Journeys in the American Pacific: A Travel Memoir

PREFACE

Ah, the Pacific Ocean! That vast expanse of blue water that occupies so much of the surface of our planet, speckled here and there by the emerald green spires of tropical islands, and the powder blue waters of calm lagoons encircled by white sand beaches. For centuries they have been everyone’s image of a paradise on Earth. As a boy growing up in Canada in the Sixties my imagination was captured by tales of those islands as I watched the television actor Gardner McKay pilot his schooner, the Tiki, through the South Seas on the syndicated television serial Adventures in Paradise. I devoured books on the South Seas and in doing so I sailed with Fletcher Christian and the Bounty mutineers in Nordoff and Hall’s Mutiny on the Bounty, a fictionalized account of Captain Bligh’s tyranny amidst a voyage to fabled Tahiti. Still later, I found myself on the shores of a Pacific idyll with Herman Melville in Typee, his novelistic recounting of his sojourn with the fierce warriors of the Typee Valley on Nuka Hiva, in the cannibalistic Marquesas Islands. James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific described how the great Pacific war of the twentieth century affected many of the oceanic islands, and altered the lives of the men and women who were there. In its sequel, Return to Paradise, he captured a snapshot of the final stages of colonialism in the Pacific. Michener’s great masterpiece, however, was Hawaii, his tale of the fabled island kingdom and its slow fall into the grasp of the United States, and the subsequent fate of the Hawaiian people. Those were the stories of kings and common folk, European and American adventurers, settlers from the Orient, and the beautiful South Seas women who came to love them. I could imagine myself walking along the shores of one of these paradisiacal islands in an idyllic escape as I pored over National Geographic Society maps of the Pacific Ocean, searching for many of the tiny islands described in the books that I had read.

Green isles and blue waters of the Pacific Ocean

As I came to adulthood the romanticism of the Pacific was pushed into the background by the more prosaic duties and obligations of modern life. But I never entirely lost the lure of the Pacific islands and when I was able to do so I chose to visit some of those islands, hoping that they might yet retain some of the authenticity portrayed in the South Seas literature that I read in my youth. What follows is an account of my personal journeys to some of those fabulous islands of the Pacific, rich in culture and history, and forever part of our imagination of paradise.

The islands that I visited in this travel memoir are linked by a common theme. They have all been profoundly affected in different ways by their relationship with the United States, which over the course of its long history has become the great hegemonic power in the North Pacific Ocean in which these islands are found. For some of these islands, their dance with the United States proved fatal, or nearly so, while for others long periods of beneficial neglect under the watchful eye of the United States have ensured the survival and continuity of much of their ancient cultures. Nevertheless, the title of the book is not a reflection on the present independence and sovereignty of any of the nations that I visited in Micronesia. When I visited Micronesia in 1989, Palau had not yet emerged from the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and while the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands had been granted independence by the United States it was not until 1990 that the United Nations formally recognized the termination of the trust in relation to those islands.

Across the Pacific, I have encountered people in Micronesian islands who live almost as their forefathers did a century or more ago, and people in Hawaii who live at the leading edges of twenty-first-century life. All of them remain linked by the Pacific Ocean, the great mother of their islands, peaceful, tempestuous, sometimes explosive, but always the ever-present great blue sea that gives life to their emerald islands (and sometimes takes it away). To the people of those islands whose lives have touched mine, ever so briefly, this account is respectfully dedicated.

PART I

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

The Hawaiian Islands are uniquely located on the surface of the Earth. As a landmass, the Hawaiian Islands are farther away from any other landmass on the planet. The Hawaiian Islands are also the longest archipelago in the world, stretching across more than 2400 kilometres of the North Pacific Ocean. Born of the fires of magma beneath the floor of the Pacific Ocean the current islands rose in succession through enormous volcanic eruptions that raised mountains high above the ocean. Subsequently, the islands raised by volcanic eruptions lost their volcanic engines through the continual movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates, and as those plates shifted the Hawaiian Islands north-westwards they slowly shrank, until they became mere atolls, or reefs, within the great South Seas. Today, the large inhabited islands lie at the southernmost end of the island chain while the north-western islands are now small uninhabited specks in the ocean, a remnant of the high islands that they once were.

Map of the Principal Islands of Hawaii (Wikimedia Commons, Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

The relative isolation of the Hawaiian archipelago also meant that it was among the last places in the world to receive the blessing, or curse, of human habitation. Archaeologists posit that Hawaii was initially settled by mariners from the Marquesas Islands far to the south, in what is now the territory of French Polynesia. Sometime between 300 and 400 ADadventurous mariners pointed their double-hulled ocean-going canoes north and set out on a perilous and monumental journey that took them to the Hawaiian archipelago where they first landed on the youngest, and largest, of the Hawaiian chain, what we call today Hawaii Island or, more colloquially, the Big Island. There the Marquesans established a vibrant Polynesian culture that subsequently spread to the other major islands of the Hawaiian chain in a migration that was refreshed by further waves of immigration from other southern Polynesian islands, principally Tahiti. In splendid isolation, the population of the islands grew until the population reached perhaps 680,000 people by the late 1770s.

Then, in 1778, an epochal event occurred that forever changed Hawaii. The British navigator and explorer Captain James Cook arrived with his vessels of exploration, HMS Resolution, and HMS Discovery, and thereafter Hawaii became known to the wider world. Although there is historical cartographic evidence that Spanish treasure galleons crossing the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Philippines, and laden with the silver treasure that was mined in the Andes

Mountains, discovered Hawaii first there is no substantial record of contact between the Spanish and the Hawaiians. Thus, it was the British, and more particularly Captain James Cook, who put Hawaii on the map of the world. Cook’s ships visited Hawaii, which he called the Sandwich Islands, three times but unfortunately, those visits began the process of the decimation of the Hawaiian people, and the consequent undermining of their culture through the introduction of a whole range of infectious bacteriological and viral diseases, principally respiratory and venereal diseases. On top of the introduction of diseases for which the population had no natural immunity, the population of the islands suffered a form of culture shock as the Hawaiians came face to face with a civilisation that was technologically far superior in comparison to the civilisation of Polynesia and one that had very different conceptions of morality and behaviour. In fact, it was a cultural misunderstanding about property rights over a boat that ultimately led to the death of Captain Cook on Hawaii Island. But the long-term damage to the Hawaiian nation from first contact with the west was much greater than the mere loss of a boat.

At the time of first contact between the British and the Hawaiians, a native man of unusual ability rose to the challenge of western contact by fundamentally altering the course of the Hawaiian Islands through military conquest and political organization. That man was Kamehameha, a towering figure in Hawaiian history both physically and historically. Seizing a destiny that had been foretold he conquered his native Hawaii Island and then obtained western weapons that allowed him to invade and militarily subjugate all of the Hawaiian Islands except for Kauai, and its small neighbour Niihau, both of which lay far to the north-west of Hawaii Island. In 1795, Kamehameha established a monarchical government over the islands that he controlled and the Kingdom of Hawaii came into existence. Kamehameha’s kingdom allowed the western political states of the era to treat the Hawaiian government as an organized polity. Fifteen years later, in 1810, King Kamehameha obtained the peaceful allegiance of the two northernmost inhabited islands of the chain, Kauai and Niihau, and a unified kingdom of all of the major Hawaiian Islands took on the form that it would retain until the end of the nineteenth century.

But the tide of westernization of the islands could not be withstood, although King Kamehameha I strove mightily to consolidate his kingdom and to integrate it into the wider world. Upon his death, however, his wives and son threw over the traditional Hawaiian cosmogony and religion of the islands and the coincidental arrival of a group of Calvinist missionaries from the United States thrust Hawaii down the path of Christianity and westernization. A long-term decline in the native population as a result of the introduction of successive waves of infectious diseases, for which the people had no natural resistance, a resulting loss of native fecundity, and the expanding tentacles of western commerce, all compromised the stability and independence of the Kingdom. In 1887, a revolt by western plantation owners and commercial investors considerably reduced the power of the Hawaiian monarch and spurred an American annexation movement among a group of Hawaiian-born and Hawaiian-naturalized citizens, who primarily traced their family histories back to the United States, and who considered themselves to be American. In 1893, the annexationists struck, taking advantage of an ill-advised attempt by the then-current monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, to restore some of the powers and prestige of the monarchy that had been taken away by the revolt in 1887.

Annexationist calls for support by the United States government brought US Navy sailors and marines into Honolulu, the capital city of Hawaii, at the behest of American diplomats to intimidate the weak monarchical government, which then fell almost immediately with only a single shot fired against local police by the annexationists. Fearful of their ability to hold possession of the country, however, the Hawaiian-American rebels called on the American government to support them directly and the American ambassador quickly established a temporary protectorate over the islands backed by the power of the United States Navy. A Provisional Government made up of the Caucasian settlers in the country was established under the American protectorate and following a petition to Washington an annexation treaty was quickly introduced into the US Congress.

The annexation treaty would have likely passed immediately but for the fact that the Republican Administration that favoured immediate annexation, and whose diplomatic and military representatives in Honolulu had aided the American-descended rebels in their revolt, had just been ousted in a federal election, and the US government was in the process of turning over to the Democratic Party. The incoming Democratic President, Grover Cleveland, spurned the annexation of such a far-off country and he believed that American officials had acted improperly towards a benign and friendly state. Cleveland terminated the American protectorate over the islands soon after taking office.

Politically, the Hawaiian Islands languished for some time afterwards, and although the white minority kept their political control they did not do so through democratic means. Rather, the new Republic of Hawaii they created was perhaps more similar to one of the colonialist and apartheid states established in the mid-twentieth century in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. But the world was becoming smaller owing to new forms of transportation, such as steamships, and it was well known that Hawaii was strategically located in the North Pacific. From Hawaii, much of the Pacific Ocean could be dominated by naval power. That fact became clear to policy-makers in the United States when the US once again found itself under a Republican Administration in the final years of the nineteenth century. The new Republican Administration of President William McKinley began preparing to establish an external US empire.

The United States embarked on a war of conquest against Spain and the US succeeded in taking possession of Spain’s colonies in the Caribbean Sea, as well as the Philippine Islands in the western Pacific. The acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands now became crucial to the expansion of American power in the Pacific but to avoid continuing domestic opposition to Hawaii’s annexation in the US Congress the McKinley Administration chose to forego a formal annexation treaty between sovereign states in favour of taking possession of Hawaii under a simple congressional resolution that accepted a transfer of sovereignty from the ruling white minority in the islands. That transfer took place despite the fact that thousands of indigenous Hawaiians signed petitions to the US Congress opposing a US annexation and the loss of their Hawaiian nationality. They were ignored.

As a result, the United States acquired the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. Hawaii became an American territory in 1900, and once American sovereignty was established the democratic rights of the native population in territorial matters were restored by the government in Washington. After a long period as an American external territory, punctuated by a Japanese aerial attack in World War II, Hawaii was admitted to the American union in 1959, as the only state that does not form part of the land mass of the North American continent. In the following half-century, the city of Honolulu was transformed from a picturesque South Seas seaport into a concrete metropolis, perhaps now more reminiscent of southern California than anything written into the romanticised South Seas literature. Hawaii today is a top tourist destination for people from North America and from East Asia. It is also the main US base for the projection of US military power throughout the Pacific Ocean.

2

OAHU - THE ISLAND OF HISTORY

In the autumn of 1987, when I found myself in San Francisco, California for a professional conference, I seized upon the proximity of San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands to plan a visit to those famous Pacific islands.

After a five-hour flight from San Francisco on one of Continental Airline’s DC-10 jumbo jets, I arrived in Hawaii as a malahini, a first-time tourist visitor to Hawaii. After breezing through the open-style Honolulu airport I found myself standing under swaying palms amidst a darkening sky. I collected my luggage and flagged a taxi to take me to Waikiki, the centre of Honolulu tourism, where I had reservations at the Hobron Hotel. The Hobron was not a luxury hotel on the oceanfront by any means but a rather nondescript skyscraper hotel erected on one of the interior streets of Waikiki not far from the Ali Wai Canal that marks the boundary of Waikiki. I took a very basic upper-floor room at the Hobron that gave me a small partial view of the Pacific Ocean (if I carefully looked for it) between two other hotels that were built much closer to the ocean. Although a high-rise hotel, the rooms at the Hobron did not come with a balcony and my room was rather small and basic. Still, the hotel did have a small outdoor swimming pool and an adequate commissary. Simple but sufficient, and the price was reasonable, especially since October was a shoulder season in the Hawaiian tourist trade, and all of the hotels offered somewhat lower prices at that time of the year. Despite the simplicity of my hotel accommodations they were comfortable enough. Before departing Canada, Carol, my travel agent back in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, had told me; You won’t be spending much time in your hotel room anyway, so you don’t need to spend on a lavish room. And, as it turned out, she was quite right about that.[1]

Honolulu’s Hobron Hotel in 1987

After settling in at the hotel off I went to explore Waikiki and Honolulu. Waikiki was, and is, the centre of Honolulu’s attractions. Once a retreat for Hawaiian royalty it became an urban concrete jungle in the latter part of the twentieth century but it hosts one of the most well-known beaches in the world. The beach at Waikiki is a long thin strip extending more than three kilometres along the oceanfront. I generally frequented the beach near Fort DeRussey because of its proximity to the Hobron. Fort DeRussey is a military reservation at Waikiki that once harboured a coastal artillery battery. However, the guns of the battery at Fort DeRussey were only fired once because the sound of the artillery blew out the windows of the nearby hotels! The coastal battery was long gone when I visited but the site was still maintained as a rest and recreation destination for US military personnel. However, the beach at Fort DeRussey was open to the public, as are all beaches in the Hawaiian islands, thanks to legislation passed in the days of the monarchy, and the Fort DeRussey beach was much broader than most of the beaches at Waikiki. Its soft white sands were very inviting. Out in Waikiki Bay at that time there were three anchored floating pads that were within swimming distance of the beach. One of the floating pads was used by a parasailing company, Aloha Parasail, and I used their service to go parasailing high above the waters of Honolulu, held aloft by a large red, white, and blue parasail that stretched out behind me while I was being pulled by a long tether attached to a motorboat. Strapped into my parasail by a secure harness I went up higher than 250 metres in the air for an exhilarating look at Waikiki and Honolulu harbour. Ships below me looked like bathtub toys, and the people swimming in the water were tiny specks while above me was the blue sky. It felt like, and in fact it was, a form of flying without wings.

The beaches at Waikiki looking past Fort DeRussey Beach towards the iconic Diamond Head in 1987

Parasailing and swimming were not the only water-sport attractions at Waikiki. Obviously, Hawaii is most famous for surfing but the wave action in October was quite gentle and I skipped trying my luck at surfing. I did try water-skiing but I have to admit that I was an abject failure