HAWAII - August 21, 2009 - 50th aniversary of the 50th state

August 21, 2009 Honolulu Advertiser
Fifty years ago today, President Dwight Eisenhower set pen to official paper to welcome Hawai'i as an official member of the United States.
In Hawai'i, the news — long presumed — was relayed to Gov. William Quinn by Hawai'i Secretary Edward Johnson.
Within minutes, Associate Justice Masaji Marumoto of the Hawai'i Supreme Court administered oaths of office to Quinn and Lt. Gov. James Kealoha before a packed house in the executive chambers of 'Iolani Palace.
Thus began a week of grand public displays of pride and patriotism, even as those quietly opposed to statehood mourned the passing of the last vestiges of Hawaiian independence.
Civil Defense sirens wailed. A gun-saluting battery from Headquarters, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific fired a 50-gun salute at 'Iolani Palace. Thousands attended an elaborate fireworks show at Ala Moana Beach Park. Cars crowded Honolulu streets, their horns blaring.
Today's 50th anniversary activities are all but certain to have a significantly different tone.
In keeping with the 50th Anniversary of Statehood Commission's stated intent of "commemorating" rather than "celebrating" the milestone, the state's largest official marking of the day will be a conference aimed at looking ahead to Hawai'i's next 50 years.
"New Horizons for the Next 50 Years," which runs from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., will include remarks from former U.S. Department of Energy deputy secretary Andy Karsner, 2008 Olympic gold medalist Bryan Clay, and pollster John Zogby; the unveiling of the new Hawai'i stamp; and workshops addressing a wide variety of concerns, including the military, tourism, the economy, media and others.
The event will close with remarks from Gov. Linda Lingle, entertainment and a fireworks display.
Hawaiian activists will also be busy today. The Hawaiian Independence Action Alliance and the Institute for the Advancement of Hawaiian Affairs have organized a march and rally for Hawaiian independence, scheduled to take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The march will begin at Ala Moana Beach Park and proceed to the Convention Center.
Also today, the Hawai'i State Judiciary is hosting a panel discussion on statehood with retired Chief Justice William S. Richardson and retired Judge Betty M. Vitousek. The free event begins at noon at the Judiciary History Center.
On Maui, Eddie Kamae and the Sons of Hawai'i will headline "50 Years of Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance," 11 a.m. at Hana Beach Park.
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.



August 21, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Happily a State, Forever an Island
By PAUL THEROUX
Correction Appended
Hale’iwa, Hawaii — Once in the Elks Club in Honolulu, an elderly man of Chinese ancestry said in a low voice to me: “This club used to be very exclusive. And the one next door too.” He meant no Chinese were admitted — or anyone but haoles (whites) or ethnic Hawaiians — to the Elks or the Outrigger Canoe Club. This was true of nearly all of Hawaii’s posh clubs. “But all that changed,” his daughter said, “when Reverend King marched on Selma.”
So Hawaii’s statehood was not an occasion for the opening of clubs to other races or even an era of good feeling. That had to wait for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The eight main islands and many smaller islands and atolls that make up the archipelago we know as Hawaii became the 50th state 50 years ago today, but it was still old-fashioned in every sense, an island chain of pineapple and sugar plantations, with a scattering of good hotels, visited by a quarter of a million tourists — mainly from ships and, in that year of 1959, the first big jets.
Back then, as the newest star on the flag, Hawaii was a thinly populated place, with most of the people living in Honolulu and predominantly young — the state’s average age was among the youngest in the nation. Its soul was Polynesian, but its popular culture and its institutions were Small Town U.S.A., with drive-in eateries, carhops and a passion for Elvis (a frequent visitor) and for high school sports; on every island the social highlight of the year was the senior prom.
There were also pineapple harvesters, bundled up against the sharp spines of the plant, and cane cutters, coffee pickers and the local cowboys known as paniolos. Honolulu was a half-dozen small communities in search of a city. Downtown was one long street; Waikiki was two. Outside Honolulu, and on neighbor islands, the land was agricultural; people lived in villages, many in plantation housing, and shopped at the company store. The roads were narrow. Life was expensive, as it has always been in Hawaii because of the distance from the mainland, but the habit of frugality and the simplicity of life were strong and sustaining.
Long before statehood, proud of living in an American territory, people from Hawaii joined the United States military and distinguished themselves in World War II — the 442nd (mostly Hawaiian men of Japanese ancestry) was the most highly decorated regiment of its size and length of service in American history. That elderly man who was not allowed to join the Elks because of his race — my father-in-law, Ernest Mun Sung Loo — had years earlier fought at Guadalcanal.
With statehood came more financing, better schools, better hospitals, improved harbors, a jump in population, urbanization, military spending and many more tourists — lately as many as seven million annually. Three Interstate highways were built on Oahu, separated from the nearest others by 2,400 miles of ocean. That is a detail. The quickest way to infuriate someone here is to say (as many unthinking visitors do), “I’m going back to the States tomorrow.”
When I first came to live in Hawaii 20 years ago, I could determine which way to paddle or sail by assessing the speed and direction of smoke issuing from the tall chimney of the nearby Waialua Sugar Mill. The smoke stopped rising 12 years ago, when the mill closed. What remains is a rusted hulk in the middle of a bewildered town that has, tellingly, been the location for big-budget movies set in the third world; just down the road, nearer the beach, is a location for the TV drama “Lost.”
Other plantation lands have become bungaloid subdivisions or luxury housing or golf courses. Some children of the plantation workers have become doctors and lawyers, or construction workers and caddies. And an immense number have become politicians — each island has its own local government — which may account for its reputation for political buffoonery and philistinism. Public intellectuals do not exist; public debate is rare, except on issues that transgress religious dogma. Hawaii is noted for its multitude of contentious God-botherers. One hundred sixty-three years ago, Melville remarked on this in “Typee.” Yet “tipsy from salvation’s bottle” (to borrow Dylan Thomas’s words), they stick to specific topics (same-sex marriage a notable example). No one else pontificates. It is regarded as bad form for anyone in Hawaii to generalize in print, as I am shamefully doing now.
Individuality is not prized; the family — the ’ohana — is the important social unit. But this Polynesian ideal of the family group, or the clan, extends to other communities. It is as though living on the limited terra firma of an island inspires people to form incurious metaphorical islands, like the Elks and the other exclusive clubs of the past. Even today, the University of Hawaii is an island that has almost no presence in the wider community. And each church, each valley, each ethnic group, each neighborhood is insular — not only the upscale enclaves like Kahala or Koko Head, but the more modest ones too. On leeward Oahu, the community of Waianae is like a remote and somewhat menacing island.
Each of the actual islands has a distinct identity — a person from Kauai would insist that he or she is quite unlike someone from Maui and could recite a lengthy genealogy to prove it. The military camps at Schofield, Kaneohe, Hickham and elsewhere exist as islands, and no one looks lonelier on a Hawaiian beach than a jarhead — pale, reflective, perhaps contemplating yet another deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Soldiers sometimes salute me because out of solidarity I wear a combat cap.
The most circumscribed islanders are the Hawaiians, numerous because of the one-drop rule (though by this dubious measure, I am a member of the Menominee nation and the whole of Wisconsin is my ancestral land). People who, before statehood, regarded themselves as of Portuguese or Chinese or Filipino descent identified themselves as Hawaiian in the later 1960s and ’70s, when sovereignty became an issue and their drop of blood gave them access.
The Hawaiian language as a medium of instruction hardly existed 20 years ago, but now it is fairly common, and there has been a substantial increase in Hawaiian speakers. But there are 40 or more contending Hawaiian sovereignty groups, from the strictest kanaka maoli (original people), who worship traditional gods like Pele, the goddess of fire (and volcanoes), to the Hawaiian hymn singers in the multitude of Christian churches, to the Hawaiian Mormons, who believe (according to revelations in The Book of Mormon) that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon and that mainlanders (proto-Polynesians) got to Hawaii from what is now California when Hagoth — a Mormon voyager (Book of Alma 63:5-8) — sailed into the Western Ocean and peopled it.
I have lived in Hawaii longer than any other place in my life. I have murmured to myself in Africa, Asia and Britain, “I’d hate to die here.” But I wouldn’t mind dying in Hawaii, which means I like living here. I should add that Hawaii has the largest number of drownings per capita of any state — roughly one person a week succumbs to the fickle rip currents or the towering surf or is simply blown by the strong trade winds out to sea in a rubber dinghy. The murder rate is low — hardly more than 20 a year — but we have an alarming rate of car crashes. Honolulu has an extraordinarily high number of cars per mile of road — and consequently a horrendous traffic problem. Yet honking your horn is seen here as a barbarity. (Driving with your feet out the window is stylish.)
The proposed rail project (it was first proposed 18 years ago) might alleviate the traffic, but what I have learned in my time here is how resistant Hawaiians are to change. And, like many who believe they are poorly governed, people in Hawaii have an abiding hatred of regulation. Great howling occurred a few years ago when the state used vans with radar to monitor speeding cars; at great expense the vans were discontinued, and speeding resumed. All beaches have prominent signs forbidding alcohol, dogs, ballgames and loud music, but on any given day you will see more than one beachgoer throwing a tennis ball to a dog while swigging beer and listening to music blaring from a radio. Littering is a problem, and that means the remains of Happy Meals as well as old cars abandoned by the side of the road.
Some of this seems either dysfunctional or annoying, and yet there are compensations. All my life I have thought, Give me sunshine. Hawaii has the balmiest weather in the world, and its balance of wind and water gives it perfect feng shui. No beach is private: all of the shoreline must be accessible to the casual beachgoer or fisherman or opihi-picker. And since people’s faults are often their virtues when looked at a different way, the aversion to self-promotion is often a welcome humility; the lack of confrontation or hustle is a rare thing in a hyperactive world. Islanders are instinctively territorial, but bound by rules, so privacy matters and so does politeness and good will.
Although many of its birds and flora have been wiped out by humans or alien species, Hawaii’s other Edenic attributes are just about indestructible. I keep telling myself that no one can taint the orchidaceous air, or flatten the gigantic sea cliffs, or still the great waves, or obliterate the rainbows.
Paul Theroux is the author of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.” His forthcoming novel is “A Dead Hand.”
Correction: August 21, 2009
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the the Japanese-American 442nd Regiment in World War II. Not all of the men in the regiment were from Hawaii.