Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Branch: U.S. Navy
Unit:  Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron (VQ) 1 “World Watchers”
Military Honors: Air Medal with numeral 1
Date of Sacrifice: March 16, 1970 - KIA in Da Nang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam 
Age: 39
Conflict: Vietnam War, 1959-1975

Harvey Chadwick Kamohoalii Aiau was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 2, 1930. His father, Chadwick Aiau, was a native Hawaiian who came to the continental U.S. to study at the University of Maryland. There he met his wife, Marianne Pitts of Richmond, Virginia. After college, the couple settled in Baltimore.

Harvey graduated from Baltimore’s Forest Park High School in 1948. He spent a year at Western Maryland College before enlisting in the United States Navy. With many Maryland students applying for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, the Aiau family reached out to Hawaii’s delegate to Congress, Joseph Farrington. At the time, Hawaii was a U.S. Territory.

Aiau was given an appointment to Annapolis as the third alternate. When the two students ahead of him failed to pass the entrance exam, Aiau took the exam and was admitted to the Academy in June 1949. At Annapolis, he played on the Navy’s varsity lacrosse team.

In his second year at Annapolis, Aiau made his first visit to the Hawaiian Islands by hitching a ride on a military plane. According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Aiau “tasted his first poi, danced his first hula, and today is having his first bout with a surfboard.” Harvey visited his Aunt Vera Kamekona in Honolulu, whom he’d only known through letters and whose street address he used for his official address at the Academy.

Returning to Annapolis, Aiau graduated from the Academy and was commissioned as an Ensign on June 5, 1953. His first assignment was on the USS Calvert (APA-32), an attack transport operating off the Korean Peninsula as hostilities in the Korean War (1950-1953) came to an end.

After being detached from Calvert in February 1954, Aiau received flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, then more training at Naval Air Station Hutchinson, Kansas. He was designated as a Naval Aviator on April 26, 1955, and assigned to Airborne Early Warning Squadron ONE.

Assignments at Naval Air Station Glynco, Georgia began in 1959. The Naval History and Heritage Command details Aiau’s rise in rank and responsibility from 1962-1969:

In May 1962 he joined the Staff of Commander Carrier Division ONE as Assistant Combat Information Center Officer and in February 1963 reported for training with Patrol Squadron THIRITY-ONE. Transferred in August 1963 to Patrol Squadron TWENTY-EIGHT he served as Administrative Officer and Patrol Plane Commander until June 1965 then was assigned as Emergency Action Officer, Team 1, Airborne Command Post, Operations Division at Headquarters, Commander in Chief, Pacific.

He reported in May 1966 for instruction at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California and in July 1967 became Head of the Naval Tactical Data System Programming Section, Fleet Computer Program Center, San Diego, California. While there, he received the degree of Master of Science in Management Science from the United States International University, San Diego, in 1969. In June of that year he joined Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron ONE to serve as Electronic Warfare Aircraft; Commander in EC-121M and Computer Systems Analyst.

Harvey Aiau advanced in rank to Lieutenant Commander. In Vietnam, Aiau’s unit flew an EC-121M Super Constellation early warning aircraft, used to monitor North Vietnamese radio and radar transmissions.

On March 6, 1970, LCDR Aiau’s “Super Connie” spy plane with a crew of 31 men experienced a mechanical problem as it approached South Vietnam’s Da Nang Air Base, after a flight from Tainan Air Base in Taiwan. The Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives recounts:

The engine number four was shut down in flight due to a generator overheating. On final approach, the airplane was unstable and lost height. The crew was aware that the first 1,000 feet of the runway 35L were unserviceable due to repair so he increased power on the three remaining engines. At a height of about 40 feet, the tail stalled and struck the runway surface. Out of control, the airplane crashed in flames and struck several equipments on ground. Eight occupants and two people on the ground were injured while 23 other occupants were killed.

Lieutenant Commander Harvey Aiau, at age 39, was among the 23 lost. Left behind were his wife Ruth (Kruger) Aiau and their three children—Peter (14), Kathleen (9), and Michael (7). He was laid to rest at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, California.

LCDR Aiau is honored at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington D.C., where his name is inscribed on Panel 12W, Line 2.

Sources
1953 Lucky Bag, the annual publication of The Brigade of Midshipmen, p.192
Naval History and Heritage Command: Harvey Chadwick Kamohoalii Aiau
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 22, 1951: Hawaiian Midshipman Pays First Visit to the Islands
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, The Wall of Faces: Harvey Chadwick K Aiau
Together We Served: Aiau, Harvey Chadwick K, LCDR
Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archive: Crash of Lockheed EC-121M Super Constellation in ĐÀ NẴNG: 23 Killed
The Evening Sun, March 19, 1970: Lt. Cmdr. Aiau Burial Planned
Burial Site: Find a Grave