Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation

The documentary "Act of War" tells the story of how the United States pretty much took over the monarchy of Hawaii. The film begins by showing a local hawaiian woman standing in front of a crowd of hundreds of hawaiians yelling, "We are not American! We will die as Hawaiians! We will never be American!" I always knew that the islands of Hawaii were stolen from the locals, but I didn't know the full history until I saw this documentary.

In 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S. Boston came to Honolulu looking for support of a treasonous coup d'etat against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani. Former U.S. President Grover Cleveland described these events as "an act of war." Queen Lili'uokalani ended up yielding her throne to what she called, "the superior force of the United States of America" in order to avoid bloodshed in her land. She trusted that the United States would eventually right the wrong they had done to her and the Hawaiian people, but obviously that never happened.

Throughout the few years I've been here in Hawaii, I've had a couple times where this subject has come up and conversation while talking to some of my local friends. It's funny because some of the people I've talked to will say that what happened to Hawaii was a good thing because now Hawaii is a developed state and because of all the tourism, it creates more jobs for the locals. Other locals have a different opinion though, they hate the fact that Hawaii has become a number one tourist destination, and how a lot of the forests have been torn down and replaced by skyscrapers and hotels.

An interesting fact about Waikiki in particular is that before it became one of the most famous beaches in the world, it was a marsh. That's right, for people who don't know, the town of Waikiki was marsh and wetlands that often flooded, so Waikiki beach isn't really even a real beach. Authorities have to keep replacing the sand every couple weeks to keep a beach for the tourists, and they actually end up taking the sand from the North Shore of Oahu. I think a lot of Hawaiians are angry that Waikiki is really this man-made tourist destination that replaced the true agriculture of the island.