There's a popular TV show called "History Detectives." Wray Taylor, a chief of maintenance in the parks department, doesn't need to watch the show. He's his own history detective and he says you can be one, too.

"It's fun," he said. "Everybody wants to know things. I'm not a professional researcher. I went in naked. I went in there and turned every rock over. You've got to put dedication into it."

His career as a history detective started when he got a job at Koko Head Park and was assigned as groundskeeper for Hanauma Bay. Taylor had to go to the top of Koko Head once a week to check for vandalism. Up there he found a mystery, what he thought were pillboxes from World War II. But nobody could tell him for sure.

"If somebody tells me, 'I don't know,' it bothers me. I gotta poke around," said Taylor. So he started poking.

"Eventually, I found out that Emil Kane was groundskeeper at Koko Head during World War II. I knew his family." And so he discovered that there was a mobile radar station atop Koko Head like the mobile radar station that spotted Japanese planes coming to bomb Pearl Harbor.

Radar at that time was a new invention. Naturally, this whetted Taylor's appetite so he began boning up on the subject.

Who was manning those stations on Dec. 7, 1941?

From his research, Taylor learned that these mobile radar stations were called "apana units." There was one at Kahuku Point that spotted the Japanese planes, and others at Koko Head and Fort Shafter, another near Hale'iwa and one above Swanzy Beach Park in Ka'a'awa.

At the Arizona Memorial, Taylor found a book that lists Pearl Harbor survivors. He went through it line by line until he came to the name Nick Pawlishak of Ambridge, Pa. He was at the radar station on Koko Head on Dec. 7, according to the book. Taylor made this discovery about 1995, four years after he started "poking around."

How to get in touch with Nick Pawlishak? Taylor said he went to the library and spent a whole day going through old telephone books. To his amazement, he found Nick's telephone number. But the telephone book was 10 years old. Did Nick still live in the same place?

Without much hope, Taylor rang the number. Wonder of wonders, Nick Pawlishak answered. His memories of Dec. 7, 1941 were as fresh as yesterday. The pair talked for an hour and started a lasting friendship.

Taylor had discovered the beginning of air defense radar in Hawai'i. Eventually the system was moved to Mount Ka'ala where it remains today. Oh yes, the pillboxes weren't pillboxes. They were fire control stations.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.