Aloha Daze

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, February 15, 2004:

On June 15, 1944, [Harry] Warnke, then 23, took off from what was then Barbers Point Naval Air Station in a single-seater F6F Hellcat fighter. Warnke, who had enlisted after attending college in Gary, Ind., was part of an eight-plane flight that had already qualified for daylight carrier landings on the USS Benjamin Franklin.

The training mission of eight single-seat fighters was to test dive angles on a truck at Kapahi Point that had been placed four miles south of Kaneohe Naval Air Station, now called Marine Corps Base Hawaii. None of the planes carried rockets or bombs.

After making four runs, Warnke failed to rendezvous with his flight leader, Lt. J.D. Petersen. As they are on many days, the peaks of the Koolaus were covered in moderate overcasts for the early-morning training exercise.

On Feb. 11, 1999, the Star-Bulletin accompanied a nine-member Joint Task Force Full-Accounting team that found the wreck of Warnke’s Hellcat in a steep ravine. The debris was scattered on a 65- to 70-degree slope. The crash site covered an area estimated to be 330 feet by 82 feet.

Two 90-pound propeller blades were found and carried out. Two other pieces of the wreckage bore the number “82,” Warnke’s aircraft number. Also recovered was a part with “F6F” inscribed, noting the type of aircraft — a Hellcat; large pieces of the wing and two tires.

No attempt was made to dig for remains. The team mapped the area, noting where the wreckage had been found.

From another article in the Star-Bulletin’s May 11, 2005 issue:

This week the Navy announced that it is seeking comment on an environmental assessment to recover the remains believed to be buried near the wreckage of the World War II fighter on state conservation land owned by the state departments of Transportation and Hawaiian Home Lands. The comment period for the assessment runs through June 7.

Warnke’s remains are believed to be at the 2,600-foot level of a ravine in the Koolaus, near the southern entrance to the H-3 tunnel. The military hopes to begin the search and recovery by late summer.

I did a quick search for an update to this story at both the Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser, the major newspapers here on Oahu in Hawaii. However, I couldn’t find the following story, which was written for the Chicago Tribune on March 14, 2006:

Because of the crash’s remote location, Warnke’s Hellcat was left to deteriorate in the tropical heat and rain.

Because of an extraordinary confluence of events, including the fact that Warnke had crashed into what are considered sacred Hawaiian grounds, his remains never were recovered, though they lay within miles of four active military installations where troops are indoctrinated to never willingly leave a fallen comrade behind.

… In the late 1990s, when the military first began planning to recover Warnke’s body, it had no inkling of the controversy that would ignite.

At the time, a sovereignty movement was in full swing in Hawaii. Some groups wanted Hawaii to secede from the United States; others wanted a nation-within-a-nation status similar to that granted to American Indians. Virtually all of them felt resentment for the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893, an event for which the Congress and President Bill Clinton had apologized in 1993.

The recovery mission became embroiled in the sovereignty debate, a movement that remains alive today.

Because the Koolau Range is a protected watershed, the military was required to request public comment on its planned mission.

The reaction from native Hawaiians was swift and negative. Many claimed the land was sacred. They cited native Hawaiian religious belief that the higher you go in elevation — Warnke’s remains are at about 2,600 feet — the closer you get to the waoakua, or gods.

“That land is kapu,” said Cypher, the activist, using the Hawaiian word for “taboo.” “Maybe you might pass through there, but you do not disturb.”

… Hawaiian groups also have expressed concern that the mission will have adverse effects on native plants and animals already endangered because of commercial and military overdevelopment of the islands.

Because of all the objections, the military will execute the Warnke mission — planned for June or July — in a kid-glove manner it never has used before, even in the hundreds of recovery missions it has undertaken in places such as Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia and Laos.

Instead of camping on-site for the several-week excavation, as it does in most places, the forensic team will be airlifted in and out daily. They are taking in far fewer personnel than they customarily use. And rather than sift through the soil there, leaving behind dirt tainted by forensic chemicals, they will haul out about 100 cubic meters of excavated material, all of which will be sifted through at a lab on nearby Hickam Air Force Base to remove the human remains.

The bottom line looks like the recovery mission will go forward. I’m a little concerned that, living on Oahu, I haven’t heard more about this story. Now, I’m more apt to tune into the national news than local, so that may be part of the problem. But that still doesn’t explain why I haven’t seen an update to this story in the local big papers.

Nevertheless, the recovery of the pilot will resolve the issue for the family. Myrtle Tice, 85, sister of Harry Warnke, is waiting for her brother to come home:

In Arizona, Warnke’s sister knows little of this debate. Recently released from the hospital after a bout with pneumonia, she has a Midwestern practicality about her.

“There’s a good chance there’s not much of him to be found up there,” Tice, 85, said candidly. “But if there is something, I want to see it recovered. I want to see it taken care of while I’m, well, still around.”

Tice’s daughter, Patricia Turner, who lives about 50 miles from the family plot in Indiana, will oversee the burial of whatever is found of her uncle.

“My mom stopped flying years ago,” she said. “But I think she would make the trip from Arizona up here for this.”

RLR