Community activists in ʻAiea are in a race with time to preserve a historic site that is one of the last surviving slivers of what was once a panoramic pastoral landscape.
The Pearl Harbor area, formerly known as Pu‘uloa, is now a densely developed concrete jungle, but it was once the food basket for Oʻahu, a lush agricultural paradise of planted crops and productive fishponds.
This area was also the site of a little-known but decisive battle that changed the history of Hawaiʻi. ʻAiea was the culminating setting for a civil war that decimated the forces of High Chief Kahekili in December 1794 and set the stage for Kamehameha’s conquest of Oʻahu in May of the following year.
The event is known as the Battle of Kūkiʻiahu. Thousands of warriors clashed on the plain overlooking Pearl Harbor. The preeminent chief, an imposing warrior named Kaeo, finally collapsed to the ground in death, felled by British cannon and gunfire after being spotted from the sea because of his brightly colored feathered cape and helmet…