Women activists visit Hawaiʻi Island, draw connections between militarized Pacific places
Pōhakuloa, like other important places across the Asia-Pacific region, is home to a military base with live fire training.
Eight activists from the International Women’s Network Against Militarism (IWNAM) and its Oʻahu-based Hawaiʻi chapter, Women’s Voices Women Speak (WVWS) visited Hawaiʻi Island from February 16–18 to protest the ongoing use of Hawaiian land for live-fire military training at Pōhakuloa Training Area (PTA). The trip convened activists working to protect Pōhakuloa and resist militarization and military development in Hawaiʻi, the Mariana Islands, Okinawa, Puerto Rico, South Korea and other locations throughout the Pacific.
“I occupied Kahoʻolawe in 1977 to stop the bombing of our precious ʻāina,” said WVWS member and longtime demilitarization activist Terri Kekoʻolani. “It’s 2018, and yet to this day the military bombs and conducts live fire training in our homeland, Big Island, at Pōhakuloa.”
PTA is located on Hawaiian Kingdom government and crown lands—known as “ceded lands”—that encompass 133,000 acres—an area more than four times larger than Kahoʻolawe. These lands are considered sacred due to their location between the sacred mountains Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Hualālai. The area also features cultural and archaeological sites, including burial sites, and is home to endangered species.
Kekoʻolani had asked PTA officials for permission to enter the base to perform ceremony as a Native Hawaiian and was denied. Without permission to enter, the group held signs and expressed their sadness and disapproval outside the gate in protest of the United States military’s ongoing use of the sacred land for military training.
The visiting group included Chamoru activist and educator Kisha Borja-Quichocho-Calvo, a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM). Borja-Quichocho-Calvo spoke to Hawaiʻi Island activists about the impending plans for the hyper-militarization of the Mariana Islands (including Guåhan, Luta, Saʻipan, Tiniʻan, Noʻos [Farallon de Medinilla], and Pågan). These plans include:
Development of the Mariana Islands Range Complex (MIRC) and the Mariana Islands Training and Testing (MITT);
The relocation of approximately 5,000 U.S. Marines and their dependents to Guåhan; and
The creation of a live-firing range complex in the northern part of Guåhan, which will devastate the flora, fauna and cultural sites in Litekyan, a sacred village for Chamorus.
Another visiting group member was Rebekah Garrison, a graduate student at the University of Southern California who shared information about Vieques, a 10-mile long island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. Like Kahoʻolawe, the U.S. military and its allies used Vieques as a bombing range beginning in the 1940s. And, just like Kahoʻolawe, the bombing continued until non-violent protest succeeded in ousting the military in 2003.
In 1941, the U.S. military began forcibly removing all Viequenese living on the east and west ends of the island, prohibiting them from returning to their ancestral lands. Today, the population on Vieques suffers from a cancer rate that is 26.9 percent higher than on Puerto Rico. The high cancer rate is believed to be caused by the heavy metal contamination that island residents were exposed to, and continue to be exposed to, from unexploded ordnance burns.
The Vieques demilitarization movement has not ended, it has simply shifted its commitments, resources and discourse. Viequenese and their settler allies continue to push for proper cleanup of the island and the establishment of cancer treatment facilities.
“We are making connections across oceans by visiting with each other and listening and learning about how militarization is hurting native people and their land and ecosystems all over the world,” said Kelsey Amos, also a graduate student at UHM. “In Hawaiʻi we had a missile scare that maybe shocked people into noticing how Hawaiʻi is part of this global network of places that the U.S. uses to support its wars. That makes us a target.”
During their trip, the IWNAM activists met with Kū Ching and Maxine Kahaulelio, two plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit in 2014 against the Hawaiʻi State Department of Land and Natural Resources, challenging it to follow its constitutional mandate to care for the land by regulating the U.S. Army’s use of Pōhakuloa. To date, the judge has not given a ruling on the case.
In 2007, the Army admitted that depleted uranium (DU) weapons had been used at PTA in the 1960s. Following this admission, in 2013, the National Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted the Army an after-the-fact license to use DU at two locations in Hawaiʻi: PTA and Schofield Barracks.
IWNAM activists met with Ruth Aloua and Jim Albertini, two of four 2017 petitioners who challenged the NRC on their approval of Army monitoring plans for DU spotting rounds at PTA and argued for a stop to live-fire training because of the dangers of DU oxide inhalation. The IWNAM group also joined Albertini at his weekly peace vigil outside the downtown Hilo post office, something he has been doing for 17 years straight.
“The military will tell you they care for the environment and the cultural sites in Pōhakuloa, but this is all greenwashing,” said Dr. Kim Compoc, a lecturer in the English department at UHM. “As long as Pōhakuloa remains under U.S. military occupation, they will do whatever they want if it serves the U.S. military interests. They will conduct live-fire training in this sacred place and perpetuate more war and misery the world over. It’s a disgrace and it needs to end.”
IWNAM members also learned about local peace-building efforts, including:
Organic farming and aquaculture at Malu ʻĀina Center for Non-violent Education and Action;
Community education, led by the Hawaiʻi Academy of Arts and Sciences (HAAS) charter school students, on the connections between Kahoʻolawe and Pōhakuloa; and
International and intergenerational friendships that continue to sustain the work and spirits of peace activists today.
A report back event about the trip to Hawaiʻi Island will be held on Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 6 p.m. at 2426 Oʻahu Avenue. The debriefing is open to the public.
The trip to Hawaiʻi Island follows the 9th International IWNAM meeting in Naha, Okinawa last June, which the WVWS delegation attended as well. While at the conference, WVWS members reported on the status of militarized sites in Hawaiʻi such as PTA, and learned about Okinawa’s long struggle against U.S. military occupation and its attendant impacts, including sexual violence against women, environmental destruction, and economic dependence.
Activists from Korea, Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Guåhan, the U.S. and Puerto Rico also reported about the human and environmental costs of U.S. militarism in those places.
WVWS is a multiethnic collective of women in Hawaiʻi that addresses local and international issues relating to demilitarization, peace and non-violence. The group works to foster women’s political leadership, to educate the public on the gendered and environmental harms of militarization, and to uplift examples of alternatives to military dependence. WVWS advocates for a framework of “genuine security”—safe land, water, food, shelter, healthcare and education for local communities—and works to resist nationalist frameworks of security that depend on war and occupation.
