This particular island was used to train US navy ships............

20th century[edit]

From 1910 to 1918, the Territory of Hawaii designated Kahoolawe as a forest reserve in the hope of restoring the island through a revegetation and livestock removal program. This program failed, and leases again became available. In 1918, the rancher Angus MacPhee of Wyoming, with the help of the landowner Harry Baldwin of Maui, leased the island for 21 years, intending to build a cattle ranch there. By 1932, the ranching operation was enjoying moderate success. After heavy rains, native grasses and flowering plants would sprout, but droughts always returned. In 1941, MacPhee sublet part of the island to the U.S. Army. Later that year, because of continuing drought, MacPhee removed his cattle from the island.

Training grounds[edit]

Operation "Sailor Hat", 1965. The detonation of the 500-ton TNT explosive charge for test shot "Bravo", first of a series of three test explosions on the southwestern tip of Kahoolawe Island, Hawaii, February 6, 1965.

On December 8, 1941, after the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor and Oahu, the U.S. Army declared martial law throughout Hawaii, and it used Kahoolawe as a place to train American soldiers and Marines headed west to engage in the War in the Pacific. The use of Kahoolawe as a bombing range was believed to be critical, since the United States was executing a new type of war in the Pacific Islands. Their success depended on accurate naval gunfire support that suppressed or destroyed enemy positions as U.S. Marines and soldiers struggled to get ashore. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and coastguardsmen prepared on Kahoolawe for the brutal and costly assaults on islands such as the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, the Marianas and Pelileu, New Guinea, et cetera, in the Western Pacific.^{[citation needed]}

Military and naval training on Kahoolawe continued following World War II. During the Korean War, warplanes from aircraft carriers played a critical role in attacking enemyairfields, convoys, and troop staging areas. Mock-ups of airfields, military camps, and vehicles were constructed on Kahoolawe, and while pilots were preparing for war atBarbers Point Naval Air Station on Oahu, they practiced spotting and hitting the mock-ups at Kahoolawe. Similar training took place throughout the Cold War and during theWar in Vietnam, with mock-ups of aircraft, radar installations, gun mounts, and surface-to-air missile sites being placed across this island for pilots and bombardiers to use in their training.

In early 1965, the U.S. Navy conducted Operation Sailor Hat to determine the blast resistance of ships. Three tests off the coast of Kahoolawe subjected the island and a target ship to massive explosions, with 500 tons of conventional TNT detonated on the island near the target ship USS Atlanta (CL-104). This warship was damaged, but she was not sunk. The blasts created a crater on the island known as "Sailor Man's Cap" and they might have cracked the island's caprock, causing some groundwater to be lost into the ocean.^[11]