Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i: 5 Interesting Facts

1. Moku’ume’ume

For many centuries, Ford Island was sacred to the Hawaiian people. They named it Mokuʻumeʻume and used a fertility rituals named ‘ume’ume During this ritual, the Hawaiians would gather around a huge bonfire, and the chief assigned pairs of people to go off and spending the night together.

Even if participants were married, they were not considered married during the game. In other words, ‘ume‘ume was a short-term mate swapping to increase the tribe’s birth rates. The next day, everyone went back to their usual spouse.

Unsurprisingly, this ritual horrified the Christian missionaries. Once they arrived on Ford Island during the 1830s, they put a stop to it because they thought this was just plainly unthinkable.

2. USA Army and Navy: Pearl Harbor

For a while the island was used as a sugarcane plantation, until the US navy started leasing it in 1875. In 1917, the army established the first Army Air station in Hawai’i.

From that moment on, the army and naval presence only increased due to the strategic location of the Hawaiian islands.

3. Amelia Earhart Crashed Here

On the path to the hangar there were all kinds of interesting Ford Island aviation tidbits like this one about Amelia Earhart.

So cool that you can be where Amelia Earhart crashed her plane. Surrounded by beautiful flowers, the sign explains Amelia’s crash:

“AMELIA EARHART CRASHED HERE

Right in the middle of the Ford Island runway, straight out from Hangar 37, Amelia Earhart’s first attempt to fly around the world ended abruptly when her Lockheed Electra ground-looped on takeoff.

Luckily, no one was hurt in the accident in the pre-dawn darkness of March 20, 1937. It appeared that Earhart overcorrected the Electra’s sideways drift by jockeying the throttles. Too much weight from the fuel-heavy airplane collapsed a gear leg.

Earhart was no stranger to Hawaii. On Jan. 11, 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo between Hawaii and the Mainland, piloting a single-engine Lockheed Vega.

Within hours of the crash, Earhart and her team went back to California on a Matson ocean liner. The Electra was repaired, and later, Earhart tried once again to fly around the world, going in the opposite direction.

This time, in one of aviation’s great mysteries, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific.”

4. Apollo 10: Charlie Brown on Hawaii

Ford Island even has space travel history, we never knew that the Apollo 10 was here.

In June 1969, one month before the Apollo moon landing is, Evelyne Farmer took this snapshot of her 14-year-old son, Frank. He is sitting next to the Apollo 10 space capsule, which was nicknamed Charlie Brown.

Did you know that the first place the Apollo astronauts stepped on dry land after their mission was Hawai’i? After Apollo 10 landed close to American Samoa, the aircraft carrier USS Princeton recovered it and brought it to Pearl Harbor.

5. Why This Bullet Hole is Still There

One poignant detail was seeing the bullet holes made by Japanese guns in 1944. A very visual reminder of that day’s infamy. Very sobering.