Photographs now on view in Honolulu capture the revolutionary spirit of the battle over Kahoʻolawe in the 1970s. In this report, HPR looks back on the era and the David versus Goliath battle waged over the island.
Dr. Emmett Aluli is a primary care physician and executive director of Molokaʻi General Hospital. He was one of the Kahoʻolawe Nine — protestors who landed on the island the Navy was using for target practice.
"This was really the first time that people had stood up against the U.S. military," Aluli said.
Aluli and ethnic studies professor Dr. Davianna McGregor are members of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, or PKO, a group formed to stop the military's bombing of Kahoʻolawe.
"Around December 1975, I got a call from Charles Maxwell who was at the time the head of ALOHA Organization, Aboriginal Lands of Hawaiian Ancestry," McGregor said.
McGregor says Maxwell and others were inspired by recognition given to Native Americans at Wounded Knee, and to Native Alaskans. The ALOHA organization sponsored a bill to recognize Native Hawaiian rights and seek reparations.
"It was getting nowhere in Congress, so I remember Charlie saying, we're going to occupy some federal land to really draw national attention to the condition of Native Hawaiians," McGregor told Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
McGregor cites high rates of poverty, poor health and incarceration among Native Hawaiians as indicators that something had to be done. Instructions went out to supporters to gather the night of Jan. 3, 1976, at Waikapu on Maui, and be ready to head to Kahoʻolawe the following morning.
"They were coming from every island, Big Island, Lanaʻi, Molokaʻi, mostly the Maui fishermen ready to occupy the island," Aluli said.
"But someone leaked it, made a press statement, so that morning, the Coast Guard showed up," McGregor recalled.
Under threat of having their fishing boats confiscated, about 100 people and 50 vessels gathered in the water began to disperse. Aluli says finally one boat, carrying nine people, made it to Kahoʻolawe. Eventually, only Walter Ritte and Emmett Aluli stayed for two days, surveying the island.
"What Walter and I saw was the devastation of an island, of the land, of the ocean. All the bays were all muddy, like bloody, muddy. You couldn't see any clean water around the island," Aluli said.
Aluli says bomb craters and unexploded ordnance were everywhere, and a population of some 40,000 goats kept any vegetation from growing.
"And so that just started the movement, 'Hey we gotta stop the bombing.' The motive, the reason was something that George Helm picked up in his research. We were there for Aloha ʻAina. Aloha ʻAina was the reason for the ending of the bombing," Aluli said.
Aloha ʻAina, love for the land, also recalls Hawaiian sovereignty movements of the 1800s. After a series of occupations on the island, court actions, and legislation, bombing on Kahoʻolawe was halted in 1990. The federal government allotted $400 million for ordnance removal and clean-up.
In 2003, the Navy transferred Kahoʻolawe to the state of Hawaiʻi. A year later, the Navy ended its ordnance clearance efforts with about 25% of the island still uncleared. Stewardship of the island continues under the PKO.
Kahoʻolawe's story is brought to life in "I Ola Kanaloa! I Ola Kākou: Photographs of Kahoʻolawe, 1976–1987." Photographer Franco Salmoiraghi shows intimate portraits of Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana's early occupations, in a fundraiser for the PKO.
Images on view at Arts and Letters Nuʻuanu through March 6.
