Many Native Hawaiians Oppose Mission Onto Sacred Ground
On a June day in 1944,
airman Harry Warnke took off from a training base in Oahu in a
Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat (file photo of type, right) on a training
run. Warnke's squadron was due to ship out overseas the
following week... but the 23-year-old Navy ensign did not join
them. His Hellcat went down as he rehearsed bombing maneuvers,
killing the young pilot.
Since many operations in Hawaii, training
or otherwise, were classified during the war, military
officials told Warnke's parents in Gary, IN that their son had
been lost at sea.
A funeral was held -- although Warnke's body remained with his
fallen aircraft in a nearly-inaccessible ravine in the mountains
of Hawaii's Koolau Range (center). Despite one
recovery attempt, Warnke and his Hellcat were left to the elements,
never to be recovered, for the next 62 years.
"From that June day in 1944 until now, Harry Warnke has been
essentially lost in time," said Colin Perry, a Hawaii aviation
historian and retired USAF pilot, told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls
Courier.
That will change this summer, however. The military is gearing
up to launch a high-tech forensic mission to recover the missing
airman's remains and return them to Indiana, to be buried in the
empty plot his tombstone stands over.
The mission won't be without controversy, however. Lands
considered sacred in 1944 are no less-so now, and the military says
special attention will be given to protect the concerns of native
Hawaiians who consider the Koolau Range to be the land of their
gods.
As an example, the forensic crew will be airlifted to the site
daily, instead of being allowed to set up camp as is typical for a
weeks-long excavation. Fewer personnel will be allowed onsite, and
those people will haul about 100 cubic meters of excavated material
to labs for analysis, instead of sifting through the soil at the
site itself -- a process that would leave behind dirt tainted with
forensic chemicals.
That isn't enough for those who believe the land is sacred,
however... especially as the matter also involves the
US federal government, which many native Hawaiians still
resent for snatching up land for military use in the years since
the attack on Pearl Harbor.
"This story is about a lot more than Harry Warnke," says
Mahealani Cypher, a Hawaiian activist who is against the recovery
mission. "It is another example of the concerns and traditions of
the Hawaiian people being overshadowed by the military and the
government."
The question of why Warnke's remains weren't recovered at the
time of the 1944 accident is also at issue. In the days following
Warnke's accident, a search party was dispatched to the
scene -- but due to the location and nature of the wreckage
crews were unable to recover anything except for one of Warnke's
shoes.
A more detailed search may have been planned -- but was likely
never executed, due to the squadron's deployment overseas the
following week.
"Why some kind of further recovery was not done, we just don't
know," said forensic anthropologist Dr. James Pokines, with the
Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command. "It was a busy war and he simply
got lost in the paperwork."
The incident was all but forgotten until the mid-1990s, when
Warnke's older sister, Myrtle Tice, discovered declassified
documents that detailed her brother's death -- and the fact his
plane had gone down in the mountains. She requested her brother's
remains be recovered... especially since they were on American
soil.
The military initially planned a recovery mission in the late
90s. When the matter went before the public for comment, however --
as was required since the Koolau Range is a protected watershed --
the move was swiftly rejected by many native Hawaiians. The move
also sparked controversy in the heat of a sovereignty movement that
was sweeping across the 50th state, and it became entwined with
that debate.
That is no less true today -- but the military says it is
committed to recovering Warnke's remains, and that it is taking
appropriate measures to insure the land is not adversely
affected.
"In my mind, they've won," Pokines said, speaking of the
Hawaiian groups opposed to the recovery mission. "Anywhere else in
the world, we'd leave a much larger impact."
Those groups maintain that is not enough, though, as outsiders
will soon be trespassing on sacred land that, given the mountains'
high elevation, are close to the waoakua -- the gods.
"That land is kapu," said Cypher, using the Hawaiian word for
taboo. "Maybe you might pass through there, but you do not
disturb."