All Of The Tragic Events That Led To Hawaii Becoming America's 50th State
Many associate Aloha shirts, hula dancing, and surfing with Hawaiian culture. Beloved by many around the globe, the paradisiacal islands exude romance and relaxation. However, the story of how America acquired Hawaii is much less pristine than the sparkling oceans and beaches on postcards and travel brochures. Struggle and oppression fill Hawaii's history, as the United States forced the islands into becoming US territory. Much like the Native American Trail of Tears, the story of how Hawaii became a state brims with hostile takeovers, as well as displaced and mistreated Native inhabitants.
Eight major volcanic islands form Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean more than 2,000 miles from San Francisco. Historians believe Polynesians became the first Hawaiian inhabitants after traveling from the Marquesas Islands by canoe around 400 CE. They created a new society; used their farming and fishing skills to survive; and eventually formed a monarchy. As white Europeans settled on the islands, sugar plantation owners - including Sanford Dole, a relative of Dole Food Company founder - overthrew the Hawaiian government and began America's process of claiming the islands.
European James Cook Sailed To Hawaii In 1778 And Attempted To Kidnap The Native King
Photo: Nathaniel Dance-Holland/National Maritime Museum, UK / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Captain James Cook was the first recorded European to set foot in Hawaii while exploring the South Pacific with his crew in 1778. He named the islands the "Sandwich Islands" in honor of the Earl of Sandwich, one of Cook's financial backers.
The iron on his ships, as well as the crews' metal tools and cooking utensils, interested the Native Hawaiians who were unfamiliar with the commodity. Thus, they at first welcomed Cook and his men as deities.
When Cook later returned to the islands on a different exploration, however, he took advantage of the trust and incited the Hawaiians against him. After he discovered a smaller boat stolen from his ship, Cook ordered his men to kidnap the elderly Hawaiian king in retaliation, which incited the Hawaiians against the Europeans.
They forced the captain to retreat from the islands, but bad weather compelled Cook's ship to soon return to the beach where an angry mob killed him and most of the crew.
Missionaries And Whalers Brought Disease And Other Problems
Photo: William Ellis / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
In March 1820, a group of Protestant missionaries traveled to Hawaii and began setting up churches. Missionaries from other religions followed; many Natives adopted their practices and belief systems. In addition to churches, missionaries built schools - and through their descendants - started a social class of white elites in Hawaii.
Whalers came to Hawaii around the same time as the missionaries, but their differences in lifestyle caused substantial conflict among all three groups. As the missionaries attempted to create laws to keep the sailors in line, whalers demanded the right to gamble and hire Native women for sex work.
The whalers' desire for familiar foods also forced the island to obtain nontraditional Hawaiian foods, including sugar, potatoes, and meat. The foreigners also brought diseases such as measles, venereal disease, and smallpox to Hawaii. By 1853, roughly 230,000 Native Hawaiians had lost their lives.
Foreigners Used The Threats Of Force To Establish A New Constitution
Photo: James J. Williams / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
By 1810, Hawaii's eight main islands had united to form a single kingdom under the rule of King Kamehameha I. However, traders from France, Britain, and the United States influenced the islanders by supplying them with guns. The foreigners also convinced them to sign a free trade agreement, which entailed giving away Pearl Harbor and granting most of Hawaii's land to sugar plantation owners.
Non-Native residents didn't like the Hawaiian form of monarchy, and when David Kalakaua became king in 1874, they felt threatened by his attempts to reduce the Missionary Party's power.
Some party members formed a group called the Hawaiian League in 1887 and drafted a constitution, which would remove power from the king and give it to the legislature instead. The so-called Bayonet Constitution also took away voting rights from Native Hawaiians and Asian citizens who owned neither money nor land. The League then coerced Kalakaua to sign the constitution, threatening him with force from a militia if he didn't complyNon-Native Businessmen Staged A Coup And Took Over The Royal Hawaiian Government
Photo: Gerald Farinas / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
King Kalakaua's sister Lili'uokalani assumed the throne in 1891, when the king passed away. As queen, Lili'uokalani attempted to restore the monarchy's power and return voting rights to Native Hawaiians - but the self-imposed white legislature refused to pass it.
Fearing the possible loss of control, a group of 13 men from the United States, Germany, and Britain formed the Committee of Safety. Backed by the US military, the group of businessmen with stakes in the pineapple and sugar industries staged a coup in January of 1893 to overthrow Lili'uokalani's rule.
The coup had about 1,000 supporters in Hawaii, and the US sent a ship with more than 120 Marines Corps members for support as tensions grew. A policeman died from a gunshot while trying to stop the committee's unofficial militia from illegally acquiring arms. Committee members took advantage of the confusion and ran into a government building, claiming they were now in charge.
The US minister to Hawaii took the group's side and recognized committee leader Sanford B. Dole - of relation to the founder of Dole Foods - as head of this new provisional government.
Hawaiian Queen Lili'uokalani Abdicated Her Throne To Avoid Bloodshed
Photo: Stanislaw Julian Ostrorog / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Queen Lili'uokalani stood down from fighting the US actions of 1893 with force, realizing many might die if she resisted the coup. Meanwhile, as leader of the new US provisional government in Hawaii, Sanford Dole began the process of annexation by submitting a treaty to the US Senate.
Several congressmen realized Native Hawaiians didn't support annexation, and even President Grover Cleveland spoke out against the idea, supporting Lili'uokalani's return to the throne. He sent a new minister to represent the US to Hawaii, but Dole refused to stand down, forming the independent Republic of Hawaii in 1894.
Since President Cleveland didn't want bloodshed either, he decided not to send in troops. However, Native Hawaiians took matters into their own hands. In 1895, they attempted their own coup, but did not succeed, costing several lives in the process. After the new republic government arrested Lili'uokalani and charged her with treason, she officially abdicated the throne.
Sugar Dominated Hawaii's Economy And Pushed Natives Off Their Land
Photo: Hawaii State Archives / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
When missionaries in Hawaii realized the islands were ideal for growing sugarcane, they convinced the Hawaiian monarchy to sell them land. Sugar plantations cropped up all over the islands, run by white people wealthy enough to afford the property.
The plantation owners hired workers from nearby Asian countries, such as Korea, Japan, and China; though some set up their business and returned to America to live, a few stayed behind in Hawaii. By 1900, sugar plantation owners dominated Hawaii's economy, despite comprising only 5% of the island's residents.
Their plantations grew, forcing Hawaiians to give up their land. At the end of the Civil War, the US government helped Hawaii's sugar economy grow by offering generous import rates. However, when Congress passed the McKinley Tariff in 1890, sugar plantation owners took a hit, and sales fell. This gave them more incentive to annex Hawaii and nullify these tariffs
The Spanish-American War Convinced Congress To Annex Hawaii
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Since President Grover Cleveland refused to act towards annexing Hawaii, the task fell to his successor, William McKinley. In 1897, McKinley signed a treaty with the Republic of Hawaii, which proved helpful to America when the Spanish-American War began a year later.
American troops fighting in the Philippines took advantage of Hawaii's location, drawing a treaty to establish a military base at Pearl Harbor in 1887. The region - though the official base didn't begin construction until 1898 - played a crucial part in the military's operations during the Spanish-American War, which helped convince Congress to annex Hawaii.
Officially annexed in 1898, Hawaii became a US territory until the American government granted the islands official state status in 1959.
Annexation Forced Native Hawaiians To Learn And Speak English
Photo: Henry Wetherbee Henshaw / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
To the first Europeans who landed in Hawaii, the Hawaiian language resembled other island nations, such as the Maori of New Zealand and the people of Tahiti. Since Hawaiians shared their language orally, with no written form, white missionaries created a written alphabet of 13 letters based on the sounds they heard when Hawaiian people spoke. It became the most common language on the islands, spoken by government employees and people who came to work the sugar plantations.
As Americans took over the islands, English became more widespread. When the US officially annexed Hawaii in 1898, the government banned people from speaking the Hawaiian language in government buildings and schools. For a long time, generations of Hawaiians grew up not knowing their native language. However, thanks to renewed interest in Native Hawaiian culture, the language made a comeback in the 1970s, and once again became the state's official language in 1978
The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act Failed Native Residents
Photo: Unknown, Hawaii State Archives / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Sugar plantation owners and ranchers obtained the land from Hawaiian Natives after overthrowing the Hawaiian government in 1893. At the time, they could own an unlimited amount of land. When the Organic Act passed, creating the new annexation government, it instituted lease terms for sugarcane farmers and plantation owners who had taken over most of the Hawaiian land.
Most were no longer than 30 years total, and around the time many of them were up for renewal or expiring, Congressional delegate Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole introduced the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921. This bill allowed people of more than 50% Native Hawaiian heritage to lease areas totaling more than 200,000 acres of land for 99 years at the cost of $1.
Though Kalaniana'ole created the bill to give Native Hawaiians living in poverty the right to their land, property leasers and Republican lawmakers struck illicit deals to create loopholes and transfers. These workarounds ultimately used land intended for Hawaiian homes for airports and other public-use entities; more than 1,000 acres went to the new government.
Meanwhile, the land allotted to the Hawaiian civilians proved underdeveloped, unworkable, and sometimes inaccessible. As one writer put it, "Many uses of Hawaiian Homelands for public parks and schools violate the intent of the trust." The act set aside no money for improving the land, and in 1999, more than 29,000 Native Hawaiians remained on the waiting list for land.
Hawaiians Lived Under Martial Law During World War II
Photo: Department of the Navy. Fourteenth Naval District / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack destroyed almost 20 military vessels and killed over 2,400 people, including some civilians. The National Guard took over as the territorial governor and placed Hawaii under martial law, fearing the contingent of Japanese-Hawaiian citizens might instigate further attacks.
Hawaii had not yet become a US state, and the government remained suspicious of the Islanders during the war, sharply limiting their rights with curfews and forcing them to carry military-issued IDs complete with fingerprints. Residents lived with blackouts and military surveillance, including the censorship of mail and newspapers.
The military also forced some Hawaiians to dig bomb shelters, and sent about 2,000 Japanese-heritage civilians to Japanese internment camps. In October 1944, the government finally deemed the threat of attack in Hawaii unlikely, thus ending martial law. Two years later, the Supreme Court ruled the military's actions against civilians unconstitutional.
The US Military Blew Up Parts Of Kaho'olawe Island For Years
Photo: US Navy Employee / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Hawaii's smallest island served as a penal colony from around 1832 to 1853, and later supported ranchers, farmers, and as many as 50,000 non-native goats. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US military evacuated the inhabitants and turned the entire island into a bombing range.
They fired missiles at the island's cliffs from ships and submarines to test their weapons, setting off large quantities of nuclear TNT near the shore to simulate the effects of a nuclear blast on nearby ships. Since Native Hawaiians viewed the island as sacred, they considered the military's actions as sacrilegious.
President Dwight Eisenhower passed a bill in 1953 to return the land to the Native people after the military completed weapons testing, but bombings continued into the 1970s. Native Hawaiians formed the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana group in protest and occupied the island several times, with one occupation lasting 35 days.
Two men went missing while traveling from the island during these protests, putting further pressure on the military to return the land. The US Navy agreed to conserve the island by introducing more plants and working to stop soil erosion; however, it wasn't until the George H.W. Bush administration in 1990 when the bombings ceased. The Navy gave control of the island to the state of Hawaii in 2003, but 25% of the island remained uncleared and hazardous.
Tourists And New Residents With Money Caused Massive Urbanization
Hawaii became a US state around the same time the middle class emerged post-WWII. US citizens with enough income to afford a destination vacation, along with easy access to passenger airplanes, propelled tourism to the islands. Hawaiians built resorts, hotels, and golf courses for the influx of tourists, often hiring residents of nearby countries - such as the Philippines - as workers.
Eventually, tourism replaced the sugar industry as one of the biggest contributors to the state's economy. Unfortunately, the development often encroached on beaches and other areas sacred to Native Hawaiians, quickly overtaking Hawaii's natural beauty.
People with money also moved to Hawaii, requiring new residential structures, as well as places to eat and shop. More people with fewer living spaces meant rent prices spiked, forcing many Natives out of their homes, which they could no longer afford.
In 1970, the Bishop Estate private trust evicted Native residents from their farms and homes with only one month's notice; thus, people local to the neighborhood for generations had to move due to construction. Protests failed to stop the development, but this incident spurred activism against exploitative urbanization.
The US Government Doesn't Consider Native Hawaiians To Be Indigenous People
Congress apologized to Hawaii in 1993 for helping to overthrow the government belonging to people who didn't want their home ruled by another country. In 2000, Hawaiian Senator Daniel K. Akaka created the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act to make stronger amends. Also known as the Akaka Bill, the act grants Native Hawaiians the same kinds of rights given to Native Americans and Native Alaskans.
As of 2018, the US government recognizes Hawaiians as an ethnic minority, not indigenous people. Unlike Native Americans and Native Alaskans, they do not have the right to govern themselves, raise funds through running gambling establishments, or possess rights to the land seized by the government. Though Akaka worked to get his bill passed for 12 years, it never received enough votes to become law. He retired in 2013 and passed away in 2018.
High Rates Of Obesity And Homelessness Exist Among Native Hawaiians
According to 2017 statistics, almost 40% of Native Hawaiians struggle with obesity, though other Pacific Island countries and territories such as Samoa and the Cook Islands share this trend. Researchers believe this strongly correlates with modern food and genetics - the genes which allowed Natives' ancestors to travel long periods without food.
Traditional Pacific island diets didn't contain the fat, sugar, and carbohydrates now abundant in inexpensive and widely available foods, such as potato chips, white bread, and soda. Along with obesity, Native Hawaiians also have high rates of diabetes, psychological stress, and asthma, possibly due to cigarettes.
In 2017, studies also claimed Hawaii had the highest homelessness rate in the United States outside of Washington, DC, and reportedly Native Hawaiians comprised almost 40% of the homeless population in 2015. Though the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act formed to set aside land for Native people, many remain on waiting lists and can't afford the skyrocketing rents.
According to a study, some people offered housing through the program turned it down, citing the homes had inadequate space for their families, as well as were too far away from transportation or their jobs.
The Traditional Hula Dance Led To Stereotypes And Commercialization
In addition to beaches, flower-patterned shirts, and tropical drinks, most people connect hula dancers to Hawaii. The dance has roots in ancient times, taking the place of a written language. Each movement of the hula tells a story, serving as the earliest record of Hawaiian mythology and history.
When missionaries came to Hawaii in the 1820s, they outlawed the dance, mandating Native Hawaiians adopt their customs instead. In the 1870s under the rule of King David Kalakaua, Hawaiian culture made a comeback and people embraced the hula once more.
Though the dance is an art form with a long history of tradition, it has also become a cultural enterprise in Hawaii. Visitors can attend shows, take classes, and view the dance as mere entertainment. Some see the female hula dancer - complete in a grass skirt and coconut bra - as a Hawaiian stereotype, similar to a cigar-store 'Indian.' While the hula brought tourists to the islands, it also spawned tiki bar decorations and Halloween costumes based on revered, ancient traditions.
Mark Zuckerberg Tried To Push Native Hawaiians Off Their Land
Photo: FLJuJitsu / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0
After visiting Kauai, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his family purchased a 700-acre piece of land for $100 million in 2014. Allegedly, Zuckerberg didn't know the area contained several small parcels of land owned by Native Hawaiians.
The Natives acquired this land through the Kuleana Act of 1850, which allowed people to own land for the first time. Many Native Hawaiians living there inherited their land and kept the property in their family for generations, despite the lack of official ownership documentation.
Zuckerberg tried to sue hundreds of these landowners to force them to sell their property at auction. Though he technically had the right to do this, his actions were reminiscent of wealthy white colonizers who previously stole the Native Hawaiians' land. Thanks to the backlash against him, in 2017, Zuckerberg announced he would drop the lawsuits