Gordon McLauchlan:

09.11.2002

Waikiki, of which I was once almost a habitue, remains a place where languor meets clangour, where holidaymakers relax amid the bustle of trade, but where politics has always seemed a faraway island to me, even as a regular visitor.

I arrived this week to attend a conference at the University of Hawaii and discovered an issue simmering away over land ownership and use.

In the past, nothing seemed as unlikely and as easily dismissed as the case that native Hawaiians should get their land back, or some reasonable compensation, and, at the very least, should be freed from the oppressive presence of the American military.

In this last endeavour they are joined by some members of long-established ethnic groups such as the Japanese.

No doubt exists that the United States Government in the last gasp of the 19th century took over Hawaii rapaciously, based on one of those flimsy pretexts colonising powers were fond of at that time.

Hawaii was unlucky enough to attract a brand of especially Calvinistic, thin-lipped, morally oppressive missionaries. The queen was kicked out, the people decimated and enfeebled by diseases (including syphilis, of course) and then consigned to virtual serfdom on sugar plantations.

During the 1990s President Clinton gave Hawaiians one of those fashionable, facile, official apologies for historic abuse.

Concerning the return of land, some rich possibilities exist because the federal Government owns so much of it, but who originally owned what and what it is now worth is complex, so I'll let that go.

The issue of the military presence does seem to be worth a look, though. In 1873, a General John Schofield popped into Hawaii as a tourist and identified Pearl Harbour as "the key to the Central Pacific Ocean". Thus, Hawaii was later invaded and became a military outpost for the United States.

Those who have read From Here to Eternity by James Jones will remember how much of a military base it was in 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. That was an incident of the sort Hawaiians don't want repeated in the new war against "terror".

Today the military controls 80,000ha of land in the state, including more than 22 per cent of Oahu, the main and most populous island. More than half of the total holdings consist of what are euphemistically called "ceded lands". Some land in the island group has been virtually destroyed after being used for years for target practice by ships and aircraft.

Immediately after the Cold War, the US Department of Defence placed a moratorium on new training land acquisitions, and, as a result, a plan was devised to return land in Hawaii to the community. Some gestures were made. But - according to "Ohana Koa/Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific" and other groups campaigning on the issue - land acquisitions in the state have resumed.

What Ohana Koa and others want is the demilitarisation of Hawaii. How many people they represent is unclear but they are not so stupid that they don't foresee the economic consequences of diminishing the military population (about 13 per cent).

The US is avowedly and unabashedly seeking not only to remain the most powerful nation in the world but to make itself as impregnable as possible from attack by its enemies, of whom there are many.

As part of this programme, it is building up its defences against, among other things, missile attack. One of its crucial military hubs is this tiny island group out in the middle of the Pacific, a small and seemingly vulnerable target.

Imagine New Zealand was federated with the United States and was valued strategically as an area from which to control the South Pacific. Imagine we were not only not nuclear-free but had one of the world's greatest naval bases, complete with nuclear installations and nuclear submarines, at, say, Mairangi Bay.

Imagine also that to have anything done about this you would have to convince not just the state Government of the dangers of this in an increasingly volatile world, but would also have to persuade the other 250 million people on the mainland who see Hawaii as a kind of national park for the playful, a state with very limited political clout.

US military bases on Hawaii should be spread around the mainland, say some Hawaiians, not just concentrated on a small island state in a way that makes its whole population so vulnerable; especially, says one campaigner, as "we're American citizens by force, not by choice".

I don't like the protesting Hawaiians' chances of making any impression on any US Government in the short term, despite the quality of some of their leaders.

I listened to a small, tough, articulate Hawaiian woman, Terri Kekoolani Raymond, making her case to an audience and she reminded me of some of the Maori women who have led their people's case for justice in New Zealand. She was unstoppable.

"Our whole mission is to demilitarise Hawaii.

"It's a formidable, tough task but we're going to give it our best shot. We're in a colonial bubble, an American bubble. We want our land back," she said, steely-eyed.

Phew. I'm glad she's no enemy of mine.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2002