As the RIMPAC 2026 war games formally kicked off, a coalition of demonstrators and activists gathered to protest the international maritime warfare exercises.
Ann Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and former U.S. State Department official, and she joined the demonstration as part of the group Veterans for Peace.
Wright first gained notoriety when she publicly resigned from her position in the State Department to protest the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Now, she’s been visiting different sites of war and conflict across the globe to build international networks of peace activism.
Wright spoke with HPR to share her commitment to peace and how she's helping the anti-war effort back home in Hawaiʻi.
Interview Highlights
On RIMPAC’s connection to global conflict
ANN WRIGHT: When you think of the number of issues that are going on in the world that are really dealing with death and destruction. And certainly the Russians and the Ukrainians dealing with death and destruction for both of those countries and the citizens of those countries. You look in the parts of Africa and Sudan where the violence there has, and they call that a genocide also, of over 2 million people that have had to move in various parts of Sudan and the starvation that's going on there. And then, of course, the continued Israeli attacks on Gaza, the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, the destruction of southern Lebanon. So these are all very important issues that kind of come together in a way here in the largest naval exercise in the world, the RIMPAC.
On military pollution
WRIGHT: We want all of these webinars that we have and all of the protests that we have out at Pearl Harbor to raise the awareness of our own community here in Hawaiʻi and throughout the Hawaiian Islands. RIMPAC is not just here on Oʻahu. There will be land forces that will be going over to Pōhakuloa on the Big Island. There will be work that will be being done on Kauaʻi at the missile defense range. …
There will be land exercises that will be going on at Bellows Beach, and of course we want everybody to think about all of the turtles that use Bellows Beach as a nesting area. … The Waiʻanae coast of Oʻahu has a huge number of aircraft that come through there, so there will be a lot of noise pollution. … There will be pollution in our waters because of these big Navy ships that, even though they say we try not to pollute, they do pollute. … This idea that this is a pollution-free military war maneuver is just not true at all.
On the impact of large scale war games on Hawaiʻi’s land and people
The issue of cultural sensitivity is one that, if you listen to their PR, "Yes, we're very culturally sensitive, and we don't want to destroy anything." Well, just ask people up at Pōhakuloa. The lawsuits that still are going on, and the environmental impact statements that have to be redone over and over, because the military can never identify all of the cultural places there. And they're the only ones that can get in there because they've put so much explosive in there, and they don't even know where it is. The lack of sensitivity — the insensitivity — of using so many lands of Hawaiian heritage for military operations is something our community definitely needs to speak about.
Ann Wright will be moderating an upcoming international webinar titled “Building an Ocean of Peace” on July 4. More information can be found here.
This story aired on The Conversation on June 29, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
