Hui Panalāʻau: Native Hawaiian youth recruited to secure the Pacific for America

Between 1935 and 1942, more than 130 young men—most of them Native Hawaiian—were sent on a mission by the U.S. government to occupy remote, uninhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean (Howland, Baker, Jarvis, Canton, and Enderbury). Known as the Hui Panalāʻau, the men endured isolation, searing heat, unrelenting sun, illness, sharks, vermin, and, even, enemy fire, all in the name of American territorial expansion and national security.

The program was supported by the Kamehameha Schools and the U.S. Department of Air Commerce, and recruited students, many with military training. Most recruits were unaware that they were being sent to desolate islands to help the U.S. government establish a claim of continuous occupation for territorial ownership.

“They looked for someone that had some Hawaiian background…because of our descendance as part Hawaiians, we would be used to the South Pacific or wherever,” James Carroll explained.

This wasn’t the first time the islands had hosted Native Hawaiians. In the mid-1800s, Native Hawaiians labored for American guano companies, harvesting droppings of seabirds to make fertilizer. Abandoned for decades, following guano depletion, the islands came into interest again in the 1930s, as key landing spots for military and commercial air routes between Australia and California. 

“The United States was trying to establish its power in the Pacific internationally, because Japan was becoming very expansionist,” historian DeSoto Brown explained. “To counteract that, the undercurrent of this entire project was for the United States to be able to claim more territory…and the public justification was [that] commercial aviation could possibly use these islands.”

The group would gather meteorological data; cultivated plants; maintained a daily log tracking fish and birds on the islands; and collected specimens for the Bishop Museum. 

“Sharks gave us plenty to worry about,” George N. West said. “I was brushing my teeth one evening just at the fall of night when, like the explosion of a firecracker, I heard two voices shout at me. I understood what the voices said and jumped out of the water just in time to see a shark close its jaws. Whew! Escapes from sharks were many.”

The mission turned deadly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Just a day later, Japanese forces struck the islands, killing Joseph Keliʻihananui and Richard Whaley.

“They dropped about 20 bombs, then turned and came back over the islands, dropping some ten more. The explosions shook the ground under our feet and the smoke concealed almost everything from our view,” West recalled of the 1941 attack. “When the planes finally left, Mattson and I walked over to where Dick and Joe were lying. They had been badly hit. They were both hurt in the legs and one had a chest wound and a hole in his back. We were going to fix up a place to put them, but by the time we got something arranged, they were dead.”
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In 2024, President Joe Biden formally recognized the Hui Panalāʻau’s role in advancing U.S. security and establishing the cultural and scientific groundwork for the establishment of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.