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February 10, 2026 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Fueling the Forces

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor all of the Navy’s fuel was stored in unprotected above ground tanks at Pearl Harbor, next to the submarine base.

When RADM Chester Nimitz was Commander of the Bureau of Yards & Docks (in 1940) he wanted the Navy’s 2 ½-year supply of fuel oil protected from aerial attack – existing aboveground unprotected tanks next to the Submarine Base presented a vulnerable enemy target.

In 1942, US victory at the battle of Midway altered the role of Hawaii from a defense position to “a springboard for the Pacific offensive. Troops poured into the islands en route to the western Pacific, and were housed in barracks and makeshift camps throughout the islands.”

“There were 43,000-soldiers on Oʻahu on December 7, 1941, plus a handful on the other islands. In the first six months of the war, the total swelled to 135,000. By June of 1945, when plans were mounting for an offensive against the homeland of Japan, troops on Oʻahu alone numbered 253,000.” (Allen; army-mil)

Jungle training and coordinated Army-Navy amphibious landings were practiced in anticipation of the island-hopping battle strategy of the western Pacific. Areas on Oahu that had been taken over by the military at the onset of war were developed as training areas.

“Hawaiʻi served as an invaluable training ground for the amphibious and jungle warfare which characterized the Pacific fighting. Well removed from the combat zone, yet 2,000 miles nearer the battlefront than the Mainland …”

“… there was sufficient area and enough equipment in the Islands to handle many thousands of troops and to embark them for large-scale operations. More important, some of the varied climates and terrains in Hawaii were like those of the target areas.” (Allen; army-mil)

To fuel the forces, the military had three major fuel storage sites located in the mauka lands of Oʻahu: Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility, Waikakalaua Fuel Storage Annex and Kipapa Gulch Fuel Storage Annex (other storage areas supplemented the effort.)

The Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility was started the day after Christmas 1940 and continued through 1943; 20-underground fuel storage tanks were built more that 100-feet below the surface. The facility was designed as an impenetrable, bombproof reserve of fuel for the military.

Each vertical tank is 100-feet in diameter and 250-feet high, roughly the size of a 20-story building, and lined with quarter-inch steel plates.

Each tank is able to store up to 12.5 million gallons of fuel. it has an overall design capacity of 6-million barrels of fuel oil (9.97-billion gallons.)

Dug from the inside, the storage facility is connected with pipes (32-inch-diameter diesel pipe, and 18- and 16-inch jet fuel pipes) and tunnels down to a Pearl Harbor pumping station, more than two-and-a-half miles away.

The tanks were set up in two parallel rows with two main access tunnels, one above the other, bisecting the rows; smaller tunnels branched from these main axis tunnels to the tank cavities.

Waikakalaua Fuel Storage Annex near Wheeler Army Airfield, one of two Air Force Fuel Storage Annexes, was made up of nine 1.75-million-gallon underground storage tanks.

It borders the Wheeler Army Airfield on the Schofield Plateau; underground fuel storage tanks are reported to have been constructed between 1942 and 1945, and were used to store various fuels since 1943.

The other Air Force fuel storage facility was the Kipapa Gulch Fuel Storage Annex that consisted on four massive underground tanks. Each tank is three times the length of a football field. Each tank could hold 2.4-million-gallons of fuel.

A 20-mile, 10-inch pipeline connected the Waikakalaua Fuel Storage Annex and the Kipapa Gulch Fuel Storage Annex with Hickam Air Force Base. Fuels that were stored in the tanks included aviation and motor gasoline and later, JP-4 and JP-8 jet fuel. (army-mil)

The image shows the aboveground fuel storage tanks at the Submarine Base in Pearl Harbor. (October 13, 1941)

February 9, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Keʻelikōlani

Keʻelikōlani’s heritage was controversial. She was the poʻolua (“two heads”) child of Kāhalaiʻa and Kekūanāoʻa. (Johnson)

Her mother, Pauahi, was said to be carrying the child of Kāhalaiʻa when she married Kekūanāoʻa. Kekūanāoʻa claimed Keʻelikōlani as his own in court, and the matter was officially settled, though it would be debated again in later years, even by her own half-brother, Lot. (Nogelmeier)

After Pauahi’s death, Kekūanāoʻa married Kīna‘u, and they became the parents of Lot Kapuāiwa, Alexander Liholiho, and Victoria Kamāmalu, making Keʻelikōlani a half-sister to these three.

Her mother died during her childbirth (February 9, 1826,) and she was raised by the Kuhina Nui and favorite wife of Kamehameha I, Kaʻahumanu. (Kaʻahumanu died six years later; she was then sent to live with her father, Kekūanāoʻa, and her stepmother, Kīnaʻu.)

Keʻelikōlani was an important figure during her lifetime, known for her high rank in the Kamehameha lineage, her social position as a governor and woman of means, and for her character as a woman of dignity, both strong-willed and kind.

She was held in high regard by the general populace, and treated lovingly or respectfully by the ranking chiefs, government officials, and the people of her time.

She was a great-granddaughter of Kamehameha, a grand-niece to Kamehameha II and III, and a half-sister of Kamehameha IV and V. (Nogelmeier)

As a Kamehameha descendant, Keʻelikōlani was part of the royal family and the court for as long as the Kamehameha dynasty ruled. Following the death of Kamehameha V, William Charles Lunalilo ascended the throne by election in 1873.

A Kamehameha through his mother Kekāuluohi, Lunalilo proclaimed the royal family to consist of himself, his father Kanaʻina, Dowager Queen Emma and Keʻelikōlani. His official royal court included these four, along with the king’s treasurer, H. G. Crabbe. (Nogelmeier)

When mentioned in the press, Keʻelikōlani was usually listed as Ka Mea Kiʻekiʻe, Ke Ali‘i Ruta Keʻelikōlani – Her Highness, Chiefess Ruth Keʻelikōlani. Foreigners knew her as “Princess Ruth.” (Nogelmeier)

At the age of sixteen, Keʻelikōlani married William Pitt Leleiōhoku. While serving as governor of Hawai‘i Island, Leleiōhoku died, only twenty-two years old. Their surviving son, William Pitt Kīnaʻu, died at the age of seventeen in an accident on Hawai‘i. (Silva)

Keʻelikōlani’s second husband (June 2, 1856) was the part-Hawaiian Isaac Young Davis, grandson of Isaac Davis, a British advisor to King Kamehameha I. The two had a son (1862,) Keolaokalani, whom Keʻelikōlani gave as a hānai to Bernice Pauahi. Keolaokalani died in about 6-months and Leleiōhoku died of pneumonia in 1877.

She was also the adoptive mother of Leleiōhoku, brother to Kalākaua, Liliʻuokalani and Likelike, and heir apparent, whom she had renamed in honor of her first husband. (Nogelmeier)

“Princess Ruth, daughter of Pauahi and Kekūanāoʻa, who had adopted Leleiōhoku, asked of the king (Kalākaua) if she herself could not be proclaimed heir apparent; and this suggestion was placed before the king’s counsellors at a cabinet meeting, but it was objected that …”

“… if her petition was granted, then Mrs. Pauahi Bishop would be the next heir to the throne, as they were first cousins. At noon of the tenth day of April, 1877, the booming of the cannon was heard which announced that I was heir apparent to the throne of Hawaii.” (Liliʻuokalani)

Keʻelikōlani died in 1883 at Haleʻōlelo, her large hale pili native-style home on the grounds of Huliheʻe Palace in Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i.

At her death, Keʻelikōlani’s will stated that she “give and bequeath forever to my beloved younger sister (cousin), Bernice Pauahi Bishop, all of my property, the real property and personal property from Hawaiʻi to Kauaʻi, all of said property to be hers.” (about 353,000 acres)

This established the land-base endowment for Pauahi’s subsequent formation of Kamehameha Schools at her death. Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop passed away a year later.

February 8, 2026 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

“It was like laying a corner stone of an important edifice for the nation.”

When Captain Cook first visited the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian was a spoken language but not a written language. Historical accounts were passed down orally, through chants and songs.

After western contact and attempts to write about Hawaii, early writers tried to spell words based on the sound of the words they heard. People heard words differently, so it was not uncommon for words to be spelled differently, depending on the writer.

The planning for the formal written Hawaiian language in the early part of the nineteenth century was started by the Protestant missionaries who arrived in Hawaii, starting in 1820. A committee of some of these missionaries (Hiram Bingham, C. S. Stewart and Levi Chamberlain) worked on the development of the Hawaiian alphabet.

Initially, the missionaries worked out a Hawaiian alphabet of 17-English letters. “On the 7th of January, 1822, a year and eight months from the time of our receiving the governmental permission to enter the field and teach the people …”

“… we commenced printing the language in order to give them letters, libraries, and the living oracles in their own tongue, that the nation might read and understand the wonderful works of God.”

“It was like laying a corner stone of an important edifice for the nation. A considerable number was present, and among those particularly interested was Keʻeaumoku …”

“… who, after a little instruction from Mr. Loomis, applied the strength of his athletic arm to the lever of a Ramage press, pleased thus to assist in working off a few impressions of the first lessons. These lessons were caught at with eagerness by those who had learned to read by manuscript.”

“Liholiho, Kalanimōku, Boki and other chiefs, and numbers of the people, called to see the new engine, the printing-press, to them a great curiosity. Several were easily induced to undertake to learn the art of printing, and in time succeeded. Most of the printing done at the islands has been done by native hands.”

“When the king first examined the press, a sheet of white paper being laid on, he pulled the lever round, and was surprised to see the paper instantly covered with words in his own language. He had some shrewdness, and, for a Hawaiian, an uncommon share of confidence in his own attainments and abilities.” (Bingham)

Toketa, who had learned to read Hawaiian after an hour’s instruction, wrote a letter for Kuakini to Hiram Bingham, requesting copies of pages of the spelling book being assembled. (Barrere)

(Toketa, a Tahitian, arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1818; he was a member of the household of the chief (Governor) John Adams Kuakini (brother to Kaʻahumanu,) at that time a prominent figure in the court of Kamehameha I in Kailua, Kona.)

(A convert to Christianity (he likely received missionary instruction in his homeland – first Europeans arrived in Tahiti in 1767; in 1797 the London Missionary Society sent 29 missionaries to Tahiti,) he became a teacher to Hawaiian chiefs, made a visit to Honolulu with Kuakini in January-February of 1822.) (Barrere)

“I immediately answered in the Hawaiian, under date of Feb. 8th, 1822, one month from the first printing for the nation.”

“Epistolary correspondence (writing of letters or literary works in the form of letters,) thus commenced in that language, suddenly opened to the chiefs and people a new source of pleasure and advantage, of which hundreds soon availed themselves.” (Bingham)

Then, on July 14, 1826, the missionaries established a 12-letter alphabet for the written Hawaiian language, using five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p and w) in their “Report of the committee of health on the state of the Hawaiian language.” The report was signed by Bingham and Chamberlain. The alphabet continues in use today.

Collaboration between native Hawaiians and the American Protestant missionaries resulted in, among other things:
• The introduction of Christianity;
• The development of a written Hawaiian language and establishment of schools that resulted in widespread literacy;
• The promulgation of the concept of constitutional government;
• The combination of Hawaiian with Western medicine, and
• The evolution of a new and distinctive musical tradition.

February 7, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

About 250 Years Ago … Smallpox

For more than 3,000 years, smallpox killed or badly disfigured many millions of people. On average, the disease killed up to thirty percent of those infected, and the majority of survivors carried deep scars (pockmarks), oftentimes concentrated on their faces.

Throughout history, disease outbreaks sparked fear for many. Before the invention of vaccinations in 1796, people had very few ways to protect themselves from disease.

When Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors arrived in the Americas, they brought smallpox with them, which devastated the Indigenous populations of South and Central America. During the French and Indian War, British forces used smallpox as a biological weapon to weaken the Indigenous tribes that assisted the French.

With every smallpox outbreak, people observed that those who had survived the infection typically did not get smallpox again. For those who contracted smallpox a second time, the infection was much less severe and usually not fatal.

These observations led to the creation of inoculation, the process of contracting smallpox on purpose to induce immunity and reduce the risk of death. Smallpox inoculation was a simple procedure: a doctor removed pus from an active pustule of an infected person, and then inserted that pus into the skin of a non-infected person via a small incision.

Because few American colonists had contracted the disease before, the colonies experienced sporadic and deadly outbreaks of smallpox. There was never a widespread epidemic that resulted in herd immunity. (NPS)

Colonial Boston had faced many smallpox outbreaks throughout the 1700s, the most severe of which occurred in 1721, 1752, 1764, and 1775.

When American colonists launched their revolution against Britain, they quickly encountered a second but invisible enemy that threatened to wipe out the new Continental Army: highly contagious smallpox. (National Geographic)

Despite the progressive acceptance of inoculation throughout the colonies, another smallpox outbreak seized Boston in 1775. After the Battle of Bunker Hill in June of 1775, military actions between the British, led by General William Howe, and the colonists, led by George Washington, stalled.

In 1775, Continental soldiers, led by Colonel Benedict Arnold, marched from Cambridge, Massachusetts towards Quebec to prevent the city from falling to the British. Just one month later, in December, smallpox was reported among the soldiers.

Smallpox crippled the forces in Canada, preventing them from launching an attack on Quebec in late 1775. Many soldiers’ scheduled enlistment ended on January 1, 1776 and a majority warned their superiors they planned to not reenlist due to fear of the disease.

These soldiers would rather desert the cause than risk death by smallpox. These soon-to-be expired enlistments forced Arnold and General Richard Montgomery to launch their assault on Quebec before the year’s end.

Montgomery later reported that only about 800 men were able to fight, as the rest were sick with smallpox. The lack of healthy soldiers resulted in a spectacular failed attack on Quebec on the 30th of December. British forces killed Montgomery, wounded Arnold, and captured hundreds of colonists.

Arnold maintained substantial forces around Quebec in hopes of launching a second, successful assault, however, the lack of reinforcements and the ravages of smallpox impeded any future attack.

Washington understood the grave threat smallpox imposed upon the Continental Army and their chances of winning the war. He even described smallpox as “more destructive than the sword.”

Personal experience played an important role in Washington’s attitude toward and understanding of the variola virus. While traveling in Barbados in November of 1751 with his brother Lawrence, Washington himself had been stricken with smallpox.

Confined with the illness for twenty-six days, he suffered greatly and was permanently pocked by the experience. Only nineteen at the time of the attack, Washington developed lifelong immunity as a result.

The disease may also have rendered him incapable of fathering children, as modern scientists have documented infertility as a complication of smallpox. (Becker)

However, Washington also feared the spread of smallpox between soldiers who did not quarantine after inoculating.

In a February 6, 1777 letter to Dr. William Shippen Jr., director of the medical department of the Continental Army, Washington proclaimed: “Finding the Small pox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can prevent it from running through the whole of our Army, I have determined that the troops shall be inoculated.”

“Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army in the natural way and rage with its usual virulence we should have more to dread from it than from the Sword of the Enemy.”

“Under these circumstances I have directed Doctr Bond to prepare immediately for inoculating in this Quarter, keeping the matter as secret as possible,”

“If the business is immediately begun and favoured with the common success, I would fain hope they will be soon fit for duty, and that in a short space of time we shall have an Army not subject to this the greatest of all calamities that can befall it when taken in the natural way.”

With this order, George Washington enacted the first medical mandate in American history. Washington declared his order to Congress that all troops must be inoculated, and he ordered that all new recruits entering Philadelphia must be inoculated upon entry.

To offset the temporary loss of soldiers while they healed from the inoculation, military doctors inoculated divisions in five day intervals. The military used private homes and churches as isolation centers to control spread of the disease.

Smallpox was under control, supplies were adequate, patients were, for the most part, housed in buildings specifically designed for their care, the staff was large in proportion to the number of patients, fresh vegetables were available from local gardens, and evidence even indicates that sheep and cattle were now being delivered on the hoof.

By May 1777, therefore, the Hospital Department in the North was well prepared to handle the casualties of another hard campaign.

Click the following link to a general summary about Smallpox:

Click to access Smallpox.pdf

February 6, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

About 250 Years Ago … The French Connection

France had long been enemies of their neighbors across the English Channel. While the two had competed in the Hundred-Years War (ca. 1337-1453) for territorial sovereignty in continental France, one could say Britain and France then partook in a second Hundred-Years War (ca. 1689-1815) for global commercial and military power.

Each empire was wary of the other gaining too much wealth, land or naval prowess, and engaged in at least eight major conflicts against each other during this period. (LOC) Their interests crossed the Atlantic and tensions developed in North America.

In 1749 the French were becoming concerned with the Pennsylvania and Virginia traders in the Ohio River Valley. That summer they sent an expedition of 247 men under the command of Captain Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville down the Ohio River. Céloron buried lead plates in the ground stating the French claim to the land.

When he returned to Canada he had a bleak report. The Ohio River Valley Indians “are very badly disposed towards the French.” In order to keep the valley he recommended that the French build a fortified military route through the area.

In 1752, the Marquis Duquesne was named Governor of Canada. His instructions were “to make every possible effort to drive the English from our lands … and to prevent their coming there to trade.”

The next year he began building a series of forts along the waterways in the Ohio River Valley. The first two forts were at Presque Isle, on the south shore of Lake Erie, and Fort LeBoeuf on French Creek, a tributary of the Allegheny River.

Meanwhile, Robert Dinwiddie, the Governor of Virginia, was granting land in the Ohio River Valley to citizens of his colony. In 1753, he received instructions from the King of England “for erecting forts within the king’s own territory.”

Dinwiddie was very upset about all the French activity in the Ohio River Valley. He sent a young volunteer, George Washington, to deliver a letter to the French demanding that they leave the region.

Later, in 1754, George Washington (a British officer) was sent to the Ohio River Valley with the Virginia militia. He and his troops were told to take the “Lands on the Ohio; & the Waters thereof.”

While at Will’s Creek (what is today Cumberland, Maryland), Washington learned that the French were in control of the Forks of the Ohio and the fort the British had built there. Washington proceeded forward with the construction of a road across the mountains.

On the night of May 27, 1754, Washington and 40 soldiers began a dark and wet overnight march. It was morning before they arrived at the Half King’s camp. Together they decided to surround the French.

Then, the shot was fired. This skirmish invited retaliation from the French and their American Indian allies. Although officially not at war, both France and Britain supported the fighting by sending troops and supplies.

What became known as the French and Indian war in North America and Seven Years War elsewhere settled into a stalemate for the next several years, while in Europe the French scored an important naval victory and captured the British possession of Minorca in the Mediterranean in 1756.

However, after 1757 the war began to turn in favor of Great Britain. British forces defeated French forces in India, and in 1759 British armies invaded and conquered Canada.

Facing defeat in North America and a tenuous position in Europe, the French Government attempted to engage the British in peace negotiations. After these negotiations failed, Spanish King Charles III offered to come to the aid of his cousin, French King Louis XV, and their representatives signed an alliance known as the Family Compact on August 15, 1761.

By 1763, French and Spanish diplomats began to seek peace. In the resulting Treaty of Paris (1763), Great Britain secured significant territorial gains in North America, including all French territory east of the Mississippi river, as well as Spanish Florida, although the treaty returned Cuba to Spain.

The ink was barely dry on the Treaty of Paris in 1763 before the French foreign ministry began planning and preparing for the “next” war with Great Britain.

As a nation France was determined to avenge its humiliating defeat during the French and Indian War/ Seven Years War, which had forced it to give up Canada and had upset the balance of power in Europe.

As early as 1767 France began following the growing conflict between Great Britain and its North American colonies with great interest, even sending agents to America to discover how serious the colonists were in their resistance to British attempts to tax them without their consent. (Jamestown)

Then, as colonial North Americans escalated their rebellion against Britain and declared independence from the British Empire in July of 1776, top American leaders and diplomats recognized France’s potential as an ally and arsenal. The new United States desperately needed money, weapons and outfitting since they did not possess large manufacturing depots for these.

As a result, in late-1776, Benjamin Franklin travelled to Paris to try to negotiate economic and military aid. Besides Franklin, Silas Deane, Arthur Lee, William Lee and John Adams played important roles as well in persuading France to send economic and military support to the United States. (LOC)

On the French side of negotiations, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs (1774-87), Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, served as the primary diplomat.

While initially wary to engage in another costly conflict, Vergennes agreed to provide initial clandestine aid to the United States from 1776 to 1778.

The French also provided war material and clothing to the Americans through the neutral Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius, which was probably the single largest source of gunpowder for North American revolutionaries.

In addition, individual French officers and soldiers decided to join the Continental Army’s ranks, most famously the Marquis de Lafayette but also military engineers like Louis Duportail, François Fleury and Maudit du Plessis.

King Louis XVI and Vergennes, however, hesitated to formally join the American cause, waiting for the young United States to prove that they could succeed militarily against the British and would not abandon the cause to form a separate peace.

Such a sign came in the U.S. victory over British General John Burgoyne by American Generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold at Saratoga, New York in the fall of 1777.

Vergennes and the American commissioners came to terms very quickly, signing two treaties on February 6, 1778.

It committed the United States and France to a joint military and no separate peace should Britain declare war (which they soon did). Vergennes dispatched Conrad Alexandre Gérard as the first French minister to the United States to facilitate this alliance.

France’s economic support was essential in bolstering U.S. finances, supplying and outfitting the American army and replacing the colonies’ lost trade in leaving the British commercial network. France’s actions further legitimized the rebellion, helping to convince other rivals of Great Britain, such as the Spanish and the Dutch, to support the U.S. cause. (LOC)

Roughly 12,000 French soldiers served the rebellion, along with some 22,000 naval personnel aboard 63 warships. Lafayette was the one of the earliest and most prominent officers to join. (Jamestown)

The French national debt incurred during the war contributed to the fiscal crisis France experienced in the late 1780s, and that was one factor that brought on the French Revolution. In the end the French people paid a high price for helping America gain its independence. (Jamestown)

Marquis de Lafayette

Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier Lafayette (Marquis de Lafayette – also spelled La Fayette) was a French aristocrat who fought in the Continental Army with the American colonists against the British in the American Revolution.

He joined the circle of young courtiers at the court of King Louis XVI but soon aspired to win glory as a soldier.

He traveled at his own expense to the American colonies, arriving in Philadelphia in July 1777, 27-months after the outbreak of the American Revolution.

With no combat experience and not yet 20 years old, Lafayette was nonetheless appointed a major general in the Continental Army, and he quickly struck up a lasting friendship with the American commander in chief, George Washington.

The childless general and the orphaned aristocrat seemed an unlikely pair, but they soon developed a surrogate father-son relationship.

The more Washington saw of the young Frenchman, the more impressed he was and the closer the two became. (Britannica)

Lafayette served on Washington’s staff for six weeks, and, after fighting with distinction at the Battle of the Brandywine, near Philadelphia, on September 11, 1777, he was given command of his own division. He conducted a masterly retreat from Barren Hill on May 28, 1778.

Returning to France in February 1779, he worked with American emissaries Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to help persuade the government of Louis XVI to send additional troops and supplies to aid the colonists.

Lafayette arrived back in America in April 1780 with the news that 6,000 infantry under the command of the comte de Rochambeau, as well as six ships of the line, would soon arrive from France.

He was given command of an army in Virginia, and in 1781 he conducted hit-and-run operations against forces under the command of Benedict Arnold. Reinforced by Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne and militia troops under Steuben, Lafayette harried British commander Lord Charles Cornwallis across Virginia, trapping him at Yorktown in late July.

A French fleet and several additional American armies joined the siege, and on October 19 Cornwallis surrendered. The British cause was lost.

Lafayette was hailed as the “Hero of Two Worlds,” and on returning to France in 1782 he was promoted to maréchal de camp (brigadier general). He became an honorary citizen of several states on a visit to the United States in 1784. (Britannica)

Later, as a leading advocate for constitutional monarchy, he became one of the most powerful men in France during the first few years of the French Revolution and during the July Revolution of 1830.

Click the following link to a general summary about the French Connection:

Click to access French-Connection.pdf