An article in the Washington Post this week described the 1915 U.S. invasion and occupation of Haiti (“100 years ago, the U.S. invaded and occupied this country. Can you name it?).
The Post’s abbreviated history of the Haiti occupation cites “bloody battles” with insurgents, thousands of residents killed, brutal suppression of dissent over a period of years, shutting down the legislature for a decade, and practices that “included segregation and enforced chain gangs to build roads and other construction projects.”
The article quotes a 1920 report in The Nation Magazine:
“Machine guns have been turned into crowds of unarmed natives, and United States marines have, by accounts which several of them gave me in casual conversation, not troubled to investigate how many were killed or wounded.”
That was, indeed, a bloody American occupation.
One thing that strikes me is the stark contrast to the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the relatively rapid incorporation of the islands into the United States as a territory.
During the 1893 coup that toppled Queen Liliuokalani, something short of 200 U.S. Marines landed at the request of the insurgent government, reportedly under orders to remain neutral. No shots were fired.
American and British troops had also landed after the election of Kalakaua in 1874, to “maintain order” when supporters of Queen Emma protested the results of the election.
In any case, it seems to me that attempts to call the subsequent history, up to the present, as an American “occupation” really ring hollow when compared to the reality of a military occupation, such as in Haiti, is actually like.
The Organic Act of 1900 included a broad grant of U.S. citizenship to citizens in Hawaii. From an article from the Hawaii Bar Journal (2002):
Sec. 4 of the Organic Act granted American citizenship to everyone who had been a subject or denizen of the Kingdom and everyone who had been a citizen of the Republic of Hawaii, i.e., everyone who was born or naturalized in Hawai`i during the Monarchy and its successor governments.142 Persons who had obtained denizen status under the Kingdom or the Republic also became American citizens because the United States recognized denization as being dual citizenship.143
With very broad citizenship rights granted to so many categories of island residents, including island-born children of imported laborers, it’s hard to maintain the idea of occupation.
Simply put, characterizing the history of the past century of Hawaii as a military occupation just doesn’t work.
There are a lot of grounds to criticize the overthrow of the Kingdom, and the plantation and corporate oligarchy that controlled politics in the islands during the first half of the 20th century, along with its echoes into the modern period, but trying to apply the “occupation” label just doesn’t fly.
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“Occupation” is a broad term. The American occupation of Japan was also different from Haiti. Still an occupation.
Despite multiple attempts via phone and email, Kalanikupule or a representative was unavailable to comment on the subject of invasion and occupation at the time this report was published. Ilind.net is committed to publishing the Ali’i Nui’s full response should he or a representative respond to the request for comment at a future time.
Occupation Lite?
Occupation in Name Only? Ono, for short!
Glucose-free Occupation?
Pseudooccupation, like pseudoephedrine? Bad for your brain.
With all due respect to Mr. Lind, usually so careful about researching and investigating facts and taking principled positions, he behaves uncharacteristically on this one particular issue and indeed stoops to ad-homineming those whom he disagrees with. The basic definitions used in international law [rather than those of everyday conversation] apply.
As Pete Townsend once sang “It’s a legal matter baby”.
The “act of war” [per US President Cleveland at the time] by the US of invading [without out cause, which Cleveland admitted at the time] an independent country, toppling the government and installing a US controlled and foreigner-dominated group of men and declaring a protectorate that same group while providing it with the physical force [the troops] necessary to maintain power and control is indeed an occupation. It was then and it is now. That it wasn’t a bloody one is due more to the wise actions of the Hawaiian Government that was toppled in refusing to meet force with force to remove the foreigner-dominated and foreigner-installed “provisionals”. It was [and remains] an occupation— just not a bloody one which says more about the Hawaiians than the US.
The US was ready to murder otherwise why all the then-state-of-the-art weaponry such as the battleship Boston, machine guns and the troops surrounding and protecting the “provisionals” that the US Consul connived with to install?
If you don’t “trust” scholars such as Sai [whose expertise was accetped and testimony not challenged by the US federal state Hawaii] to explain things because you are persuaded they are either biased or lying or deranged. Do you trust the International Committee of the Red Cross to explain? Here’s a version.. https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/law9_final.pdf. If you don’t trust the Red Cross to provide a definition then try the international scholars: Eyal Benvenisti… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyal_Benvenisti; Matthew Craven, https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff30809.php; or Sir Ian Brownlie, in Principles of Public International whom the Supreme Court recently cited as an authority. [Zivotofsky].
The US didn’t have to murder Hawaiians, but it was ready to. The Hawaiians denied the US to opportunity to do what it did only five years later in the Philippines in brutally and murderously suppressing the movement for Filippino independence using troops that transited through Honolulu. The War against Filippino Independence seems to have been where the US army learned to waterboard and commit the kinds of mass killing atrocities that are like what happened in My Lai. But the US did have international title to the Philippines, something it lacks for the Hawaiians’ Islands. If the Hawaiians had resisted the US would water-boarded and murdered as many as needed to suppress the Hawaiian resistance to what [would have become] a US occupation.
The Hawaiians, uniquely in history it seems, relied on law, justice, and honor rather the force to obtain justice and they are still waiting. The US has been ignobly ignoring the law since 17 January 1893. If Mr. Lind cannot see that he needs to further educate himself. If he can see it and countenances, it then he supports invasions and occupations but only when they are bloodless–a difficult ethical position to maintain while claiming support for rule of law. Or if his position is simply advise “fuhgeddaboudit” well then as he has no skin in the game [it wasn’t his country that was invaded] his advice can be safely disregarded as both uniformed and officious. It should be remembered that the US government came to the Hawaiians’ Islands on a warship, bearing weapons. The Hawaiians didn’t ask to join [the lawless farce of “faux” vote of 1959 can be disregarded in the same way that the Austrian “vote” for unification with Germany [post invasion] can be disregarded.]
It is an odd “occupation” indeed, which doesn’t involve any troops. The 162 marines did little upon landing and were withdrawn only a few months after the overthrow.
Two points, Ian:
(1) After the Overthrow the US didn’t need to use its own troops to “occupy” Hawaii because the Republic of Hawaii did so as its (informal) local agent. It’s unlikely Uncle Sam would have held back if a serious insurrection against the Republic had developed.
(2) While the Organic Act did grant US citizenship to those who were citizens of the Republic of Hawaii, under the laws of the Republic many immigrant Asians were unable to become naturalized Hawaiian citizens and thus did not benefit from this provision. US law was similarly discriminatory, and most immigrant Asians were prohibited from becoming naturalized US citizens until the 1940s. Furthermore, Section 101 of the Organic Act specifically prohibited Chinese immigrants who had demonstrated their right to reside in the Hawaiian Islands (through a complicated administrative process) from going to the US mainland. Our immigration laws were incredibly racist until that became politically untenable during and after World War II (it was a bit awkward touting Chiang Kai Shek as an ally while discriminating against his countrymen in such an obvious manner).
Very imperfect democracy with constant growing pains overly dependent on tourism and military spending? Yes.
Military occupation? Not by a long shot.
@Laudig
USS Boston was a cruiser, not a battleship.
“Filipino” is spelled with one “n.”
Ian’s views are not “uniformed.” In fact, they are sometimes quite unconventional.
US has not “challenged” Sai’s far-fetched rhetoric because it carries no weight and there is simply no reason to engage him.
The monarchy fell because it was too weak and poorly administered to quell garden-variety civil unrest yet its deluded queen went way out on a limb with an ill-advised power-grab that spectacularly failed.
The monarchy was so fragile that it had earlier actively sought US annexation as protection from far more voracious imperial powers that were licking their chops.
And Hawaii is now a US state whose residents of all stripes enjoy freedoms and opportunities that truly oppressed peoples throughout this very cruel world dream of and routinely risk and lose their very lives to seek while unreconstructed refugees from outdated academic radical chic-dom wallow in utopian fantasies and smugly sneer with myopic contempt.
But there is always the proud inspiration of free and independent Haiti, bastion of luxury for a lucky few until the next bloody coup.
I really must take issue with Laudig and Christensen. In January 1893, 162 men came ashore from the U.S.S. Boston. That small group landed as peacekeepers, not occupiers — just like the peacekeepers who landed in Liberia a few years ago at a time when all hell was breaking loose. In both cases the peacekeepers left after a few weeks and did not return. The peacekeepers landed in Honolulu because there had been two mass meetings of opposing factions which seemed likely to clash in the streets — 500 mostly ethnic Hawaiians on the Palace grounds and about 1500 mostly Caucasians at the Armory (about 2 blocks away, corner of Beretania and Punchbowl). Of course peacekeepers go into a dangerous situation with plenty of guns and ammunition to protect themselves in case they are attacked. In Hawaii the peacekeepers guarded Minister Stevens’ home and a couple other places, but mostly stayed inside the fence on the grounds of the vacant building that served as their barracks — they did not patrol the streets, did not take over any buildings, did not enter the Palace grounds, and did not give any guns or ammunition or food to the armed militia of local men who did all the heavy lifting of the revolution. That local militia was the same group who had surrounded the Palace and staged the preliminary revolution of 1887 forcing Kalakaua to sign the “Bayonet Constitution” — when zero U.S. forces were in Honolulu.
Grover Cleveland, friend of Lili’uokalani, did everything he could to destabilize the revolutionary Provisional Government and restore Lili’uokalani to the throne, from April 1893 to January 1894. There were zero U.S. “occupation forces” present in Hawaii from April 1 1893 until 1898, because Cleveland’s Minister Blount ordered them back to their ship and then Minister Willis kept them out. Cleveland and his Secretary of State and Secretary of the Navy actually sent U.S. warships to conduct “training exercises” with blazing cannons and mock landings, for about 2 weeks in December 1893, in a last-ditch effort to intimidate the Dole government into resigning in favor of Lili’uokalani — if you’ve never heard about that, put into Google the keywords . Cleveland’s Minister Willis wrote a letter to President Dole ORDERING him to stand down (which Dole courageously refused to do). Cleveland stopped only after the U.S. Senate took testimony in public under oath for a month and published the 808-page Morgan Report in February 1894 and passed a resolution telling Cleveland to keep hands off Hawaii. Does this sound like a U.S. “occupation force” controlling the Provisional Government and later the Republic as some sort of puppet regime? Give me a break!
International law? The best “international law” at that time consisted of how governments recognized the legitimacy of other governments. In Fall 1894, Emperors, Kings, Queens, and presidents of at least 19 nations on 4 continents personally signed letters sent to President Dole in 11 languages formally recognizing the Republic of Hawaii as the rightful successor to the Kingdom government. The letters came from the Emperor of China, President of France, King and Queen of Spain, Tsar of Russia, and others. Even Queen Victoria of Britain sent a letter of recognition, despite the close relationship she had had with Emma, Kapi’olani, and Lili’uokalani for several decades. Photos of those letters can be seen at
http://tinyurl.com/4wtwdz
The point Ian was making stands. In comparison to other “occupations,” this was relatively benign.
Plop, [one “p” or two”?] both you, and your name, make me laugh. Pointing out spelling errors isn’t a strong argument. The USS Boston was indeed a called a protected cruiser, one of the US’s [or is it “U.S.’s”?] first “steel” ships and thus recognized as a precursor [at least by a British author] to the “battleship” and in evolutionary terms the differences are minor and beside the point which was intimidation of the constitutional, legal government, into inaction.
From the point of view of those facing its then “state of the art” guns the distinction “protected cruiser” versus “destroyer” versus “battleship” would likely be lost as the purpose of its weaponry was to intimidate the legal government into taking no physical force action against the US agents placed in power which it did.
And yes indeed “Filipino” has one “l” and one “p” but regardless of the spellings, the US war [made easier, as intended, by the occupation of the Hawaiian Islands the U.S. which killed up to 220,000 Filipino casualties (with more civilians dying from disease and hunger brought about by war, per wiki) Indeed some place the number of Filipino dead at 1 million out of a 9 million population. None of the other “ploppings” [three “p’s”] by Plop rise to warranting a reply being nonsubstantive. Conklin, at least, has the courage to actually sign his name even though he is mistaken in thinking that other states have the authority to chose the government of nation rather than the nation itself by recognition. A less examined point is that this premature “recognition” of a government [by the local foreign agents] was, itself, a form of lawless [two “l’s”] intervention in the internal affairs of a foreign state. Governments are selected by the nationals of the nation, not governments of other nations. But that’s an argument for another day.
Not entirely surprised that Mr. Laudig would accuse Mr. Lind of ad hominem, unjustifiably, before perpetrating the same logical fallacy. (“If Mr. Lind cannot see that he needs to further educate himself. If he can see it and countenances, it then he supports invasions and occupations but only when they are bloodless–a difficult ethical position to maintain while claiming support for rule of law”).
Aloha Ian. Thank you for your continued vigilance and reasonableness regarding this contentious subject, while I don’t doubt that Mr. Laudig means well, it’s obvious that he has an ax to grind, from over in China. Wild hyperbole is the mark of a movement grasping at straws.
@Laudig
If you’re in China and truly advocate consent of the governed, how do you feel about China imposing its rule on Tibet?
Be careful. Freedom of expression is not so free there, especially regarding this topic.
Talk about military occupation…
Okay…I think that’s enough of the barbs back and forth. I’ve trashed several subsequent comments in this thread that were more personal assaults than arguments. This is a call to stay focused, please.
This article falsely calls the occupation of Hawaii “supposed” and states “to call the subsequent history, up to the present, as an American “occupation” really ring hollow.
Please educate yourself about martial law in Hawai’i.
http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Martial_law_in_Hawaii/ .
The facts directly contradict the statements made above.
“Hawai?i is one of the most heavily militarized locales in the world. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Base Structure Report discloses the existence of 161 military installations in Hawai?i and control of 5.7 percent of Hawai?i’s total land area. On the island of O?ahu, it controls 22.4 percent of the land” . Source Hawaii Independent.
Was it not the American military that took over and bombed Kahoolawe, Makua, Waikane and dozens of other areas in Hawaii?
This article invents a benign military presence in Hawaii. Contaminating the major drinking water aquifer for Honolulu at Red Hill is dead serious.
Turning the huge amount of fishponds that Hawaii’s people depended on for food at Pearl Harbor into a nuclear weapon and contaminated Superfund site is not a benign occupation.
Many nations “conquered” Haiti going back to the French and Spanish before America. Haiti won. With the heat, malaria and other diseases, Haiti outlasted its conquerors. Makes you wonder how the Dominican Republic, on the same island, has been relatively successful.