Category Archives: History

Los Angeles: Visiting Venice Beach

My friend brought me to this place.  I loved the canal systems and homes with little boats out the front.  Someone put a sign up saying something like ‘not selling eat your heart out’.  It was funny but thankfully I don’t desire to live there.  I just appreciated the beauty of it.  The beachfront prominade was very ecclectic with a wide range of people there and street performers.  I loved the mountains in the background.  Apparently you can drive along the coast to San Francisco.

Venice is a beachfront neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half-mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, artists, and vendors.[2] Venice was home to some of Los Angeles’ early beat poets and artists and has served as an important cultural center of the city.[3]

Contents

History

Venice, originally called “Venice of America,” was founded by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town, 14 miles (23 km) west of Los Angeles. He and his partner Francis Ryan had bought two miles (3.24 km) of oceanfront property south of Santa Monica in 1891. They built a resort town on the north end of the property, called Ocean Park, which was soon annexed to Santa Monica. After Ryan died, Kinney and his new partners continued building south of Navy Street. After the partnership dissolved in 1904, Kinney, who had won the marshy land on the south end of the property in a coin flip with his former partners, began to build a seaside resort like its namesake in Italy.[4]:8

When Venice of America opened on July 4, 1905, Kinney had dug several miles of canals to drain the marshes for his residential area, built a 1,200-foot (370 m)-long pleasure pier with an auditorium, ship restaurant, and dance hall, constructed a hot salt-water plunge, and built a block-long arcaded business street with Venetian architecture. Tourists, mostly arriving on the “Red Cars” of the Pacific Electric Railway from Los Angeles and Santa Monica, then rode Venice’s miniature railroad and gondolas to tour the town. But the biggest attraction was Venice’s mile-long gently sloping beach. Cottages and housekeeping tents were available for rent.

A gondolier on the Venice Canals, 1909.

The community seceded from Santa Monica in 1911.[4]:8 The population (3,119 residents in 1910) soon exceeded 10,000; the town drew 50,000 to 150,000 tourists on weekends.

Attractions on the Kinney Pier became more amusement-oriented by 1910, when a Venice Scenic Railway, Aquarium, Virginia Reel, Whip, Racing Derby, and other rides and game booths were added. Since the business district was allotted only three one-block-long streets, and the City Hall was more than a mile away, other competing business districts developed. Unfortunately, this created a fractious political climate. Kinney, however, governed with an iron hand and kept things in check. When he died in November 1920, Venice became harder to govern. With the amusement pier burning six weeks later in December 1920, and Prohibition (which had begun the previous January), the town’s tax revenue was severely affected.

Windward Ave. in 1913.

The Kinney family rebuilt their amusement pier quickly to compete with Ocean Park’s Pickering Pleasure Pier and the new Sunset Pier. When it opened it had two roller coasters, a new Racing Derby, a Noah’s Ark, a Mill Chutes, and many other rides. By 1925 with the addition of a third coaster, a tall Dragon Slide, Fun House, and Flying Circus aerial ride, it was the finest amusement pier on the West Coast. Several hundred thousand tourists visited on weekends. In 1923 Charles Lick built the Lick Pier at Navy Street in Venice, adjacent to the Ocean Park Pier at Pier Avenue in Ocean Park. Another pier was planned for Venice in 1925 at Leona Street (now Washington Street).

Canals with roller coaster in background, 1921.

For the amusement of the public, Kinney hired aviators to do aerial stunts over the beach. One of them, movie aviator and Venice airport owner B. H. DeLay, implemented the first lighted airport in the United States on DeLay Field (previously known as Ince Field). He also initiated the first aerial police in the nation, after a marine rescue attempt was thwarted. DeLay also performed many of the world’s first aerial stunts for motion pictures in Venice.

By 1925, Venice’s politics became unmanageable. Its roads, water and sewage systems badly needed repair and expansion to keep up with its growing population. When it was proposed that Venice be annexed to Los Angeles, the board of trustees voted to hold an election. Annexation was approved in the election in November, 1925, and Venice was formally annexed to Los Angeles in 1926.[4]:8

Los Angeles had annexed the Disneyland of its day and proceeded to remake Venice in its own image. It was felt that the town needed more streets – not canals – and most of them were paved in 1929 after a three-year court battle led by canal residents. They wanted to close Venice’s three amusement piers but had to wait until the first of the tidelands leases expired in 1946.

In 1929, oil was discovered south of Washington Street on the Venice Peninsula. Within two years, 450 oil wells covered the area, and drilling waste clogged the remaining waterways. It was a short-lived boom that provided needed income to the community, which suffered during the Great Depression. The wells produced oil into the 1970s.

The canals of Venice, Los Angeles

Los Angeles had neglected Venice so long that, by the 1950’s, it had become the “Slum by the Sea.” With the exception of new police and fire stations in 1930, the city spent little on improvements after annexation. The city did not pave Trolleyway (Pacific Avenue) until 1954 when county and state funds became available. Low rents for run-down bungalows attracted predominantly European immigrants (including a substantial number of Holocaust survivors) and young counterculture artists, poets, and writers. The Beat Generation hung out at the Gas House on Ocean Front Walk and at Venice West Cafe on Dudley. Police raids were frequent during that era.[3]

Venice and neighboring Santa Monica were hosts for a decade to Pacific Ocean Park (POP), an amusement and pleasure-pier built atop the old Lick Pier and Ocean Park Pier by CBS and the Los Angeles Turf Club (Santa Anita). It opened in July 1958, in Santa Monica. They kept the pier’s old roller coaster, airplane ride, and historic carousel but converted its theaters and smaller pier buildings into sea-themed rides and space-themed attractions designed by Hollywood special-effects people. Visitors could travel in space on the Flight to Mars ride, tour the world in Around the World in 80 Turns, go beneath the sea in the Diving Bells or at Neptune’s Kingdom, take a fantasy excursion into the Tales of the Arabian Nights on the Flying Carpet ride, visit a pirate world at Davy Jones’ Locker, or visit a tropical paradise and its volcano by riding a train on Mystery Island. There were also thrill rides like the Whirlpool (rotor whose floor dropped out), the Flying Fish wild mouse coaster, an auto ride, gondola ride, double Ferris wheel, safari ride, and an area of children’s rides called Fun Forest. Sea lion shows were performed at the Sea Circus.

Since attendance at the park was too low to justify winter operation, and with competition from Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Marineland, it was sold after two seasons to a succession of owners, who allowed the park to deteriorate. Since Santa Monica was redeveloping the surrounding area for high-rise apartments and condos, it became difficult for patrons to reach the park, and it was forced into bankruptcy in 1967. The park suffered a series of arson fires beginning in 1970, and it was demolished by 1974. Another aging attraction in the 1960’s was the Aragon Ballroom that had been the longtime home of The Lawrence Welk Show and the Spade Cooley Show, and later the Cheetah Club where rock bands such as the Doors, Blue Cheer, & many other top bands performed. It burned in the 1970 fire. The district around POP in the southside of Santa Monica is known as Dogtown. It is a common misconception that Dogtown is in Venice, but the original Z-boys surfing and skateboarding shop was and is still on Main St. in Santa Monica. Venice and Santa Monica were home to pioneering skateboarders the Z-Boys, as profiled in the documentary film, Dogtown and Z-Boys. It is little-known that POP pier was actually completely in Santa Monica; it started at the end of Ocean Park Blvd and extended to the line where Venice meets Santa Monica.

Binoculars Building (originally Chiat/Day Building), 340 Main Street. Frank Gehry, Architect. The binoculars, which house a conference room, were designed with help from Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. The building is now Google’s LA office. It is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.

Producer Roger Corman owned a production facility, the Concorde/New Horizons Studio, on Main Street, where many of his films were shot. This facility was razed to build the Venice Art Lofts and Dogtown Station lofts.

Demographics

As of 2008, the population is estimated to be around 40,885. The median household income is $67,057, making it one the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. The racial and ethnic composition in Venice is White (63.9%), Latino (22.2%), African American (5.6%), Asian (3.7%), and Other (4.6%).[5]

Attractions and neighborhoods

Venice is today one of the most vibrant and eclectic areas in Los Angeles and it continues a tradition of liberal social change involving prominent Westsiders. Venice Family Clinic is the largest free clinic in the country.

Abbot Kinney Boulevard is considered the nucleaus of the area, with retail stores, restaurants, bars and galleries lining the street. Previously “a derelict strip of rundown beach cottages and empty brick industrial buildings called West Washington Boulevard”,[6] community groups and property owners pushed for renaming a portion of the street to honor Abbot Kinney in the late 1980s.[7][8]

The Venice Farmers’ Market, founded in 1987, operates every Friday morning from 7–11 a.m. on Venice Boulevard at Venice Way.

72 Market Street Oyster Bar and Grill was one of several historical footnotes associated with Market Street in Venice, one of the first streets designated for commerce when the city was founded in 1905. During the depression era, Upton Sinclair had an office there when he was running for governor, and the same historic building where the restaurant was located was also the site of the first Ace/Venice Gallery in the early 1970’s[9] and, before that, the studio of American installation artist Robert Irwin.

The former Venice Post Office, a red-tile-roofed 1939 Works Progress Administration building designed by Louis A. Simon[10] on Windward Circle, has been another fixture in Venice. The lobby features a mural painted by Modernist artist Edward Biberman in 1941 with the coastal community’s developer Abbot Kinney at its center[11], surrounded by beachgoers in old-fashioned bathing suits, men in overalls, a wooden roller coaster representing the Venice Pier and the oil derricks once ubiquitous in the area. .[12] In 2012, the post office was closed. Shortly after, movie producer Joel Silver unveiled plans for revamping the building as the new headquarters of his company Silver Pictures.[13]

Many of Venice’s houses have their principal entries from pedestrian-only streets and have house numbers on these footpaths. (Automobile access is by alleys in the rear.) However, like much of Los Angeles, Venice is also well known for traffic congestion. It lies 2 miles (3.2 km) away from the nearest freeway, and its unusually dense network of narrow streets was not planned for modern traffic. Mindful of the tourist nature of much of the district’s vehicle traffic, its residents have successfully fought numerous attempts to extend the Marina Freeway (SR 90) into southern Venice.

Venice Beach

Streetballers at the Venice Beach basketball courts.

Venice Beach includes a the beach, the promenade that runs parallel to the beach (“Ocean Front Walk” or just “the boardwalk“), Muscle Beach, the handball courts, the paddle tennis courts, Skate Dancing plaza, the numerous beach volleyball courts, the bike trail and the businesses on Ocean Front Walk. The basketball courts in Venice are renowned across the country for their high level of streetball; numerous NBA players developed their games or are recruited on these courts.[14]

King Solomon the Snake Charmer on the Venice Boardwalk.

Along the southern portion of the beach, at the end of Washington Boulevard, is the Venice Fishing Pier. A 1,310-foot (400 m) concrete structure, it first opened in 1964, was closed in 1983 due to El Niño storm damage, and re-opened in the mid-1990s. On December 21, 2005, the pier again suffered damage when waves from a large northern swell caused the part of the pier where the restrooms were located to fall into the ocean.

Waves at the Pier, December 21, 2005

The pier remained closed until May 25, 2006, when it was finally re-opened after an engineering study concluded the pier was structurally sound.

The Venice Breakwater is an acclaimed local surf spot in Venice. It is located north of the Venice Pier and Lifeguard Headquarters and south of the Santa Monica Pier. This spot is sheltered on the north by an artificial barrier, the breakwater, consisting of an extending sand bar, piping, and large rocks at its end.

Oakwood

The Oakwood portion of Venice, also known as Ghost Town and the “Oakwood Pentagon,” lies inland from the tourist areas and is one of the few historically African American areas in West Los Angeles; however, Latinos now constitute the overwhelming majority of the residents. During the age of restrictive covenants that enforced racial segregation, Oakwood was set aside as a settlement area for blacks, who came by the hundreds to Venice to work in the oil fields during the 1930s and 1940’s. After the construction of the San Diego Freeway, which passed through predominantly Mexican American and immigrant communities, those groups moved further west and into Oakwood where black residents were already established. Whites moved into Oakwood during the 1980’s and 1990’s and Latinos moved out.[15]

The Venice Shoreline Crips and the Latino Venice 13 gangs, which are under a shaky truce, continue to remain active in Venice. By 2002, numbers of gang members in Oakwood were reduced due to gentrification and increased police presence. According to a Los Angeles City Beat article, by 2003, many Los Angeles Westside gang members resettled in the city of Inglewood.[16]

By the end of the 20th century, gentrification had altered Oakwood. Although still a primarily Latino and African-American neighborhood, the neighborhood is in flux. According to Los Angeles City Beat,[17] “In Venice, the transformation is… obvious. Homes are fetching sometimes more than $1 million, and homies are being displaced every day.” In 2012, an article in the Los Angeles Times predicted that the wine shops, cafes, restaurants and other businesses opening on Rose Avenue — adjacent to Oakwood — would soon lead to the other streets of Venice being transformed into upmarket areas.[15] Author John Brodie challenges the idea of gentrification causing change and commented “… the gunplay of the Shoreline Crips and the V-13 is as much a part of life in Venice as pit bulls playing with blond Labs at the local dog park.”[18] Xinachtli, a Latino student group from Venice High School and subset of MEChA, refers to Oakwood as one of last beachside communities of color in California. Chicanos and Latinos of any race make up over 50% of Venice High School’s student body.[19]

East Venice

East Venice is a racially and ethnically mixed residential neighborhood of Venice that is separated from Oakwood and Milwood (the area south of Oakwood) by Lincoln Boulevard, extending east to the border with the Mar Vista neighborhood, near Venice High School. Aside from the commercial strip on Lincoln (including the Venice Boys and Girls Club and the Venice United Methodist Church), the area almost entirely consists of small homes and apartments as well as Penmar Park and (bordering Santa Monica) Penmar Golf Course. The existing population (primarily composed of Caucasians, Hispanics, and Asians, with small numbers of other groups) is being supplemented by new arrivals who have moved in with gentrification.

A housing project, Lincoln Place, built by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles is currently in the midst of an extensive legal battle between past and present tenants and the owner, AIMCO. The developer, which acquired the property in 2003, plans to demolish it and build a mixed-use condominium and retail structure on the site. As of 2010, the housing developer AIMCO has settled with tenants and agreed to reopen the project and return scores of evicted residents to their homes and add hundreds of below-market-rate units to the Venice area.[20]

Venice and art

Palm trees along the Venice Boardwalk

Venice has always been known as a hangout for the creative and the artistic. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Venice became a center for the Beat generation. There was an explosion of poetry and art. Major participants included Stuart Perkoff, John Thomas, Frank T. Rios, Tony Scibella, Lawrence Lipton, John Haag, Saul White, Robert Farrington, Philomene Long, and Tom Sewell.[3] In the 1970’s, prominent performance artist Chris Burden created some of his early, groundbreaking work in Venice, such as Trans-fixed.[21] Originally located at the Venice home of Pritzker Prize–winning architect and SCI-Arc founder Thom Mayne, the Architecture Gallery was in existence for just ten weeks in 1979 and featured new work by then-emerging architects Frank Gehry, Eric Owen Moss, and Morphosis.[22] In 1994, sculptor Robert Graham designed a fortress-like art studio and residence for himself and his wife, actress Anjelica Huston, on Windward Avenue.[23] Other notable artists who maintained studios in the area include Jean-Michel Basquiat[24], John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Dennis Hopper, and Ed Ruscha.[25] Designers Charles and Ray Eames had their offices on Abbot Kinney Boulevard from 1943 on, when it was still part of Washington Boulevard; Eames products were also manufactured there until the 1950s.[26] Organized by the Hammer Museum over the course of one weekend in 2012[27], the open-air Venice Beach Biennial (in reference to the Venice Biennale in Italy) brought together 87 artists, including site-specific projects by established artists like Evan Holloway, Barbara Kruger as well as boardwalk veteran Arthure Moore.[28]

The canals of Venice

Government and infrastructure

Local government

The Los Angeles Fire Department operates Station 63, which serves Venice with two engines, a truck, and an ALS rescue ambulance.

Los Angeles Police Department serves the area through the Pacific Community Police Station at 12312 Culver Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066, and a beach sub-station at 1530 W. Ocean Front Walk, Venice, CA 90921.[29]

Los Angeles County Lifeguards

Venice Beach is the headquarters of the Lifeguard Division of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. It is located at 2300 Ocean Front Walk. It is the nation’s largest ocean lifeguard organization with over 200 full-time and 700 part-time or seasonal lifeguards. The headquarter building used to be the City of Los Angeles Lifeguard Headquarters until Los Angeles City and Santa Monica Lifeguards were merged into the County in 1975. The department is commonly referred to by Angelenos as Baywatch Lifeguards.

The Los Angeles County Lifeguards safeguard 31 miles (50 km) of beach and 70 miles (110 km) of coastline, from San Pedro in the south, to Malibu in the north. Lifeguards also provide Paramedic and rescue boat services to Catalina Island, with operations out of Avalon and the Isthmus.

Lifeguard Division employs 120 full-time and 600 seasonal lifeguards, operating out of three sectional headquarters, Hermosa, Santa Monica, and Zuma beach. Each of these headquarters staffs a 24-hour EMT-D response unit and are part of the 911 system. In addition to providing for beach safety, Los Angeles County Lifeguards have specialized training for Baywatch rescue boat operations, underwater rescue and recovery, swiftwater rescue, cliff rescue, marine mammal rescue and marine firefighting.

County, state and federal representation

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services SPA 5 West Area Health Office serves Venice.[30]

The United States Postal Service operates the Venice Post Office at 1601 Main Street and the Venice Carrier Annex at 313 Grand Boulevard.[31][32]

Education and libraries

Public schools

Venice is served by many Los Angeles Unified School District schools. The area is within Board District 4.[33] As of 2009 Steve Zimmer represents the district.[34]

The neighborhood is served by Coeur d’Alene Avenue Elementary School, Westminster Avenue Elementary School, Short Avenue Elementary School, and Broadway Elementary. Students go on to Mark Twain Middle School. High school students attend Venice High School, which is actually in the adjacent neighborhood of Mar Vista.

Private school

Saint Mark Elementary School is a private school in the area, as is First Lutheran School of Venice.

Public libraries

The Los Angeles Public Library operates the Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch.[35]

Parks and recreation

Venice Beach Recreation Center

The Venice Beach Recreation Center comprises a number of facilities sprawling between Ocean Front Walk and the bike path, Horizon Ave to the north, and N.Venice Blvd to the south. The installation has basketball courts (unlighted/outdoor), several children play areas with a gymnastics apparatus, handball courts (unlighted), tennis courts (unlighted), and volleyball courts (unlighted). At the south end of the area is the famous muscle beach outdoor gymnasium. In March 2009, the city opened a sophisticated $2,000,000 skate park on the sand towards the north. While not technically part of the park the Graffiti Walls on the beach side of the bike path in the same vicinity.[36]

The Oakwood Recreation Center is located at 767 California Ave. The center, which also acts as a Los Angeles Police Department stop-in center, includes an auditorium, an unlighted baseball diamond, lighted indoor basketball courts, unlighted outdoor basketball courts, a children’s play area, a community room, a lighted American football field, an indoor gymnasium without weights, picnic tables, and an unlighted soccer field.[37]

The Westminster Off-Leash Dog Park is in Venice.[38]

Venice in film

Dozens of movies and hundreds of television shows have used locations in Venice, including its beach, its pleasure piers, the canals and colonnades, the boardwalk, the high school, even a particular hamburger stand.[39] While it is neither possible nor desirable to list every movie which features scenes shot in Venice, the following films show views of the neighborhood which are interesting in the context of its history and culture:

Mexican Quarter in Los Angeles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olvera_Street

Olvera Street is in the oldest part of Downtown Los Angeles, California, and is part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. Many Latinos refer to it as “La Placita Olvera.” Since 1911 it was described as Sonora Town.

Having started as a short lane, Wine Street, it was extended and renamed in honor of Agustín Olvera, a prominent local judge, in 1877. There are 27 historic buildings lining Olvera Street, including the Avila Adobe, the Pelanconi House and the Sepulveda House. In 1930, it was converted to a colorful Mexican marketplace. It is also the setting for Mexican-style music and dancing and holiday celebrations, such as Cinco de Mayo.

Contents

History

Early days

The “Old Plaza Church” facing the Plaza, 1869. The brick reservoir in the middle of the Plaza was the original terminus of the Zanja Madre

Los Angeles was founded in 1781 on a site southeast of Olvera Street near the Los Angeles River by a group of Spanish pobladores (settlers), consisting of 11 families — 44 men, women, and children, accompanied by a contingent of soldiers — who had set out from the nearby Mission San Gabriel Arcángel to establish a secular pueblo along the banks of the Porciúncula River at the Indian village of Yang-na.[1] The initial settlement was dubbed El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles. To provide for the religious needs of the settlers, priests from San Gabriel established an asistencia (a sub-mission), the Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia. As the town grew, it eventually built its own parish church, which is today known as the “Old Plaza Church.” Unpredictable flooding forced settlers to move the town to higher ground. The town, complete with a church and rectangular plaza surrounded by house lots and planting fields, was placed in its current location in the early 19th century. Spanish colonial rule lasted until 1820. This period saw the first streets and adobe buildings of the town constructed. The town came under the control of newly independent Mexico in 1821. During this time of Mexican rule, which lasted until 1848, the Plaza area was the heart of Mexican community life in Los Angeles and center of an economy based upon cattle ranching and agriculture.

Hard times

Men and women gather around the “Old Plaza Church” sometime between 1890 and 1900. Faint impressions of paintings on the exterior of the building are evident. Signs on nearby commercial buildings read: “Saloon and Restaurant, Home Brewery” and “F.W. Braun and Co., Druggist.”

For a time after the Mexican-American War and Gold Rush, the Plaza remained the center of a diverse town. The central street of the Plaza, Vine or Wine Street, was extended and had its name changed by City Council ordinance in 1877 to Olvera Street to honor Augustín Olvera, the first Superior Court Judge of Los Angeles County and long-time Olvera Street resident. In the 1880s, Los Angeles began quick expansion through a massive influx of Anglo and European settlers who arrived via the railroad. The old Plaza area became a forgotten remnant of the city’s roots, and the remaining adobe and brick buildings within the Plaza area fell into disrepair as the civic center of the city shifted to present-day Temple and Main Streets.

A good view of the street during this period is to be found in Charlie Chaplin‘s 1921 film The Kid, which featured a number of scenes in it, mostly on the west side a few doors north of the Pelanconi House. At the time of the film, years before its makeover by Christine Sterling, it was hardly considered to be a proper street, but rather just a dingy, dirty alley.

Its decline as the center of civic life led to its reclamation by diverse sectors of the city’s poor and disenfranchised. The Plaza served as a gateway for newly arrived immigrants, especially Mexicans and Italians. During the 1920s, the pace of Mexican immigration into the United States increased to about 500,000 per year. California became the prime destination for Mexican immigrants, with Los Angeles receiving the largest number of any city in the Southwest. As a result of this dramatic demographic increase, a resurgence of Mexican culture occurred in Los Angeles. It was within this social and political climate that Christine Sterling began her public campaign to “save” the old Francisco Avila Adobe from demolition and build up Olvera Street as a Disneyland-like center of Mexican romance and tourism.

Preservation and restoration

Sundial at Olvera Street

Sterling’s efforts to rescue the Plaza-Olvera area began in 1926, when she discovered the deteriorated conditions of the area, and in particular the Avila Adobe, the oldest existing home in the city. After raising the issue of the Avila Adobe with the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Sterling approached Harry Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times with a plan to restore the building and create a colorful Mexican marketplace and cultural center in the Plaza. Chandler was intrigued by Sterling’s idea for restoring the Plaza area as a mixture of romance and capitalism, and helped by providing extensive publicity and support for the development plan in The Times.

However, by 1928, due to a lack of financial support for implementing her ideas, the project appeared to be fading. In late November of that year, Sterling found a Los Angeles City Health Department Notice of Condemnation posted in front of the Avila Adobe. In response, Sterling posted her own hand-painted sign condemning the shortsightedness of city bureaucrats in failing to preserve an important historic site. Her action helped attract additional public interest in preserving the old adobe. In response to the increased show of publicity, the Los Angeles City Council reversed its original order of condemnation. Support for restoring the adobe rushed in from throughout the city. Building materials came from several local companies, including Blue Diamond Cement and the Simmons Brick Company, one of the largest employers of Mexicans in the Los Angeles area. Los Angeles Police Chief James Davis provided a crew of prison inmates to do hard labor on the project. Sterling oversaw the entire construction project, and an excerpt from her diary vividly captures her spirit and sense of desperation for financial support during the construction: One of the prisoners is a good carpenter, another an electrician. Each night I pray they will arrest a bricklayer and a plumber.

Entrance to Olvera Street (left), Los Angeles.

In spite of ample supplies and forced volunteers, the project lacked solid financial backing until Chandler came forward with capital for the project through funds collected at $1,000-a-plate luncheons with selected businessmen. Chandler established and headed the Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, a for-profit venture which became the financial basis for the restoration of Plaza-Olvera. The street was closed to traffic in 1929.

On Easter Sunday 1930, Sterling’s romantic revival came to pass with the opening of Paseo de Los Angeles (which later became popularly known by its official street name Olvera Street). Touted as A Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of Today, Olvera Street was an instant success as a tourist site. La Opinión, the leading Spanish language daily, perhaps reflecting the sentiments among many Mexicans in the city, praised the project as una calleja que recuerda al México viejo, which in English means, “A little street that recalls old Mexico.”

Present

The Plaza-Olvera Street site was designated as a California State Historic Landmark in 1953.

In the midst of Downtown industrialization, Olvera Street is a quaint, colorized, and non-confrontational environment. Olvera Street is successful in depicting the quaintness of Mexican culture. The Avila Adobe aside, however, the buildings on the street date from at least seventy years after the founding of the city in 1781, and have little if any authentic association with the city’s founding, or with its former status as a Spanish, then Mexican outpost. Olvera is really a named alley, unusual in Los Angeles, rather than a true street. This can be seen from the fact that most of the buildings originally had their main entrances and addresses on the adjacent and parallel Main and Los Angeles Streets. In addition, the frontages along Olvera Street are uneven, as is typical with alleys. Nevertheless, for virtually all of its history it has been named as a street, sometimes also being identified as Wine Street, in reference to a wine cellar once located there, as well as wineries that once stood nearby.

As a tourist attraction, Olvera Street is a living museum paying homage to a romantic vision of old Mexico. The exterior facades of the brick buildings enclosing Olvera Street and on the small vendor stands lining its center are colorful piñatas, hanging puppets in white peasant garb, Mexican pottery, serapes, mounted bull horns, oversized sombreros, and a life-size stuffed donkey. Olvera Street attracts almost two million visitors per year.

Blessing of the Animals

The Blessing of the Animals is a traditional event dating to 1930 that is held every Sabado de Gloria (Saturday before Easter). The event was originally held in conjunction with the Feast Day of Saint Anthony of the Desert, but it was changed to take advantage of better weather.

The original procession has grown into an all-day event with vendors, performers, and a procession where participants bring their animals to be blessed by religious authorities and others.

The event includes an animal parade and informal displays of their pets[2] and the historical event was covered in the book Blessing of the Animals: A Guide to Prayers & Ceremonies Celebrating Pets & Other Creatures[3]

See also

Hawaii: WWII Fortifications On O’ahu

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Mar/26/ln/ln02a.html

World War II fortifications still present on O’ahu

• Anatomy of Battery 405
• Fortifications on O’ahu

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Gary Weller, president of Iron Mountain Inc., shines a flashlight inside Battery 405, one of many World War II fortifications still present on O’ahu.

Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

O’ahu has so many hidden military bunkers that even its pineapple fields can’t be taken at face value.

The buildup began shortly after the turn of the century and continued through World War II, with Army engineers busily tunneling through volcanic rises, building underground command posts, and transforming oceanfront flats into fortified ramparts.

The island bristled with coastal batteries guarding against battleship attacks on Pearl and Honolulu harbors that never came. The biggest guns could fire 16-inch, 2,340-pound shells over the horizon.

Their legacy is now tons of leftover reinforced concrete and steel, some on public and military property, some on private property, the whereabouts of some still classified, and much of it too massive to be moved.

“I suspect that if you were to use the term ‘Gibraltar of the Pacific,’ you could get away with that without much argument,” historian William Gaines said. “At the end of World War II, O’ahu was probably the most heavily armored island in the world.”

Now better known for surf and sand, O’ahu’s hard edges aren’t too far below the surface.

The Kunia Regional Signals Intelligence Operations Center, with three floors, each the size of a football field, lies hidden beneath pineapple fields near Wheeler Army Airfield. Built after the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack for aircraft assembly and repair, it is now an intelligence receiving hub for the National Security Agency.

The old coastal defense batteries and fire control stations dotting island hilltops are easier to spot. Kama’aina have clambered in and around them for years. The Battery Randolph at Fort DeRussy, circa 1911, resolutely anchors one end of Waikiki while Diamond Head fortifications anchor the other. The U.S. Army Museum of Hawai’i occupies Randolph.

Before going bankrupt, a contractor in 1969 succeeded in demolishing the fort’s Battery Dudley, but got no further than the parapets at Randolph, with its 15-foot-thick seaside walls.

“Legend has it that the wrecking ball collapsed first. I wouldn’t be too surprised,” said Dorian Travers, of the Army Museum.

There are far more batteries and bunkers out there than meet the eye. Many who have had access to them discover inside them more than an echo and moldy interior.

“We’re surprised every day. We find more and more,” said John Bennett, a retired city prosecutor’s investigator and member of the Coast Defense Study Group.

The military controlled one-third of O’ahu during the war years, and one Army official said there are probably 300 tunnels.

Sandii Kamaunu, owner of Military HQ on Sand Island Access Road, several years ago bought up a Civil Defense field hospital stored and long forgotten since the early to mid-1950s in a World War II gun battery in Kailua. She was flabbergasted by what she found.

The cache included hundreds of sealed crates. There were 200 cots and 200 wool blankets, splints, blood transfusion kits, porcelain bed pans and urinals, and vials of dried-up potassium penicillin crystalline for shots that Kamaunu says were given with “horse needles that hurt like hell.” Some of the items bore 1940s dates.

All were like new, in the box, directions included.

Wayne Jones, the acting director of the O’ahu Civil Defense Agency, remembers inspecting the supplies.

“There was an old dentist’s chair up there if I remember correctly, an old operating table — all stainless steel — but of no use to us,” Jones said.

For decades, Ron Deisseroth and his mushroom business co-existed with the field hospital in twin 155-foot-deep bunkers, a spot that suited both. Sheltered beneath at least 200 feet of earth at the deepest point, Battery 405 — with kitchen, infirmary and bunks — originally supported two MK VI 8-inch Navy guns. Five similar batteries were built around the island. A facade meant to look like a two-story home — intended to throw off would-be invaders — once camouflaged the tunnel’s entrance.

Deisseroth, who grew mushrooms from 1950 to about 1992, remembers schoolchildren trooping up the hill for a disaster preparedness drill.

“I guess they wanted them to know where to go in case of an attack,” said the O’ahu man, who leased the property from Kane’ohe Ranch.

When Deisseroth lost his lease, he had to clear out the bunker. That meant everything — including the locked-up field hospital. He called the Army and O’ahu Civil Defense.

“I tried to contact everyone, and nobody had any claim on it,” he said. So he hired a locksmith to open the steel door and sold the contents to Military HQ for about $6,000.

Kamaunu has sold about 150 cots, and a couple of porcelain urinals on eBay she jokingly listed as MASH “beer steins.” General Electric offered her $300 for an operating lamp light bulb, she said. But the surplus store owner is really looking for a museum to buy it up in bulk.

“It’s like opening a time capsule,” she said. “It’s nice to be part of it.”

Gary Weller has plans to use Battery 405 for archival, digital and backup storage for his company, Iron Mountain Inc.

The field hospital was an unusual find, and most old unsecured bunkers were cleared out or rifled through years ago. Most guns, meanwhile, were cut up for scrap. But the bunkers remain full of historical value.

Not widely known is that both of the USS Arizona’s big stern turrets with triple 14-inch guns were salvaged. One was placed at Kahe Point and called Battery Arizona. The other went to Mokapu Point.

Gaines, a retired archivist and librarian professor at Parkland College in Champaign, Ill. and an expert on O’ahu coastal defenses, said vandals got into Battery Arizona in the late 1960s and started a fire in a power generating room, which also was used to store Civil Defense supplies. After that the bunker was abandoned.

The Hawai’i Army National Guard, which still uses part of old Fort Ruger at Diamond Head, estimates that publicly accessible portions represents just 25 percent of the battery and tunnel complexes there.

Construction on Fort Ruger began in 1906, with Battery Harlow completed in 1910. Its plotting room, not often seen by the public, has a pre-World War I mechanical data transmission system for mortars that were capable of lobbing 12-inch shells high over Diamond Head and out to sea.

The defense boom had its impetus prior to the turn of the century with countries like Germany, Russia, France and England eyeing Hawai’i, the Army museum’s Travers said.

Brig. Gen. Montgomery M. Macomb, commander of the Army’s District of Hawaii, said in 1911 that “O’ahu is to be encircled with a ring of steel.”

Fort Kamehameha, now part of Hickam Air Force Base, was part of that fortification. Fort Barrette, in Kapolei, followed in the 1930s. During World War II the military engaged in another big building wave, adding radar operations tunnels, ammo storage depots and underground command posts. The Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility, completed in 1943, includes enormous fuel tanks and seven miles of tunnels.

“These guys were absolutely sure the Japanese invasion fleet was coming over the horizon for months after Dec. 7 (1941),” Gaines said.

An old battery remains at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, but Gaines said guns were never installed “because the war moved so fast, and by 1944, there was not much chance of the Japanese fleet showing up on the coast of O’ahu.”

The twin tunnels, whose makai openings are obscured by vegetation, are used for storage.

One tunnel complex was put up for sale by the General Services Administration more than a decade ago, historians say. The bunker complex beneath Aliamanu crater, including 500- and 600-foot tunnels and at least 20 rooms, was used at the end of the war by the Hawaiian Sea Frontier command.

But the bunker never sold, and today the warren of rooms lie sealed and loaded with pesticide, another of O’ahu’s catacombs from a bygone era.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunia_Regional_SIGINT_Operations_Center

The Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center[1] (KRSOC, also pronounced “KR-Sock”), also known as the Kunia Tunnel[2] or the Regional Signals Intelligence Operations Center Kunia, is a United States National Security Agency facility.[3][4] It is a secured installation located on Kunia Road between Kunia Camp and Wheeler Army Airfield in central Oahu, Hawaii.

Contents

History

In response to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the installation was designed and built as a bomb-proof, underground open bay with a 250,000-square-foot (23,000 m2) floorspace to facilitate aircraft assembly in proximity to Wheeler Army Airfield. During the later part of World War II and in the decades that followed it was used primarily for cryptologic and intelligence activities.[5]

Operations

Military complements that currently occupy the structure include the U.S. Navy’s Naval Security Group Activity Hawaii (a combination of the former NSGA Kunia and NSGA Pearl Harbor) and the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps 500th Military Intelligence Brigade.[4]

Future

Once complete the National Security Agency Central Security Service’s Hawaii Regional Security Operations Center presently under construction will replace operations at Kunia Tunnel. The facility, located near Whitmore Village, Oahu, occupies the former site of the large, circular antenna at the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Pacific, or NCTAMS PAC. The construction contract awarded is worth $318 million.[1]

Hawai’i Voyaging Traditions No Mistake

The Hawaiian’s are great voyagers.  I learned more about them at the Rotary Peace Forum and the incredible bravery they show navigating the oceans.  To fall in love with the ocean is to fall in love with nature and this is the true nature of humanity.   This is a tribute to all sea faring indigenous people.  Incredibly brave.

http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/index/voices_of_voyaging.html

Celebrating over Three Decades of Voyaging, Since 1975

What Makes Hokule’a Special, Valuable and Unique?

Views from the Crew

(See Never Lost: Polynesian Navigation [a website by the Exploratorium in San Francisco], for video interviews with Hōkūle‘a crew members, including founders Ben Finney and Herb Kawainui Kāne; pwo navigators Chad Kālepa Baybayan, Milton “Shorty” Bertelmann, Bruce Blankenfeld, Chadd ‘Onohi Paishon, and Charles Nainoa Thompson; and president of the Friends of Hōkūle‘a and Hawai‘iloa Billy Richards.)

1974 Becoming a Crew Member of Hokule’a, Nainoa Thompson / Full Text

It was the first year I was paddling for the Hui Nalu Canoe Club, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Herb Kane was living across the canal from the club at Maunalua Bay. It was 1974, and Herb, Tommy Holmes, and Ben Finney were designing Hokule’a. The canoe hadn’t been built yet, but they had a smaller canoe then, and they’d ask us to paddle it out of the canal over the reef into the open ocean. That was great! I was at the club every day so I could take the canoe out. Then one day, Herb invited two of the paddling coaches and me over to his house. Herb’s house was filled with paintings and pictures of canoes, nautical charts, star charts, and books everywhere! Over dinner Herb told us how he, Ben and Tommy were going to build a canoe and sail it 2,500 miles without instruments-the old way. “We’re going to follow the stars, and the canoe is going to be named after that star,” Herb said, pointing to Hokule’a. This voyage would help to show that the Polynesians came here to Hawai’i by sailing and navigating their canoes-not just drifting by accident here on ocean currents or driven off course by storms. The voyage would demonstrate something very important for the Hawaiian people and for the rest of the world. In that moment, all the parts of my life that had seemed disconnected came together in me. I was 20 and looking for something challenging and meaningful to do with my life. I had a hard time finding that inside the four walls of a classroom. But now here it was-the history, the heritage, the charts, the stars, the ocean, and the dream … there was so much relevance in that dream. I wanted to follow Herb; I wanted to be a part of that dream.

1976 Landfall Tahiti, Nainoa Thompson (Nainoa was not a crew member on the first voyage to Tahiti; he was assigned to serve as a crew member on the voyage home. He flew to Pape’ete, Tahiti, to join the crew and was there to witness the exuberant welcome that Hokule’a received when she arrived.)

In 1976, Hokule’a sailed on its historic voyage to Tahiti. Kawika Kapahulehua skippered the canoe, and Mau Piailug was the navigator. Never before had Mau been on such a long journey, never before had he been south of the equator where he could not see the North Star, a key guide for his travels. Nevertheless, sensing his way over 2,500 miles, using clues from the ocean world and the heavens, clues often unnoticed to the untrained eye, he found, after 30 days of sailing, the island of Mataiva, an atoll in the Tuamotu island group. At the arrival into Pape’ete Harbor, over half the island was there, more than 17,000 people. The canoe came in and touched the beach. There was an immediate response of excitement by everybody, including the children. So many children got onto the canoe they sank the stern. We were politely trying to get them off the rigging and everywhere else, just for the safety of the canoe. None of us were prepared for that kind of cultural response–something very important was happening. These people have long traditions and genealogies of great navigators and canoes. What they didn’t have was a canoe. And when Hokule’a arrived at the beach, there was a spontaneous renewal, both an affirmation of our great heritage, and also a renewal of the spirit of who we are as a people today.

1980 Landfall Hawai’i, Nainoa Thompson / Full Text

I stand on the bow of Hokule’a watching the sun dropping toward that cloud bank and I question how much control, if any, I have in finding the land. This is the way things are supposed to be. Closer and closer it comes to the cloud, and I have a different, almost strange feeling. The sun is right in the compass direction of ‘Aina-land. It is pointing out the land. I walk to the bow of the canoe for I know the island is there. I don’t know how I know. Steve Somsen also knows. Not that he really knows, but he’s picked up on my knowing it’s there. Suddenly a particular cloud begins separating. It has the same quality as other clouds in terms of whiteness. But this one is not traveling. It’s stationary, and it opens up to reveal a long, gentle slope with a slight bump–a cinder cone on the side of Mauna Kea! The navigation at this moment seems to be out of my hands and beyond my control. I’m the one given the opportunity of feeling the emotion of the navigator not yet ready to have a complete understanding of what is happening. It is a moment of self-perspective, of one person in a vast ocean given an opportunity of looking through a window into my heritage. I hear the crew cheering as the edge of the sun begins disappearing behind Mauna Kea. I feel their happiness, but a silence in me sets in. Venus follows the sun and touches the mountain an hour later. It is now time to sleep, for there is nothing else to do. The sun has led us to the land. Ahead of us is our ku’ula, and I’m filled with a feeling of emptiness and gratitude. [I remember a story I was told one time (how accurate I do not know) of the people of ancient Polynesia. They had their family guardians, ku’ula, that gave them prosperity. They were symbolized as figures shaped of carved stone. Fishing families had their ku’ula that attracted fish and gave them protection. The navigator of old, as the story goes, was not like other men. He was separated from them-a man of the sea, not of the land. So his ku’ula was not bound to the land but was the land itself-the highest mountain, a mountain of power.]

1985 Greeting in Aotearoa, Nainoa Thompson / Full Text

After we landed, we were invited to a very special occasion at the marae at Waitangi. We were greeted in the traditional way. We learned that the marae houses wellness for the Maori people. We watched grandchildren and grandparents dance together and sing together. We understood that these marae housed not just people, but the genealogies by which they traced their ancestry back to the canoes that brought them to Aotearoa. I can see how connected the Maori are to their ancestry. And because they are connected to their past, I believe that it’s much easier for them to see the kind of future they want to voyage to. This was another part of our own work toward renewal. Sir James Henare, the most revered of the elders of Tai Tokerau, got up and said, “You’ve proven that it could be done. And you’ve also proven that our ancestors did it.” On this very special occasion, he laughed and he cried. I recognized from him that we already come from a powerful heritage and ancestry. The canoe, on its voyages, is just one instrument to connect to that. Sir James Henare also made an incredible statement: “… because the five tribes of Tai Tokerau trace their ancestry from the names of the canoes they arrived in, and because you people from Hawai’i came by canoe, therefore by our traditions, you must be the sixth tribe of Tai Tokerau.” We didn’t know what to make of such a powerful statement. In a few sentences, Sir James Henare had connected us to his people. And he said that all the descendants from those who sailed the canoe are family in Tai Tokerau.

1986 Landfall Tongatapu, Carlos Andrade / Full Text

Now, we strain to see in the little light left by stars that intermittently show themselves through the storm clouds. Orion died long hours ago in the west. The three stars in the handle of the Dipper stand vertically, beckoning like a bird’s wing above the northern horizon. The Southern Cross sinks into the south as we plunge through the predawn. Nainoa tells us to look for land. There! Sione, our Tongan crew member, sees what he says is land. Forty-five minutes later, the rest of us finally see something. A darker shadow solidifies on the horizon right where he has been pointing, as the sun climbs up the back of the easterly winds. Low, ringed by coral fingers that reach out miles into the surrounding ocean, Tongatapu, sacred Tonga, spouts white with blow holes carved into her flanks by the ceaseless pummeling of the sea. At first we mistake the fountains of white for whales, then we laugh with relief knowing that dry beds and hot meals await us when we land. The navigator can rest now. Like Maui with his mighty hook, he has fished the land from the sea. He has raised the island.

1992 Landfall Tahiti, Dennis Chun / Full Text

Standing at the steering paddle, I stare at the streaking reflection of the morning sun off the water. By keeping this line on specific points on the canoe, I am able to use the sun as a reference point without looking at it directly. We are expecting to sight land today and emotions are running high. Each of my crewmates anxiously stares at the horizon in hopes of being the first to sight the telltale shadow of land. Suddenly an excited yell awakens everyone on board. “There it is, over there! There’s the island!” cries Nainoa. We all clamber to the port side straining to catch a glimpse. In the shadowy distance, just off the port manu, a low, dark shadow resembling a pencil mark etched where the sea and sky meet stands Mataiva. Mataiva is actually an atoll, more commonly called a “low island.” Because there are no hills or mountains, the tallest visible objects are the tops of the coconut trees, which we see as we approach the island. Still six miles away, we catch a glimpse of a phenomena that I have previously only heard of. The greenish-blue color of the atoll’s lagoon is reflected off the underside of passing clouds. We know that Tahiti is a day’s sail almost due south of Mataiva; for most of us our journey is about to end. Suddenly the elation of making our landfall and the successful passage is replaced by a sense of loss. We have become close as a crew, as friends, and as family. Our experiences are a once in a lifetime event never to be duplicated. In the silent evening of the passage to Tahiti, we vow to carry on the traditions of the ancient Hawaiians and their long distance voyayes “for the children”- E OLA MAU KA HA HAWAI`I.

1992 Homecoming Hawai’i, Wallace Wong / Full Text

Dec. 06–It’s hard to imagine that I sailed all that way. It seems like yesterday that we left Tahiti and those storms and hot days that we endured is now just a memory. I enjoyed this experience on the ocean, sailing the Hokule’a with a sky filled with stars. I will never forget it and look forward to the next voyage. I am happy to be home and glad that the Hokule’a is safe and at home. I will miss those twelve courageous crew-members that I spent over a month with. From Rarotonga to Tahiti to Honaunau, Moloka’i and on to Kualoa, I got to know and respect each and everyone of them and I’ll never forget them. Since the beginning of Hokule’a in 1976 I’ve always wanted to be a part of it and I finally was able to experience the feeling of what our ancestors experienced. The adventure and agony of sailing as well as the happiness of sighting Hawai’i after such a long voyage from the South Pacific. The camaraderie of the crew, your friends; your family at sea; people you look to for strength and courage and help when in need.

1999 Moana Doi, Crewmember since 1990. Voyage from the Marquesas to Managareva 1999.

I’ve always loved the ocean. Ever since high school I paddled for Lanikai Canoe Club, and later for Kailua Canoe Club. In December of 1989, Paige Barber (my hula sister), invited me to the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s annual meeting. There I met Nainoa Thompson, and a few months later he called and asked if I would like to begin crew training. I had no prior experience as far as sailing, but was willing and ready to learn. Excited and eager, we began crew training for the 1992 voyage to Rarotonga, Cook Islands. Since my first experience on board Hokule’a, I have not been able to walk away. Hokule’a has taken me to places that I probably would only dream of going to. The places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the wonderful experiences, I will never forget. I am truly grateful and I feel it is such a privilege and an honor to be one of the few to sail on Hokule’a. To me, voyaging is not just about sailing, it’s about life and it’s a journey in which you look within yourself. Life is all about taking risks, enjoying , doing what makes you happy, and looking beyond the horizon! AITA PE’A PE’A!!

1999 Navigating in the Marquesas and to Mangareva, Catherine Fuller / Full Text

The most striking aspect of our trip through the [Marquesas] islands, besides the geography, was the aloha and the generosity of the people. We were fed like royalty at each stop; a combined effort of each village to feed 23 people. We ate crab, chicken, pork, beef, fish of all kinds, taro, ulu, fresh fruit and po’e. And of course, the ever present pamplemousse, or grapefruit. Without knowing us, these people opened their homes and their hearts. We’ve never eaten so well on a voyage before, It’s almost embarrassing to think of the comfort most of us are accustomed to at home, as compared to the simplicity we find here. … They have beautiful islands where they can be self-sustaining. They have fish, fresh water, pigs, chickens, ulu and taro, and no need for TV or radio. On the canoe, because space is so limited, simplicity is key. Personal gear is limited to (what will fit in) a 48-quart cooler….Trying to live a simpler life opens your mind; for me, I can allow myself to enjoy the voyage and to discover my own strengths and weaknesses. I see how much clutter I live with at home, the clutter of material possessions and mental distractions. Voyaging on Hokule’a is a privilege, and I am honored to be here. The simplicity of living on the canoe is a luxury that is priceless.

1999 Sailing to Rapanui, Chad Baybayan / Full Text

October 4: The night sky on the ocean can be mesmerizing. Stars cascade overhead showering the canoe and ocean below it with light from the heavens. The moon rises slowly out of the sea, making a trail of golden light beneath it. Wavelets lap against the hull of the canoe like little hands that reach up and touch Hokule’a, gently pushing us along the way. We move to a gentler and softer pace, influenced by the rhythm and pulse of the sky and sea that surrounds us. As the planet slowly turns and the sun begins to flood the morning sky with brilliant streaks of oranges and reds, another night has ended and another day begins, the cycle of this voyage once again renewing itself.

Hokule’a, now in the heart of the tradewind belt, pushes slowly eastward under the soft undersides of the fair weather cumulus clouds that float above us. The conversation of the day centers around how the many male members of this crew met their spouses. One crew member remembered starting a new job and walking into her office on the first day of work without knocking. She looked at him, shouting “Excuse me, were you raised in a barn? Don’t you knock before entering?” It was love at first sight. We married two years later.

The canoe is filled with this type of light humor, the mood matching the pleasant weather of the day. In the quiet breaks that fill my day, my mind drifts off, contemplating and remembering the many evolutions that both Hokule’a and I have experienced in the 24 years that we’ve shared. Time and the powerful experience of voyaging have bonded me in a strong set of beliefs that orient the internal compass that navigates my life. Twenty-four years ago the job that I do now was called navigating. Today, recognizing the broad roles that navigators must play and the leadership skills that they need to possess, we redefined the term navigation, calling it now the art of wayfinding. Wayfinding is more than guiding the canoe. It is about nurturing a crew of friends by building positive relationships on the deck of this canoe and among the communities we visit. It is also about continuing the tradition of honoring our ancestors, and the culture and heritage they represent. Lastly, it is about cherishing the spirit of the many friends and supporters that fill Hokule’a’s sails through their effort and work.

In 1995, when Bruce Blankenfeld and I sailed Hawai’iloa, the newest of the Hawaiian voyaging canoes, to Tahiti on her maiden voyage, we set a very simple goal for our crew. We would work to be better friends when we arrived than we began. As navigators and as a crew we would “raise” the islands we were seeking if we all did our jobs. But how we felt as a crew about the totality of the experience was as important a goal as making that landfall. On this voyage it is that very spirit that we embrace, one of caring, making new discoveries and building new and deeper friendships along the way. So our voyage continues at a much slower pace, but with that strong feeling very much intact.

1999 Landfall Rapanui, Three Navigators

Bruce Blankenfeld: A lot of things have happened on this voyage that gave me chicken skin. The port hull of the canoe is the wahine hull and the starboard hull is the Kane hull. The symbolism is that the male and the female forces give us life. The symbolism is that they also balance each other – they help each other survive in the ocean. The mana in this canoe comes from all the people in the past who have sailed aboard Hokule’a and cared for her. I think of the literally thousands of people who have come down and given to the canoe when she was in dry dock. I think of Bruno Schmidt in Mangareva who showed up with his truck every morning to take us wherever we needed to go. I think of the people in Tautira and Aotearoa and the Marquesas who did the same. The list is endless. All of this malama – this caring – adds to the mana of the canoe. It is intangible but it is alive and well. We can all feel it. I just want to acknowledge it. In this crew we have shown a nice respectful balance. We have shown that we all know how to work hard and how to treat each other well and that was one of the most memorable parts of the voyage for me. The work ethic among this crew was fabulous. There was not one negative word. This kind of caring for each other is part of the on-going rediscovery of what voyaging is all about.

Nainoa Thompson : The voyage is pau and this gives me almost an empty feeling. But everyone should be proud of this accomplishment. We have traveled to the last corner of the Polynesian triangle and that achievement is not just ours – it belongs to everyone who has donated a portion of the millions of man hours spent taking care of the canoe over the almost 25 years since her creation. We worked hard to prepare for this voyage but it was not just academic preparation and physical training that got us here. It was my plan to continue sailing southeast and tack back northeast at sunset – but the wind shifted northeast and if we tacked we would have been going back the way we had come. So instead I decided to follow the wind around and in the morning the island was off our port bow. The wind brought the canoe here. It’s about mana. Hokule’a has latent, quiet, sleeping mana when she is tied up at the pier in Honolulu. But when the canoe is sailed by people with deep values and serious intent the mana comes alive – she takes us to our destination. The mana is inside all of us. It’s tied to our ancestry and our heritage. Sometime, in the press of daily life, we neglect it. But when we come aboard this canoe and commit our spirits and souls and lives to a voyage like this one, I think we all feel it. I know I do. This is a very privileged moment for all of us – we have stepped inside that realization of mana on this voyage. When we go back to our special island home, we need to remember this moment. Mana comes from caring and commitment and values. We malama our canoe and she takes care of us. When we return to Hawaii we need to remember to malama our islands just as we do this canoe. We need to commit ourselves to the values that give life meaning. This canoe is so special – and our island home is also very special – if we learn to care for our land and our ocean they will also take care of us.

Chad Baybayan: What made this voyage so special for me was that I felt so comfortable because I knew I was among people who had earned their spot on the crew. You guys are my heroes because you all showed such a dedicated professionalism. I am proud to have sailed with you. Now we have another special journey ahead of us – to return the canoe home to our own special part of the Polynesian triangle and by doing that we honor not only our ancestors but all those people at home who have supported us at home.

1999 Life at Sea: Sailing To Tahiti from Rapanui, Kimo Lyman

Life at sea teaches one many values that can easily be a metaphor for life ashore. Caring for one’s resources, because that’s all you have got, respect for the environment and eachother, how to maintain and protect your “little island” are a few that come to mind. Hardship is offset with fellowship. Together we work to raise and lower the sail, steer and trim, clean and care for the canoe and in doing so we experience harmony and strive for balance. Simple things have great value, sunrises and sunsets, a delicious meal, a fresh breeze, shade in the midday, a rain squall rinse. Courtesy, respect, cooperation become second nature. Pleasantries are common and magnified, faults overlooked or gently corrected. Living in close quarters with a dozen other individuals can be either, (a) trying and difficult or (b) easy and enjoyable. Why choose (a)? Life at sea teaches aloha as a lifestyle. Our hope is to bring what we learn ashore.

Conversation is large aboard. We’ve got recollections of voyages past and expectations of voyaging’s future, wonderful history and geography lessons, astronomy discussions, environmental and world health, navigation technique, rightous gossip of antics ashore and personal “from home” stories, all liberally closed with huge helpings of laughter. And we’ve got an on board contest now starting it’s second week, guess Lopaka Bee’s middle name, one clue so far, it begins with the letter “M”. Still there’s plenty of quiet time to reflect on one’s direction in life or marvel at the wonders of nature.

I’ve been going to sea since I was sixteen when my brother got me a berth on a sailboat back to San Francisco. On every voyage I’ve learned something new and the lessons continue. This time one word stands out, support. Without the support and love of each of our family members back home, we couldn’t be here. I’d like to personally thank my wife for insisting I “go again” and my kids for putting up with my absence. And we, as a crew, thank all the people of Hawaii for their interest, love, and support as we sail our ambassador, Hokule’a, into the next century.

2007 Departing from Hawai‘i for Majuro and Satawal, on Maisu, Pomaikalani Bertelmann

The rays of the sun stretch over the cliffs of Manuka and lights up the pathway to Kahiki. Mother and child wait in patience for the exact moment to ‘oki from the last form of physical connection to the ‘aina. In the brilliance of purple, blue, pink and vibrant orange, the face of ka la is seen and it is time. The call comes from the mother, “ready to go?”, the response, “i’m right behind you”. In minutes, Hokule’a is underway, powered by the wind she takes her time moving forward, keeping a watchful eye on Maisu. In her movement there is confidence, in the pitch and roll she is graceful, she is an example of everything that Maisu will become. Kamahele is here to watch over them.

Blessed with love and support from famiy, friends and community, three crews will sail mile by mile to their destination. ‘Alaka’i stands by as a witness, in awe, to the beauty that has just unfolded before our eyes.

In her confidence Hokule’a leads the way, pitching and rolling in over the gentle swells – moving forward in a rythm in sync with the sea. You sense Maisu’s excitement as she familiarizes her “feet” to the wet of the deep blue. They are home, they are on their way…they are three vessels, this is one voyage, we are supporting and perpetuating the legacy of voyaging traditions and values, we are applying what we’ve been taught and we are learning what we don’t – As the days roll by we will learn, share, and record all that we have experienced.

The Journey Continues with planning for the World Wide Voyage ….

Related Readings: For portraits of crew members on the 2000 voyage home to Hawai‘is see Sam Low’s “Portraits of Voyagers, 2000”: Abraham “Snake” Ah Hee , Chad Baybayan, Tava Taupu, Pomaikalani Bertelmann,Shantell Ching, Joey Mallott, Kahualaulani Mick, Kau‘i Pelekane.

Hawaiian History

This is courtesy of wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hawaii

 

The human history of Hawaii includes phases of early Polynesian settlement, British arrival, unification, Euro-American and Asian immigrators, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, a brief period as the Republic of Hawaii, and admission to the United States as Hawaii Territory and then as the state of Hawaii.

Contents

Discovery and settlement

Main article: Ancient Hawaiʻi

The earliest settlements in the Hawaiian Islands were made by Polynesians who traveled to Hawaii using large double-hulled canoes. They brought with them pigs, dogs, chickens, taro, sweet potatoes, coconut, banana, and sugarcane.

There are several theories regarding migration to Hawaii. The “one-migration” theory suggests a single settlement. A variation on the one-migration theory instead suggests a single, continuous settlement period. A “multiple migration” theory suggests that there was a first settlement by a group called Menehune (settlers from the Marquesas Islands), and then a second settlement by the Tahitians.

On January 18, 1778 Captain James Cook and his crew, while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage between Alaska and Asia, were surprised to find the Hawaiian islands so far north in the Pacific.[1] He named them the “Sandwich Islands”, after the fourth Earl of Sandwich. After the discovery by Cook, other Europeans and Americans came to the Sandwich Islands.

Juan de Gaitán is said to have arrived in Hawaii in 1555.[citation needed] There are Spanish maps of the era in which islands are shown in Hawaii latitude, but 10° further east. The first sea chart that would prove this is dated 1551, signed by Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian and French cartographers, in which is shown an archipelago located at points close to the place Hawaii occupies on the globe.[citation needed]

Kingdom of Hawaii

 
Main article: Kingdom of Hawaii

Formation of the Hawaiian Kingdom

native Hawaiian in royal cloak

Kamehameha I unified the islands

The islands were united under a single ruler, Kamehameha I, for the first time in 1810 with the help of foreign weapons and advisors. The monarchy then adopted a flag similar to the one used today by the present flag of the State of Hawaii, with the Union Flag in the canton (top quarter next to the flagpole) and eight horizontal stripes (alternating white, red, blue, from the top), representing the eight major islands of Hawaii.

In May 1819, Prince Liholiho became King Kamehameha II. Under pressure from his co-regent and stepmother, Kaʻahumanu, he abolished the kapu system that had ruled life in the islands. He signaled this revolutionary change by sitting down to eat with Kaʻahumanu and other women of chiefly rank, an act forbidden under the old religious system—see ʻAi Noa. Kekuaokalani, a cousin who thought he was to share power with Liholiho, organized supporters of the kapu system, but his forces were defeated by Kaʻahumanu and Liholiho in December 1819 at the battle of Kuamoʻo.[2]

Imperial Russia

In 1815 the Russian empire affected the islands when Georg Anton Schäffer, agent of the Russian-American Company, came to retrieve goods seized by Kaumualiʻi, chief of Kauaʻi island. Kaumualiʻi signed a treaty making Tsar Alexander I protectorate over Kauaʻi. From 1817 to 1853 Fort Elizabeth, near the Waimea River, was one of three Russian forts on the island.

France

Main article: The French Incident

In the early kingdom, Protestant ministers convinced Hawaiian rulers to make Catholicism illegal, deport French priests, and imprison Native Hawaiian Catholic converts.

In 1839 Captain Laplace of the French frigate Artémise sailed to Hawaii. Under the threat of war, King Kamehameha III signed the Edict of Toleration on July 17, 1839 and paid $20,000 in compensation for the deportation of the priests and the incarceration and torture of converts, agreeing to Laplace’s demands. The kingdom proclaimed:

That the Catholic worship be declared free, throughout all the dominions subject to the king of the Sandwich Islands; the members of this religious faith shall enjoy in them the privileges granted to Protestants.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu returned and Kamehameha III donated land for them to build a church as reparation.

In August 1849, French admiral Louis Tromelin arrived in Honolulu Harbor with La Poursuivante and Gassendi. De Tromelin made ten demands to King Kamehameha III on August 22, mainly that full religious rights be given to Catholics, (the ban on Catholicism had been lifted, but Catholics still enjoyed only partial religious rights). On August 25 the demands had not been met. After a second warning was made to the civilians, French troops overwhelmed the skeleton force and captured Honolulu Fort, spiked the coastal guns and destroyed all other weapons they found (mainly muskets and ammunition). They raided government buildings and general property in Honolulu, causing $100,000 in damages. After the raids the invasion force withdrew to the fort. De Tromelin eventually recalled his men and left Hawaii on September 5.

Great Britain

Main article: Paulet Affair (1843)

On February 10, 1843, Lord George Paulet on the Royal Navy warship HMS Carysfort entered Honolulu Harbor and demanded that King Kamehameha III cede the Hawaiian Islands to the British Crown. Under the guns of the frigate, Kamehameha stepped down under protest.[3] Kamehameha III surrendered to Paulet on February 25, writing:

Where are you, chiefs, people, and commons from my ancestors, and people from foreign lands?’
Hear ye! I make known to you that I am in perplexity by reason of difficulties into which I have been brought without cause, therefore I have given away the life of our land. Hear ye! but my rule over you, my people, and your privileges will continue, for I have hope that the life of the land will be restored when my conduct is justified.
Done at Honolulu, Oahu, this 25th day of February, 1843.
Kamehameha III.
Kekauluohi.[4]

Gerrit P. Judd, a missionary who had become the Minister of Finance, secretly sent envoys to the United States, France and Britain, to protest Paulet’s actions.[5] The protest was forwarded to Rear Admiral Richard Darton Thomas, Paulet’s commanding officer, who arrived at Honolulu harbor on July 26, 1843 on HMS Dublin. Thomas repudiated Paulet’s actions, and on July 31, 1843, restored the Hawaiian government. In his restoration speech, Kamehameha declared that “Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono”, the motto of the future State of Hawaii translated as “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”

Honolulu Fort, 1853

Kamehameha family

Dynastic rule by the Kamehameha family ended in 1872 with the death of Kamehameha V. After the short reign of Lunalilo, the House of Kalākaua came to the throne. These transitions were by election of candidates of noble birth. Princess Ka’iulani tried very hard to prevent her country from becoming part of the United States.

United States

The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 between the Kingdom of Hawaii and the United States allowed for duty-free importation of Hawaiian sugar (from sugarcane) into the United States beginning in 1876. This promoted sugar plantation agriculture. In exchange, Hawai’i ceded Pearl Harbor, including Ford Island (in Hawaiian, Moku’ume’ume), together with its shore for four or five miles back, free of cost to the U.S.[6] The U. S. demanded this area based on an 1873 report commissioned by the U. S. Secretary of War. This treaty explicitly acknowledged Hawai’i as a sovereign nation.

Although the treaty also included duty-free importation of rice, which was by this time becoming a major crop in the abandoned taro patches in the wetter parts of the islands, it was the influx of immigrants from Asia (first Chinese, and later Japanese) needed to support the escalating sugar industry that provided the impetus for expansion of rice growing. High water requirements for growing sugarcane resulted in extensive water works projects on all of the major islands to divert streams from the wet windward slopes to the dry lowlands.

Hawaiian revolutions

Several rebellions and revolutions challenged the governments of the Kingdom and Republic of Hawaii during the late 19th century.

Rebellion of 1887

In 1887, a group of cabinet officials and advisors to King David Kalākaua and an armed militia forced the king to promulgate what is known as the Bayonet Constitution. The impetus given for the new constitution was the frustration of the Reform Party (also known as the Missionary Party) with growing debts, spending habits of the King, and general governance. It was specifically triggered by a failed attempt by Kalākaua to create a Polynesian Federation, and accusations of an opium bribery scandal.[note 1][8] The 1887 constitution stripped the monarchy of much of its authority, imposed significant income and property requirements for voting, and completely disenfranchised all Asians from voting.[7]:20 When Kalākaua died in 1891 during a visit to San Francisco, his sister Liliʻuokalani assumed the throne.

Queen Liliʻuokalani in her autobiography called her brother’s reign “a golden age materially for Hawaii”.[9]:233 Native Hawaiians felt the 1887 constitution was imposed by a minority of the foreign population because of the king’s refusal to renew the Reciprocity Treaty, which now included an amendment that would have allowed the US Navy to have a permanent naval base at Pearl Harbor in Oʻahu, and the king’s foreign policy. According to bills submitted by the King to the Hawaiian parliament, the King’s foreign policy included an alliance with Japan and supported other countries suffering from colonialism. Many Native Hawaiians opposed US military presence in their country.

Wilcox Rebellions

Main article: Wilcox rebellions

A plot by Princess Liliʻuokalani was exposed to overthrow King David Kalākaua in a military coup in 1888. In 1889, a rebellion of Native Hawaiians led by Colonel Robert Wilcox attempted to replace the unpopular Bayonet Constitution and stormed ʻIolani Palace. The rebellion was crushed.

Revolution of 1893

US Marines at the time of the overthrow, January 1893

According to Queen Liliʻuokalani, immediately upon ascending the throne, she received petitions from two-thirds of her subjects and the major Native Hawaiian political party in parliament, Hui Kalaiʻaina, asking her to proclaim a new constitution. Liliʻuokalani drafted a new constitution that would restore the monarchy’s authority and the suffrage requirements of the 1887 constitution.

In response to Liliʻuokalani’s suspected actions, a group of European and American residents formed a Committee of Safety on January 14, 1893. After a meeting of supporters, the Committee committed itself to removing the Queen and annexation to the United States.[10]

United States Government Minister John L. Stevens summoned a company of uniformed US Marines from the USS Boston and two companies of US sailors to land and take up positions at the US Legation, Consulate, and Arion Hall on the afternoon of January 16, 1893. The Committee of Safety had claimed an “imminent threat to American lives and property”.[note 2] The Provisional Government of Hawaii was established to manage the Hawaiian islands between the overthrow and expected annexation, supported by the Honolulu Rifles, a militia group which had defended the kingdom against the Wilcox rebellion in 1889. Under this pressure, Liliʻuokalani abdicated her throne. The Queen’s statement yielding authority, on January 17, 1893, also pleaded for justice:

I Liliʻuokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom.
That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government.
Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

An immediate investigation into the events of the overthrow commissioned by President Cleveland was conducted by former Congressman James Henderson Blount. The Blount Report was completed on July 17, 1893 and concluded that “United States diplomatic and military representatives had abused their authority and were responsible for the change in government.”[11]

Minister Stevens was recalled, and the military commander of forces in Hawaii was forced to resign his commission. President Cleveland stated “Substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair the monarchy.” Cleveland further stated in his 1893 State of the Union Address[12] and that, “Upon the facts developed it seemed to me the only honorable course for our Government to pursue was to undo the wrong that had been done by those representing us and to restore as far as practicable the status existing at the time of our forcible intervention.” Submitting the matter to Congress on December 18, 1893, after provisional President Sanford Dole refused to reinstate the Queen on Cleveland’s command, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under chairman John Morgan continued investigation into the matter.

On February 26, 1894, the Morgan Report was submitted, contradicting the Blount Report and finding Stevens and the US troops “not guilty” of any involvement in the overthrow. The report asserted that, “The complaint by Liliʻuokalani in the protest that she sent to the President of the United States and dated the 18th day of January, is not, in the opinion of the committee, well founded in fact or in justice.”[13] After submission of the Morgan Report, Cleveland ended any efforts to reinstate the monarchy, and conducted diplomatic relations with the Dole government. He rebuffed further entreaties from the Queen to intervene.

More rebellions

In 1893 the Leper War on Kauaʻi was suppressed by troops.

In an 1895 Counter-Revolution, a group led by Colonel Robert Nowlein, Minister Joseph Nawahi, members of the Royal Household Guards, and later Robert Wilcox, attempted to overthrow the Republic. The leaders including Liliʻuokalani were captured, convicted, and imprisoned.

Sanford B. Dole, left, led the Republic of Hawaii and was first governor of the Territory of Hawaii

Republic of Hawaii

Main article: Republic of Hawaii

After Benjamin Harrison failed to be reelected US president, Grover Cleveland became the new president, a friend of Liliʻuokalani and anti-expansionist. He delayed annexation and demanded restoration of the Queen. Fears grew of a US intervention to restore the kingdom. A Constitutional Convention began on May 30, 1894 and the Republic of Hawaii was declared on July 4, 1894, American Independence Day, under the presidency of Sanford Dole.

American territory

Main article: Territory of Hawaii

Annexation to the United States

Political cartoon of 1898

Unbalanced scales.svg
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In March 1897, William McKinley succeeded Grover Cleveland as president. He agreed to a treaty of annexation but it failed in the Senate because petitions from the islands indicated lack of popular support and would be in violation of international law. A joint resolution was written by Congressman Francis G. Newlands to annex Hawaii.

In 1897 the Empire of Japan sent warships to Hawaii to oppose annexation.[14]

McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution which annexed Hawaii, illegally in the opinion of annexation opponents, on July 7 1898 to become the Territory of Hawaii. On 22 February 1900 the Hawaiian Organic Act established a territorial government with Sanford Dole, the former President of the Republic of Hawaii, appointed governor by the US President. The territorial legislature convened for the first time on 20 February 1901. Some Hawaiian people formed the Hawaiian Independent Party, under the leadership of Robert Wilcox, the first congressional delegate from Hawaii.

Plantation era

Hawaii’s Big Five
C. Brewer & Co.
Theo H. Davies & Co.
Amfac
Castle & Cooke
Alexander & Baldwin

Sugar plantations in Hawaii expanded during the territory period. Some diversified to dominate related industries including transportation, banking and real estate. Economic and political power was concentrated in what were known as the “Big Five” corporations.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor was attacked on 7 December 1941 by the Empire of Japan, triggering the United States’ entry into World War II. Most Americans had never heard of Pearl Harbor, even though it had been used by the US Navy since the Spanish-American War. Hawaii was put under martial law until the end of the war.

Democratic Revolution of 1954

The Democratic Revolution of 1954 was a nonviolent revolution of industry-wide strikes, protests, and other civil disobedience. In the territorial elections of 1954 the reign of the Hawaii Republican Party in the legislature came to an abrupt end, as they were replaced by the Democratic Party of Hawaii. Democrats lobbied for statehood and gained the governorship for 40 years, from 1962 to 2002. The Revolution also unionized the labor force, hastening the decline of the plantations.

Statehood

All islands voted at least 93% in favor of statehood in 1959

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii Admission Act on March 18, 1959 which allowed for Hawaiian statehood. After a popular referendum in which over 93% voted in favor of statehood, it was admitted as the 50th state on August 21, 1959, with a population of about 423,620 (85%) Americans and foreigners and 76,620 (15%) Native Hawaiians.

Modern sovereignty movements

For many Native Hawaiians, the manner in which Hawaii became a US possession is a bitter part of its history. Hawaii Territory governors and judges were direct political appointees of the US president. Native Hawaiians created the Home Rule Party and are now using statehood as a path toward more self-government. After years of cultural and societal repression and along with other self-determination movements worldwide the 1960s is thought to have seen the rebirth of Hawaiian culture and identity in the Hawaiian Renaissance.

With the support of Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Congress passed a joint resolution called the “Apology Resolution” (US Public Law 103-150). It was signed by President Bill Clinton on November 23, 1993. This resolution apologized “to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893… and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.” The implications of this resolution have been extensively debated.[15][16]

Senator Akaka proposed what is called the Akaka Bill to extend federal recognition to those of Native Hawaiian ancestry as a sovereign group similar to Native American tribes.[17]

See also