Hanabusa proposes Pohakuloa expansion as practitioners sue over military abuse there

Together with Republican Congressman Randy Forbes, Hawaiʻi Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa has co-sponsored a bill called the Asia-Pacific Priority Act which, among other things, would upgrade the Pōhakuloa Training Area (PTA) on Hawaiʻi Island and designate it as the primary military training ground in the Pacific.

According to journalist Ian Lind, Democrats in Hawaiʻi have a long history of targeting defense spending in the state as a way to leverage fundraising and secure re-election, but no one was better at it (or had a longer at-bat) than Senator Daniel Inouye. Inouye was generally hailed as provider for the state in the mainstream media for regularly securing and drawing down large amounts of federal defense dollars.

Now, Hanabusa—who was passed over by Governor Neil Abercrombie to replace Inouye when he died in office in 2012—appears to be tacking her political ship along the same course as she gears up to challenge Brian Schatz, the man Abercrombie appointed instead, in the upcoming special election to finish Inouye’s term.

Hanabusa is not Inouye, however. The WWII veteran, who lost an arm rescuing fellow American soldiers, had a reputation that proved to be politically unassailable. In October of 1992, as Inouye was running for reelection to a sixth term, accusations that he pressured his hairdresser to have sex with him in 1975 did essentially nothing to slow down his political career. Hanabusa doesn’t have nearly the same level of political power (to be fair, no one does).

The fact that Inouye, on hid deathbed, sent a letter to Abercrombie asking him to pick her to succeed him, and the fact that Abercrombie ignored it to appoint his Lieutenant Governor instead, may have hurt her credibility and clout.

And speaking of patriarchal privilege, while Inouye benefitted from it—and in such dramatic fashion—Hanabusa, by default, is harmed by it.

The public is also increasingly aware of the harm caused by the military’s abuse of Hawaiʻi’s resources. Organizers within the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement have been lifting up the truth about the United States’ illegal occupation of Hawaiʻi. Public opinion about the military’s role in Hawaiʻi is simply not the same as it was in the early ’90s, or perhaps at any point since Dan Inouye returned from Europe a war hero.

And recent news regarding Pōhakuloa, specifically, has not exactly been positive. Just a few days after the Hanabusa-Forbes bill was announced, Waimea, Hawaiʻi residents Clarence Ku Ching and Mary Kahaulelio filed a lawsuit against the Hawaiʻi State Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) for failing to enforce clean-up provisions in the military’s lease for the 133,000 acre training ground in the middle of Hawaiʻi Island.

Ching (a cultural practitioner) and Kahaulelio (a Hawaiian Home Lands lessee) are represented by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation (NHLC) and claim that William Aila Jr. (DLNR director) and the department, as trustees, have duties to protect ceded lands from being harmed—duties they have failed in.

Pōhakuloa has been controlled by the U.S. military since 1964 when the State of Hawaiʻi agreed to lease three parcels of land there to the federal government for 65 years. The lease conditions, however, require that the Army “make every reasonable effort to . . . remove or deactivate all live or blank ammunition” and to “remove or bury all trash, garbage or other waste materials.”

In a press release from NHLC, Ching—who has cultural ties to the land—stated that “The state has taken no steps to investigate or monitor the Army’s compliance with the terms of the lease. But the state’s own records show that it knows that unexploded ordnance litters the landscape.”

Kahaulelio, who lives on Hawaiian Home land in Waimea, added, “The state has done nothing to make sure that the Army complies with the terms of the lease. It can’t just sit on its ʻōkole while trust lands are damaged. Like the king, chiefs, and konohiki before it, the state has a solemn duty to malama.”

According to the complaint, filed in circuit court Monday, while Aila is “aware that military training activities have caused great damage to public land, natural resources and cultural sites in Hawaiʻi,” his and the state’s continued inaction as trustees of the land at Pōhakuloa condone further destruction and damage.

Ching and Kahaulelio want the court to block the state from negotiating an extension of the lease with the Army, so long as the terms of the lease are being violated. The Pōhakuloa lease expires on August 16, 2029.

Hanabusa, meanwhile, has showered her Pacific military bulk-up bill with praise, while failing to address the long-standing environmental, cultural and political concerns that have been expressed by members of the public over the already-massive military training center.

After PTA was already built, an Environmental Impact Statement (which was, itself, only ordered because of another lawsuit) found that the area was home to endangered and threatened plant and animal species, as well as more than 300 culturally significant archaeological sites. The military’s own environmental assessment found that “no significant impact” would occur should the facility be built.

Hanabusa, who is from Waiʻanae and represented the area in the Hawaiʻi State Senate for a decade, might be counting on support from the Hawaiian community to carry her past the incumbent, Senator Schatz, in the upcoming election. But her pro-military legislative record may be taking her further away from an increasing number of Hawaiian voters who might otherwise support her.