a great chance that the account that we just talked about in this episode is one of the primary pieces of evidence used by FDR's administration to facilitate a massive system of concentration camps that was used to imprison around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.

This got dark. Yeah, around which 66,000 were American citizens at the time of their imprisonment. were American citizens at the time of their imprisonment. Naval intelligence officer Irving Mayfield wrote in his report on the incident, quote, the fact that two Nihao Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot indicates likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed to be loyal to the United States may aid Japan. God damn it.

Okay. so I do have to point out that this is definitely not the only reason. I'm not going to use the word reason. I feel like that's not a good word usage. It's not the only thing that led the administration to implement Executive

Order 9066. But it is one of many. And it's the only direct aid that happened right um that that most people can point to there was like some suspicions of spying um like uh before pearl harbor um which some of it's true and some of it's not because their spies were rudimentary successful at best. Because the Japanese wanted to attack

Pearl Harbor when the carriers were there and they missed them by a fucking mile. So if they had an intricate spy network, probably wouldn't have fucking missed that. I imagine one of the reasonings that was kind of put on the paper, but then they took it off. FDR was just saying, look at their eyes!

Their eyes! I can't trust them. They don't speak English. Go back to where you came from. It's pretty much every fucking person over the age of 50's Facebook post into a government fucking program. And I did not use the word internment camps.

They were by definition concentration camps if you want to argue with me about that you can go fuck yourself I'm not going to do that by definition a concentration camp is a prison camp to concentrate a certain group of people

there's a difference between a concentration camp and a death camp we're not going to have this conversation again but thousands I think it was like at least a thousand people died in the camps from various diseases because a lot of the camps got bitterly cold in the winter. Disease spread rapidly. It wasn't great.

It was horrible, horrible crime. One of the worst ones. I visited one before I got in the army. They were awful they were just literally wooden shacks yeah and like

not insulated they weren't allowed to take anything with them yeah they were given like shitty rancid food like disease spread rampantly due to like not caring um so like it's all bad man it's like it's all absolute garbage but you're probably

wondering what happened to the other people who managed to survive um after this uh that were kind of sort of on the side of nishikachi. One of those being Irene Harada, the wife of the guy who gutted himself with a shotgun. So actually, I do have to point out something here. Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not interned at a very high rate in comparison to Washington or California, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, I mean, I'm not going to argue with the rationality of racism by any means um but like it was very obviously it was like racist it was just a racist ass program

because like the main reason that they didn't enter a ton of japanese in hawaii uh is because they needed them for like the workforce so like but you're near like a rather large naval facility in in pearl harbor uh that just got attacked but no no we we can't throw these guys in the concentration camps right because we need them like okay so why are you throwing anybody in the camps like this is literally the place that they got attacked if you can't rationalize it there your program is a pointless fucking racist pogrom like that's all it is god yeah i didn't know that anyway that's fucking crazy yeah uh and i'm like you can't argue like you you can't try to find rationality in racism it's it's the way it is but and you know and calling out someone's

like horrible racist policy for being hypocritical is really dumb and pointless, and I know it is, but I like to do that to show how absurd the whole thing is. But Irene Harada, the wife of the shotgun Harada, was arrested.

Shotgun Harada. And she was held for three years, but never actually convicted or charged with anything before being released. You might also know that as being incredibly illegal, because that's not how due process works. Shintani was sent to an internment camp, which, like,

that still sucks. Don't send your political enemies to concentration camps. Like, charge him with treason and throw him in prison uh but they didn't do that he was never charged with anything uh and afterwards probably the weirdest part is after they were released they all went back to the island really the same fucking island like imagine how awkward that has to be with everybody like oh don't don't hang out with them that family has a bad name after them.

Yeah, and apparently when Irene went back, she was very short-tempered and shitty with everybody. Like, come on, man. Your fucking husband tried to kill us. Yeah. No hard feelings, but a lot of hard feelings, fucking Irene. It's kind of awkward. Yeah.

So, small side story here. Nishikachi's hometown of Hashihama, Japan. So their family never really heard whatever happened to him other than the fact that he disappeared during the battle of Pearl Harbor. So they just assume that he died in combat. So there's a small monument built for him that States quote, having expended every effort.

He achieved the greatest honor of all by dying a soldier's death in battle. His meritorious deeds will live forever. I suppose being beaten to death, but with a rock by a pissed off Hawaiian woman certainly does count as a battle, but probably not the one that he expected. His family apparently learned what happened to him in like the 70s uh they have not they have not changed the monument we already shelled up this type of money into it we can't back out now just tacking on a plaque under it like he died as he lived hitting himself in the face with a rock he started off good too getting invited to parties yeah yeah so that is the knee how incident that's awesome and uh and i just assume more evidence the fact i will never be allowed on the

island no dude you just your name alone fucks you over. You know, I'm just saying maybe. Hear me out here. People shouldn't be able to own private islands ever. Like, it's not great. Especially not a thief that he bought from a corrupt king. Right. But, you know, that's me. That's just how I feel.

And, you know, so donate to the Patreon and we will invade the Hawaiian. And we will give it back to its rightful owners, the Kingdom of Hawaii. But I'm hoping they understand that we're doing that and we don't get beaten by rocks. That's fair. Yeah. I really don't want to get Nishikachi'd in the head. No. That's like, fuck it.

So, Nick, we do a little thing on the show called Question from the Legion. This question I think is one that we've talked about before. Not on the show necessarily, just when we get drunk and realize that our entire country is collapsing around us on fire.

If you could pick another country, where would you live? Ooh. In all honesty, I would have to go with France for some reason. I don't know why. It's either that or France. For some reason, I always wanted to live in Mexico. Just for family reasons. Do you still have family in Mexico?

Oh, yeah. Plenty. That'd be an easy move, then. Some of them good, some of them not so good. Those not so good ones probably have some business opportunities. Yeah. For me, I don't know.

Maybe Iceland. Good choice. Part of this reason is a cop-out on my part. I'm bad with languages, and I was able to navigate Iceland 100% effectively, only speaking English. Nice. Now, the signs were not in English, but that was fine because I could just ask someone, Hey, what's that say? Or where is that?

And it worked out pretty good. Or my other choice would probably be Japan. I would say Japan. If one, I didn't get kicked out of a bunch of places. You tried not being a rather large tattooed gaijin. I

tried with the sweater, but then they knew I was American, so they knew that was bad business. So they fucking kicked me out. Which, in their case, good on them. Like, they know me too well. Yes. But, it was also, I've been, I got lost in Japan

at least three times that were really bad. One, I almost missed curfew because I fucking got on the wrong train and ended up on the wrong side of Japan. That's a bad, that's a problem. That is a horrible problem. And two,

when I first got to Tokyo and I went up to the, probably the most random guy in the airport and I said, um, excuse me, like trying to explain like, where is this? Like on the ticket. And he looks at me and he goes,

Hey man, yeah, I'm from Seattle. I don't even know where I'm at. And I was like, Oh fuck. Yeah. That would be a problem for me and i know like uh i would absolutely have to learn japanese which i know i could not do like the only way i could possibly do it is like just go there and force myself to do it um and that's the only way i've ever picked up any languages like i like tried to learn German and like I took German in high school, bombed it. But like I learned not like conversational German, but like enough German to get by when I was in Germany without even really trying.

So like you just exist in the bubble and you have no choice. So you pick it up. But yeah, I think that's what I would pick. I know a lot of people are probably expecting me to say armenia and uh i don't know why i didn't pick that like it's so easy for me to get armenian citizenship like i just have to prove that my family is from armenia uh i just thought you had to go look at my nose. Look at me. Who else looks like this? I shaved an hour ago. Sir, you have a full beard.

I am aware. Yeah. Trust me. Mexicans look at Armenians with all the hair and we're like, holy shit. How'd you do that? Yeah. We thought we had sweaters for legs. The only thing we're good at

is drinking and growing hair it's like our whole culture so Nick thank you for joining me on this journey into Nihao Island the island that we will soon be landing on the beaches of it's gonna be like that fucking silver corp fucking coup in Venezuela

we're just gonna get owned by some fishermen with just rocks where are your nets why do you have rocks we knew you were coming oh god damn it we've been trading for this moment ever ever since the japanese guy showed up oh fuck uh so until next time um i guess don't crash land on nio island