In it, there is a photo of her great-great-grandfather Charles Peleohalani Keko‘olani and his signature, among thousands of others, scrawled onto an 1897 petition against the annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom. “Now there was a military act that violated Hawai‘i’s sovereignty in order to support a regime change.”īefore we leave, Keko‘olani flips through a binder she brought with her. “That was the beginning of the broken relationship between the U.S. Kajihiro points toward Mililani Street, where troops from the USS Boston marched to from Honolulu Harbor and aimed Gatling guns at the palace, providing the muscle for the overthrow. He recounts the unfortunate course of political events that led to the overthrow: the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, which allowed sugar to flow tariff-free to the United States and cemented Hawai‘i’s ties to the United States the Bayonet Constitution, which increased the power of the white minority while disenfranchising Asian immigrants and poor Native Hawaiians the second Treaty of Reciprocity, which granted the United States exclusive use of Pearl Harbor and finally, the coup d’état that stole Lili‘uokalani’s crown, imprisoned her within the palace walls, and began an illegal occupation that continues today. On the lawn, under the shade of a towering tree, Kajihiro points to the building’s western facade, telling how King David Kalākaua built the extravagant palace, complete with electricity, to demonstrate that the kingdom was a modern, civilized nation in an age when imperialism was devouring much of the world. “We come to the ‘Iolani Palace to talk about this as the symbolic heart of Hawai‘i’s sovereignty, and also as the scene of the crime, where the overthrow took place,” says Kajihiro. The first stop on our tour is ‘Iolani Palace, standing stoically amidst the morning rush in Downtown Honolulu. “The whole idea of a beautiful island like Kaho‘olawe devastated by bombing over almost 50 years,” she says, “brought me into this whole thing of, ‘Why does the military have this power and the ability to destroy islands?’”
Keko‘olani, affectionately called “Auntie Terri” by many, was a member of the fifth landing on Kaho‘olawe-she acted alongside other kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) activists in direct defiance of the U.S. On a breezy December morning, they take me on what they call a “DeTour,” visiting several sites of militarization around O‘ahu and making visible the military’s heavy footprints upon our historical, social, and geographical landscape.įrom the beginning of the tour, Kajihiro, whose unassuming smile is well recognized among the activist community, proudly traces the genealogy of their work back to the people’s struggles on Kaho‘olawe and in Kalama, and Waiāhole-Waikane in the 1970s. (DMZ is derived from the acronym for “demilitarized zone.”) Longtime local activists Kyle Kajihiro and Terri Keko‘olani are working to push these uncomfortable topics into popular discourse and propel a more critical discussion of militarization through their work with Hawai‘i Peace and Justice and DMZ-Hawai‘i/Aloha ‘Āina. But it also means talking about dependence, violence, imperialism, and occupation. Talking about the military in Hawai‘i means talking about our economy, our patriotism, and often, our friends and family. Military personnel, retirees, and their dependents constitute roughly 17 percent of the population, and the military is one of our largest industries, second only to tourism.
Yet the military controls about 231,000 acres, or 5.6 percent of total land area in the state, occupying a staggering 24.6 percent of O‘ahu. The military in Hawai‘i is so ever-present and familiar that, for the most part, we no longer see it carved into the landscape and folded into our social fabric. Fergusen and Phyllis Turnbull, Oh, Say, Can You See? The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai‘i Yet in daily life relatively few people in Hawai‘i actually see the military at all.
“Everywhere you look in Hawai‘i, you see the military.
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