1857: The mutineer Jemadar Issuree Pandy 1943: The massacre of Janowa Dolina

1947: Garlon Mickles, the last hanged in Hawaii

April 22nd, 2017 Headsman


Seattle Times, April 22, 1947.

On this date in 1947, U.S. Army Private Garlon Mickles was hanged at a place called “execution gulch” in Honolulu’s Schofield Barracks.

Mickles had enlisted three years before, the 16-year-old son of a St. Louis laundress. (“Tell my mother I died like a man,” were his reported words to the chaplain.)

According to Associated Press reports, army engineers frustrated peeping eyes by “put[ting] up a smoke screen to shield the gallows from the view of the curious.”

He was convicted of raping and robbing a female War Department employee on Guam, where he was stationed with the Twentieth Air Force — from which staging-point the unit conducted bombing raids on mainland Japan. (The Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was part of the 20th.)

Mickles appears to be the last person ever executed on the Hawaiian islands, and also an unusual overlook by the Espy File of U.S. executions, from which he’s totally absent.

On this day..

Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Children,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Guam,Hanged,Hawaii,Milestones,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Rape,Soldiers,Theft,U.S. Military,USA

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One thought on “1947: Garlon Mickles, the last hanged in Hawaii”

  1. Meaghan says:

    He managed to get into the army at the age of 13?! I mean, I know it was 1944 and all, but still, he must have been very mature-looking for his age.

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