Kawaihae, Hawaii

King returned a few months later after Cook's death, but was not impressed with the area he deemed "little cultivated" or the people, whom he called "of the lowest class that inhabited [the islands]".

[1] Kamehameha's British advisor John Young also resided in the vicinity of Kawaihae with his family, and the ruins of their homestead, the remains of what is believed to be the first western-style house in Hawaii, could still be seen today near the Puʻukoholā Heiau.

It was in Kawaihae, on April 1, 1820, that the first company of American missionaries to Hawaii led by Asa and Lucy Goodale Thurston, who later founded Mokuaikaua Church in Kailua Kona, arrived aboard the Thaddeus and set foot on the islands.

But by the late 1800s, Kawaihae had declined in importance due to the end of whaling, the decimation of its population by foreign diseases and migration of its people to other parts of Hawaii; it became a sleeping and forgotten village serving mainly as a cattle landing.

It was designed as a test of the use of high explosives to create harbors in hard substrate and as a proof of the concept that small nuclear charges could be used for civil works projects.

Over 100 tons of conventional explosives (roughly equivalent to the smallest nuclear charge that could be built at that time) were buried in the Kawaihae reef and detonated to clear the basin and the entrance.