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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, June 10, 2002

No museum planned for USS Kamehameha

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Like Kamehameha, the nuclear submarine named for him was warrior, king and statesman.

The USS Kamehameha was based in Guam, South Carolina, Spain, and, from 1993 until last summer, at Pearl Harbor. It will meet the same fate as all other inactivated submarines — it will be cut up for scrap.

Advertiser library photo • Nov. 23, 1999

Packing 16 Polaris missiles, USS Kamehameha was the 30th of the "41 for Freedom" submarines built during the Cold War as a nuclear deterrent, and the first to receive a Hawaiian name.

Commissioned in 1965, its nearly 37 years of service before being inactivated last summer is a record for nuclear submarines.

At the August inactivation ceremony, U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawai'i, spoke of the parallels between Kamehameha I and the submarine named for him.

"Kamehameha, great warrior, great leader, used his military powers to bring about and then maintain peace," said Inouye, who suggested the sub's name to President Kennedy in 1963.

As Hawai'i celebrates the rule of Kamehameha the Great with lei, a parade last Saturday and a holiday tomorrow, Kamehameha the submarine is meeting an ignoble but inevitable end.

The 425-foot submarine, emptied of fuel and dry-docked at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., is being cut up for scrap.

There is some good news, though.

The Navy recently said the Kamehameha's sail, or tower portion of the sub, along with the rudder and other sections, are being saved for static displays.

Naval Sea Systems Command is working with the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., and has already shipped "numerous other artifacts of interest to Submarine Forces Pacific for display," according to a May 28 Navy letter.

The fall of the "Kamfish" to the chopping block was a fate some here fought to avoid.

Mokule'ia resident Thomas Shirai, who spent 10 years in the Coast Guard, was among those who waged a letter-writing campaign to bring the USS Kamehameha back to Hawai'i as a monument.

"I felt strongly because the name of the ship was Kamehameha — a great leader of the people of Hawai'i," Shirai said.

Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Don Cataluna and U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawai'i, also got involved.

Cataluna wrote to Inouye in early March asking that the Kamehameha be returned as a monument at Ford Island.

"Just as the USS Arizona, Missouri and Bowfin have been preserved as monuments, so too should this submarine," Cataluna said.

America recognizes Kamehameha as "one of the world's great warriors and military strategists and the vessel that bears his name should be accorded similar respect and should come home to permanently rest in Hawai'i," Cataluna wrote.

Born between 1736 and 1758, Kamehameha became chief of his western Big Island district in 1781, and guided his warriors to victory on Maui and Moloka'i.

On O'ahu, Kamehameha faced heavy opposition from chief Kalanikupele's cannon, but he was able to take out the guns, and forced the O'ahu troops to the Pali, where the warriors either were forced over the edge or jumped.

Kamehameha, who became the first ruler of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1795, died in 1819 before being able to realize his dream of creating a Polynesian empire from Hawai'i to Tahiti.

"In military matters, I would not be overstating the case to say that he displayed a brilliance and a level of skill comparable to the likes of Hannibal, and Napoleon and Alexander," Inouye said at last summer's sub inactivation ceremony.

The submarine Kamehameha went on 63 "deterrence" patrols before the Navy converted it in 1992 so it could deploy special operations troops.

Ralph Harris, who served on the Kamehameha from 1969 to 1973, remembers its ballistic missile days.

"It was a difficult time. We carried nuclear weapons you had to be ready to launch and that creates a mental burden," the O'ahu man said. "It's an extraordinary mental burden for a young man to carry."

At its decommissioning April 2, the city of Bremerton, Wash., declared the day "USS Kamehameha Day" in honor of the sub's service record.

Navy officials said it was the age of the vessel "and the many years of hard service" that drove the decision to retire Kamehameha from active service.

But despite its accomplishments, and importance of its namesake, the sub could not have met any other fate, the Navy said.

Mink on May 1 sent a letter to Rear Adm. Robert T. Conway Jr., commander of Navy Region Hawai'i, asking if Kamehameha could be preserved as a monument at Ford Island.

In a May 28 reply, Lt. Cmdr. R.G. Johnson with the Judge Advocate General's Corps said the Navy has a "very active" ship donation program with 45 museum ships — about half of which are submarines — displayed in 21 states.

But all were conventionally powered, Johnson said.

"USS Kamehameha was not considered for the ship donation program because it was nuclear powered," Johnson said, adding, "unfortunately, to date, (recycling) has been the fate of all nuclear vessels."

Johnson said the Navy is very environmentally conscious and takes tremendous care in disposing of decommissioned nuclear vessels.

The fuel is first removed and sent to Idaho for processing. Then, the nuclear reactor compartments are cut out of the vessel, sealed, and taken to a disposal site in Hanford, Wash.

After a submarine's hazardous materials are removed, it is cut apart and as much as possible is recycled.

Even if the submarine's reactor section could be removed with an eye toward preservation, "for it to be floated, it would have to be put together as one piece, and that's a lot of labor and a lot of equipment," said Mary Anne Mascianica, a spokeswoman for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

From where she works, Mascianica said she could see the Kamehameha in dry-dock.

"It's under scaffolding and there are pieces that have been cut away," she said. "This is well on its way to being recycled. It's not something that can be pulled back at this point."

Mascianica remembers the Kamehameha from a different era — when the sub pulled into a base in Maine for extensive work in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Somersworth, the small neighboring New Hampshire town where she lived at the time, adopted the sub and its crew.

"My little town spent so much time with the crew," Mascianica said. "The crew came into our homes for the holidays — so Kamehameha had a very personal touch for me."

Over the years, Kamehameha deployed from Guam; South Carolina; Rota, Span; and from 1993 on, Pearl Harbor.

Navy officials were not sure last week where items returned from Kamehameha will be displayed.

People like Shirai are just glad they will be.

"It's disturbing (to find out Kamehameha is being scrapped)," he said. "But I can deal with it because at least they are saving some parts that will be remembered."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.