"HAWAII - THE FIFTHTIE ..." a Hawaii (State of) Travel Page by mtncorg

During the long, cold winter nights, we dream of places like Hawaii. Long, sandy beaches lapped by warm, azure seas. Tropical fruit drinks, sultry nights. Hawaii has long been the epitome of such a vacation. Place names like Honolulu, Waikiki, Maui, Kona, Na Pali, Mauna Loa, Diamond Head all evoke different chords deep inside us. Even if we haven't been there, we know Hawaii. We have seen it on tv or experienced it in countless movies. Reality is, of course, different, though with lots of money you can stay cocooned in the tourist confines of Waikiki, Lahaina, Kona-Kailua, Princeville, Poipu or many other resorts, coming into contact with only those Hawaiians who work as part of the resort staff. Maybe venturing out for the helicopter tour, sunset cruise/dinner tour, war memorial tour, horseback or snorkel tour. "Hawaian culture" is experienced via the hotel's luau. For many of us, these are enough.
For the rest of us, Hawaii can be a lot more. Not unlike other States, Hawaii can boast of its own indigenous culture. Polynesian adventurers reached these most isolated Pacific islands, perhaps as early as the Third Century., developing a culture that would be familiar to those of the islands further south towards Tahiti. They had the islands to themselves until Captain Cook headlined a vanguard of European explorers, traders and whalers, in 1778. With European guns and advice, a local chief, Kamehameha, unified the islands politically for the first time, in 1810. After his death, in 1819, political and social conditions favored the recent Chrristian missionaries, who staged a cultural transformation in these islands, as they did throughout the Pacific. Cultural transformation led to economic change and the advent of a new concept among the Hawaiians - that of land ownership, an idea foreign to Polynesian thought. A huge wasting of the Hawaiian poulation from the introduction fo new diseases helped to depopulate areas making it easier for the advent of huge sugar plantations owned largely by missionary-descended families. For workers, the owners resorted to different waves of migrant workers, brought in at different times: Chinese, Portugese, Japanese and Filipino all came in separate waves, none staying in indentured servitude long enought to soothe the plantation owenrs. By giving away the land for baubles, the Hawaiian nobility also set the stage for the political changes that occurred in 1893 when the plantation families overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy (Queen Liliuokalanni) taking direct power into their own hands in the form of an oligarchical 'republic'. Formal annexation into the US came with the need for sea bases on the long road to the new US territory of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War of 1899. It wasn't until the events of WWII and the huge influx of money and people that much of the power finally slipped from the plantation family hands.