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."

FMI: www.hawaiianhistory.org, www.jpac.pacom.mil