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Space Invaders, Do You Come In Peace?

By Amanda Kurth
Published: 02/21/22 Topics: Comments: 0

Visitors to the Garden Island have little idea they share land, sea and air with the military and big-wig defense contractors occupying 2,385 acres at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), just an hour due west from the Lihue airport.

But just as Kaua’i is a major center for scientific study possessing state of the art resources, this ancient, once soggy stretch of low land, long ago exhausted to grow sugar cane, is today home to reaps of GMO crops that form a buffer around the base, where it remains terra incognita.

When imagining Kaua’i, perhaps you envision paddleboarding, thundering waterfalls and lush gardens, feral chickens or whale watching along the famed Na Pali coast tour.

What would not come to mind are the advanced hypersonic weapons, ballistic missile defense testing, predator drones, low-earth orbit intercepts and sophisticated tracking systems that monitor activities near and far, like that of unidentified flying objects (UFO).

February 14, a “balloon” prompted jets to scramble over Kaua’i and investigate any malfeasance or intrusion.

According to Maj. Gen. Kenneth S. Hara, Hawaii’s adjutant general; an official statement via Twitter asserted in the first of three tweets, “Indo-Pacific Command detected a high-altitude object floating in the air in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. In accordance with homeland defense procedures, Pacific Air Forces launched tactical aircraft to intercept and identify the object, visually confirming an unmanned balloon without observable identification markings.”

The Valentine’s Day aerial mystery remains just that. The incident has been corroborated by the US Pacific Air Forces. However, no further details have been released. The matter is still, as of today, under investigation.

What is clear through many online forums is that local eyewitnesses have substantiated official reports of a military unit sent on reconnaissance outfitted with F-22A Raptors, the only of their kind stationed in Hawai’i.

It wouldn't be the first time Kaua’i has attracted other-worldly phenomenon.

Barking Sands, the area where PMRF is situated, sounds like the stuff of legends. From the sugar era to the space age, the nearly eight-mile stretch of sand was once home to an old Hawaiian fisherman and his nine dogs.

One day as he prepared his fishing canoe, he tied the dogs to stakes, three to each, as he had done every morning.

While out at sea, he was caught in an unexpected storm, wrestling the angry waves until he could return ashore.

His strength shattered, and his body became heavy. He forgot to untie the dogs as he summoned the strength to crawl into his hut.

The next morning, he went outside and did not see them.

In their place buried were mounds of sand.

As he began to dig, each shovelful removed was filled with more earth, and still, he could not find his dogs.

Every day after that when he crossed the beach where he last saw them, he heard the dogs barking low beneath his feet.

Native Hawaiians trace their origins from the Pleiades star system called the Akua. But were these islands already inhabited by extraterrestrials?

Is it possible that Hawaii’s volcanic activity attracted other intelligent life forms to harness the immense geo-energy it produces?

History Channel’s Ancient Alien’s narrator voice aside, let us go full kimono here and talk story.

Looking back, American social traditions transformed in the mid-20th century, specifically around issues of race, gender and sexuality.

According to historian W. Scott Poole, the first science-fiction fantasies of aliens could have been a way of processing these social adjustments.

For example, in 1967, the Supreme Court finally proclaimed that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

What is even more interesting is that the country had already been talking for years about Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who purportedly were abducted by a UFO and its occupants.

Back in 1961, Kaua’i too played host to several alien encounters.

That fall, Masa Arita of Lihue took a photograph of a silver orb above Kalapaki Beach.

The next week, Ed Roberson of Lihue reported a flying disk between the KTOH radio tower on Ahukini Road and Lihue town.

Earlier in 1950, The Garden Island newspaper reported Hawaiian Canneries manager Albert Horner of Wailua, Ben Iida of Lihue, Ben Ohai of Kapa’a and Kumanosuke Fujita near Knudsen’s Gap recounted seeing strange objects.

More recently, in 2020, Hawai’i residents discovered a mysterious blue light surging through the dark horizon.

Multiple witnesses took video of the object, and one woman on O’ahu even followed it in her car before the light plunged into the nearby coastal waters.

The late U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye also did not seek theatrics. He humbly formed a band of truth-seekers reigniting a passionate fascination with the phenomena.

Conspiracy junkies were soon presented with the opportunity to digest the throngs of truly awesome and outlandish theories.

But for all intents and purposes, 2007 proved to be a good year to secretly funnel $22 million to the Pentagon’s clandestine budget for UFO research.

The current scope and force of interest in this subject have one asking if the gods of antiquity merely are personifications of the beings that have already visited us.

The urge to investigate and trust in the paranormal is all-consuming at times from a writer’s point of view, almost religious in devout hope.

When we want to understand something strange, something previously unknown to anyone, we must begin with a standard set of questions. Aloha space invaders, do you come in peace?

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Author: Amanda Kurth
Blog #: 0859 – 02/21/22