One Piece is a grand adventure story where the Straw Hats get to meet tons of quirky people as they journey into the unknown. Most of those individuals work under the banner of certain pirates or organizations. However, there are times when a powerful clan or family appears and genuinely affect the course of the Straw Hats’ voyage. There’s the Germa 66, the Charlotte Family, the Kozuki of Wano, the Gorgon Sisters, or even the scattering members of the D Clan, just to name a few.
That being said, only a handful of them are actually an integral part to the overall saga of One Piece. Unfortunately, one of those clans is rarely mentioned despite the fact that they are the only one who holds the key to the true history of the world. They are called the Ohara Clan, and this is everything that you need to know about them.
Who is The Ohara Clan
In a remote area in the middle of the West Blue Ocean, there’s a small island called Ohara where the Ohara Clan resides. Usually, there’s a kingdom that rules over this kind of island, such as with the Drum kingdom where Chopper comes from, but there is no such thing in Ohara. This is why the people there are rather free to do whatever they want. And in this case, most of them choose to pursue education.
Despite being a small island with a relatively small population, Ohara is famous all around the world as the hub for scholars, particularly Historian and Archeologist. The reason is simply because Ohara is the place where the Tree of Knowledge grew. As the name suggests, this colossal tree is actually a massive library that holds almost every book and record from around the world, especially on the topic of history and archeology.
The scholars of Ohara like to travel around the world and when they get back home, they will bring back some books with them. Not only that, they will also write a book to record all the information that they find during their journey. So if anybody is interested to know more about the history of the world, there’s no better place to learn about it than Ohara Island.
The Role of The Ohara Clan In One Piece
One particular topic that every Ohara Scholars are deeply passionate about is the Void Century. The Void Century happened around 800 to 900 years before the beginning of One Piece. As the name suggests, the void century is a period of about 100 years when there is absolutely no historical records available. It is literally a missing chapter in the history of the world. Something incredibly important certainly happened during that time, but there’s somehow no information about it whatsoever.
However, the Ohara scholars found out that there are actually pieces of information available that were made during the Void Century. This record exists in the form of massive cube-like steles called Poneglyph. As if knowing that there will be people who would try to erase th world’s history, the people at the time wrote about some major historical events and other important information on the surface of the Poneglyphs, and scattered them all around the world. Since the Poneglyphs are made out of virtually indestructible stones, they manage to survive to this day.
Tons of people try to look for these Poneglyphs because they want to know about the information written on it. But unfortunately, the text was written in a dead, ancient language. And that is where the Ohara Clan comes in. With all the information that they have accumulated throughout the years, they manage to learn about this language. Not only that, a handful of the brightest minds from Ohara can even read the Poneglyph. The only thing left is to go out there and find those Poneglyphs. So in a sense, the role of the Ohara Clan in One Piece is to uncover the truth of the Void Century, and therefore providing the overarching narrative to the story that is bigger than the Straw Hat’s journey.
What Happened to The Ohara Clan
As it happened, there is an entity who doesn’t want the people at large to know about what happened in the Void Century. Not only that, they are actually the ones who've been actively trying to hide any kind of information about it from the public. Who are they? Well, they are a little something called the World Government.
So what happens when the World Government realizes that the Ohara is not only interested in the Void Century, but they are actually getting closer to uncovering the truth about it? Well, they simply do what any deranged global superpower would do, which is ordering the complete eradication of the Ohara Clan along with any trace of their existence. They do it through the greatest weapon that The Marine has, which is the Buster Call.
Around 22 years before the beginning of Luffy’s journey, the Ohara Island, along with its people and the Tree of Knowledge, are totally wiped out by the full might of the Marine. As if that’s not enough, the World Government even lied to the public and said that the Ohara scholars were researching the forbidden knowledge in order to destroy the world, causing people to demonize the Ohara and destroying every record about them, including erasing the location of the Ohara island from the World Map.
The Only Surviving Member of The Ohara Clan
The Ohara scholars are the last people who can read the ancient text written on the Poneglyphs. Even the books that could teach people about that language are also burned down along with the Ohara people. And without them, the knowledge and information that were passed down by the people of the Void Century will be lost forever.
Fortunately, there is one little girl who managed to escape that atrocity. She has to witness her mother, and everybody else that she knew all her life, killed in that accident. But despite having to live through such a traumatic experience, and despite the World Government putting an 80 Million bounty on her head and calling her the Devil’s child, she is determined to live on and continue the research left by her parents and the people of Ohara. Her name is Nico Robin, and she is now part of the crew of the future pirate king, Monkey D. Luffy. And under the banner of the Straw Hats, she has become the person who is closest to uncovering the truth about the Void Century.