Fifty years ago, Walter Ritte was one of nine Native Hawaiians to make it to the shores of Kahoʻolawe. The U.S. military had used the island for bombing practice for decades, and the group was determined to stop it.
“We got to Kahoʻolawe. Helicopters came to threaten all of the boats,” he recalled. “The boats decided to turn around and go back to Maui. I was totally seasick. I said, ‘I have to get off this boat.’ So a bunch of reporters came in on a boat, and I said, ‘Hey, can we catch ride to Kahoʻolawe?’”
On Jan. 4, 1976, nine of them jumped aboard the boat; along with Ritte, they were Noa Emmett Aluli, George Helm, Kimo Aluli, Gail Kawaipuna Prejean, Ellen Miles, Ian Lind, Steve Morse and Karla Villalba.
“Right as soon as I got past my seasickness, I saw historic sites,” Ritte told HPR. “I saw circles, white paint circles around the historic sites. And obviously, in my mind, these were targets, and they were blowing up our historic sites. And as a Hawaiian, a young Hawaiian, I wanted to know about my history. So for me, they were destroying my ability as a Hawaiian to learn about who I am. So that was the first anger that came inside of me.”
They stayed on the island for three days.
“As we went into the helicopter, I was melancholy and hungry and tired and everything,” he said of their departure. “I was staring at this rock, and the helicopter went up into the air, and I was glued to this one rock, and the rock turned into the whole island, and then I had this funny feeling starting in my toes, was tingling my toes, and came up and took over my body, and I heard in my brain that ‘I am going to die.’ And the thing just kept playing over and over, ‘I am going to die.’ And I kind of lost it.”
He knew it was a message from Kahoʻolawe.
“All I knew was we're going to have to stop that bombing,” Ritte told HPR. “And that was the beginning of the change in my whole life.”
Two weeks later, his wife, Loretta, along with his sister Scarlett, joined them on the island.
“When Walter came back from being on Kahoʻolawe, there was a change in him,” Loretta Ritte recalled. “And I think when the opportunity came to go, I wanted to go to experience and see what he was feeling.”
She describes how she felt when they arrived on shore.
“It was almost evening time, and there was such a peace. I could feel the welcoming of the island towards us, and she guided us in the night with the moon all the way to the top of her puʻu.”
“I understood why he came home feeling the way he did, and just committed to this little island that was calling out for help,” she continued.
The group repeatedly got arrested, until Walter Ritte said they were sent to a high-security facility, where they educated themselves about federal and environmental law.
When they got out, they occupied the island for 35 days.
“There was no fear at all when we went to the island,” he said. “There's bombs everywhere. But it was common sense to how to survive on that place. You don't just walk all over the place. You know, it's like if there's a goat trail, you stay on the goat trail. You don't walk all over. If the goats didn't get blown up, then you're not going to get blown up,” he chuckled.
Only once did he feel afraid.
“There's one time when they started bombing us, where we got really scared because the ground was shaking and we dove into a lava crack to make sure that we wouldn't die over there,” Ritte said.
Their efforts and the awareness they raised were instrumental in halting the bombing of Kahoʻolawe in 1990. Four years later, the island was returned to the State of Hawaiʻi, and restoration efforts are ongoing.
There were huge sacrifices along the way — most notably Molokaʻi’s George Helm and Kimo Mitchell of Maui were lost at sea while supporting the island’s occupation. Their deaths deeply affected the Hawaiʻi community, and Ritte said they vowed to push forward to honor them and “not waste [their] efforts.”
Grassroots on Molokaʻi
Before joining the mission on Kahoʻolawe, Ritte said he “got into a lot of political trouble” as a hunter on Molokaʻi, following the deer that “don’t know how to read the ‘no trespassing’ signs.”
“We didn't know anything about our rights as Hawaiians,” Ritte said of his early 30s. “We didn't even know Hawaiian history.”
He led early protests for land access on Molokaʻi, saying at the time, “Hawaiians didn't do those kinds of things, so we went against the grain.”
The actions of the Kahoʻolawe Nine went on to help spark the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, and the Hawaiian Renaissance during which hula, Hawaiian language and other cultural practices were revived, along with education on Hawaiian history. It also ignited the formation of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, whose efforts continue today.
Last weekend, Ritte helped organize a commemoration event on Oʻahu to mark the occasion but also look to the future.
“At this point 50 years later, the military now wants to continue all of their land leases in Hawaiʻi, and it's becoming a big issue. So we decided, ‘OK, let's go celebrate Kahoʻolawe, but let's also talk about the issues in the Hawaiian community.’”
Looking back, Ritte sees their efforts five decades ago as a success.
“Yeah, we defeated the United States of America military with aloha, and that's what our kūpuna kept telling us. There is no more powerful weapon than aloha.”
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