Travel: Hawaii’s New Pacific Aviation Museum

A Grumman Wildcat fighter in the Guadalcanal exhibit at the Pacific Aviation Museum in Pearl Harbor.

(Courtesy Pacific Aviation Museum)

Soon after sunrise on a bright Hawaiian Sunday in 1941, Roy Vitousek and his teenage son Martin lifted off from the island of Molokai in a little Aeronca single-engine airplane they had rented. The vast Pacific sky was gloriously empty as they banked north and east toward Honolulu and home. Then, out of the blue, a swarm of Japanese Zeros were all around them, headed for Pearl Harbor. Stunned, father and son watched as two of the Zeros circled back and opened fire on them.

That same little red Aeronca 65TC, still bearing bullet holes in its fuselage, now hangs from the ceiling of Hangar 37 on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, home of the Pacific Aviation Museum, which opened last December 7, some 65 years after the attack that sent the Vitouseks sputtering home and the U.S. reeling into World War II. The new museum joins the Pearl Harbor Historic Site, the most popular tourist attraction in Hawaii, which includes the memorial built over the sunken USS Arizona; the battleship Missouri, where the Japanese surrender was signed in 1945; the submarine Bowfin, dubbed the “Pearl Harbor Avenger”; and now the Pacific Aviation Museum.

Ford Island was in the center of the storm on that beautiful Sunday in 1941. Bombs rained down on its airfield and hangars, and the Pacific fleet, alongside on Battleship Row, was decimated. Some six decades later, the island remains a remarkably unchanged military installation. Traces of the bombing and strafing of that infamous day pockmark the area, giving the new museum an unnerving air of authenticity.

The museum covers the air war all across the Pacific. It has a collection of seven carefully restored aircraft (and three others will be available for viewing as more hangars open), including the 1942 Stearman biplane in which future President George H. W. Bush, age 18, made his first solo flight; a B-25 Mitchell bomber like the ones used in the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan; and one of the Navy Wildcat fighters that had to face the superior Zeros in the early years of the war. These spread their wings in an expanse of 42,442 square feet of hangar space originally used to house seaplanes during the war.

The museum features the requisite introductory film in a small theater and a few shorter documentaries tucked into odd corners to explain the “Cactus Air Force” on Guadalcanal and Jimmy Doolittle’s daring raid on Tokyo in 1942. Teenagers and wannabe pilots tend to gravitate to a bank of six simulators that line one end of the hangar. Anyone old enough to follow directions can climb into a Wildcat cockpit for a flight into the wide blue yonder over Guadalcanal, communicating by radio with the “tower” and other would-be fighter pilots.

While the museum makes a strong effort to cover the larger war, what it does best is provide a vivid account of the December 7 attack, using everything from graphics on the floor showing flight paths of the Japanese planes as they swept into Pearl Harbor to wall posters explaining the logistics and a Zero hanging just across from the Vitouseks’ little Aeronca. Father and son survived that harrowing day; they landed at what is now Honolulu International Airport near Pearl Harbor, shaken but unharmed despite the bullet holes in their fuselage. Other private planes up that morning didn’t fare so well; one pilot was killed and two others disappeared, presumed shot down at sea.

Another local story, the tale of the “Niihau Incident,” only recently came to light. A diorama displays the actual remains of a Zero whose pieces were strewn across an expanse of red dirt on the private island of Niihau, which had been owned by a family named Robinson since the 1860s. Nearby is the battered little Cleveland Cletrac tractor that had carved furrows in some 50 square miles of the island, in case of just such an air attack.

The Zero, piloted by Shigenori Nishikaichi, had been hit by ground fire while bombing Bellows Field on December 7, and it was leaking fuel, so it couldn’t make it back to the aircraft carrier Hiryu. The Japanese fallback plan called for stragglers to land on Niihau and rendezvous with a Japanese submarine. The Zero hit one of the furrows and broke apart; the pilot was rescued by local Hawaiians, who called in as translators two Japanese who lived among them.

The Japanese pilot persuaded the two that their duty to the emperor required them to rebel and help him take the island. They agreed, and they took two Hawaiians, Ben and Ella Kanahele, hostage. The two tried to escape, and Ben was shot and seriously wounded, but he and Ella managed to kill Nishikaichi, ending the revolt. One of the two Niihau Japanese killed himself, and the other was arrested. An official government report was filed, but it would be 60 years before the story was widely known off the island. The Robinsons still own Niihau (and, for that matter, the Niihau Zero and the tractor, which are on loan to the museum). The island continues to be populated largely by native Hawaiians, and outsiders are not welcome.

Hangar 37 is the first phase of the Aviation Museum, which eventually will include two more hangars and the control tower complex, in all 16 acres. Long-range plans have the museum explaining the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold War era in the Pacific to a growing number of visitors, who of course will have less and less memory of the conflicts.

Where to stay: On Oahu, Waikiki Beach remains the best concentration of hotels, with a range of prices. Outrigger Enterprises Group, a local hotel chain, has led the charge to turn one formerly trashy area along Lewers Street into a sparkling new Beach Walk (www.waikikibeachwalk.com). In the process they’ve replaced two small hotels with a new Embassy Suites (www.embassysuiteswaikiki.com), which includes a hearty breakfast in the price, always a favorite for families. The Outrigger Waikiki (www.outriggerwaikikihotel.com) fronts the beach, has the friendliest staff imaginable—one maid chirped “aloha, hello, happy birthday” at every encounter—and has the lively Duke’s Waikiki restaurant, with a large collection of the famed surfer Duke Kahanamoku’s surfing memorabilia, on its ground-floor beachside. The Outrigger’s Ohana hotels (www.ohanahotels.com) cater to families on a budget, and the rooms often include a kitchen.

Most hotels can arrange for a shuttle to Pearl Harbor; a cab from Waikiki costs about $40, and the local city bus—called TheBus—makes the trip for $2. See www.thebus.org or call 808-848-5555.

Admission to the Pacific Aviation Museum is $14 for adults and $7 for children. Tickets can be purchased at the Bowfin site, and a bus shuttles you over a floating bridge to Ford Island with a quick stop at the Missouri before continuing on to the Pacific Aviation Museum. See www.pacificaviationmuseum.org.

—Shirley Streshinsky is the author of Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness.