Two weeks have passed since a wildfire burnt on the island of Maui, Hawaii and 114 people died. Hawaiians criticized the U.S. government for inaction, claiming that they are abandoned. However, the Biden administration responded with “no comment” on this wildfire.
The misfortune of Hawaii lies in the fact that it becomes the 50th state of the U.S.
As a matter of fact, what causes this disaster is not merely a wildfire, but also the way how the U.S. addresses long-standing problems behind Hawaii.
The wildfire in Hawaii may be analyzed from two dimensions.
First, military bases of the U.S. in Hawaii suffered few losses in the fire, reflecting the U.S. government’s focus in assessing the disaster.
For the U.S., Hawaii is also of great military strategic value in addition to its name card of tourist destination. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the largest command of six combatant commands of the U.S. military, has all its service commands settled on Hawaiian Islands, the command center of the Indo-Pacific Theater of the U.S.
The U.S. military mainly deploys its services on the island of Oahu and main Hawaiian Islands, and very few on Maui. Therefore, the fire has minimal effect on the U.S. military.
A photo was circulated on social media over the past few days, showing that a laser beam set houses in Hawaii on fire. Some netizens asked whether the fire in Hawaii was set by the U.S. military, as the U.S. military has always hoped to build antimissile system and sky surveillance system on Maui over the past two years.
The photo was then verified by U.S. media to be artificially processed.
Let’s look back to this event. What’s more noteworthy than the photo itself is the subconscious of netizens: They believe that the U.S. government puts the military role of Hawaii above people’s livelihood, even at the cost of lives of Hawaiians.
Why many Hawaiians lost their lives? Serious shortage of firefighters may tell us something. This is the second dimension.
Different from other U.S. states, Hawaii is far from the American Continent, so self-rescue is the only way for survival in case of fire as it is impossible to deploy firefighters from other states.
Under such a background, the key lies in who are Hawaii’s firefighters. The income distribution in Hawaii determines the result to a large extent.
Suffering from income inequity, Native Hawaiians fall further behind the average level of Hawaii in median household income. In Hawaii, one of regions with the highest level of consumption in the U.S., they have to take up the basic occupation of firefighter, one of their few options, for survival.
For this, many Native Hawaiians have moved to cities along the west coast of the U.S. for better work over the past years. To date, there are more Native Hawaiians living in the American Continent than those in Hawaii.
There has been an insufficient number of people for basic occupations as Native Hawaiians move out, which affects poor communities most.
With these dimensions considered, we can draw a conclusion: the U.S. government concerns more about Hawaii’s military strategic value than its economic development and people’s livelihood. For the U.S. government, all others in Hawaii must give the way to its military role. In other words, the U.S. has always treated Hawaii as a colony.
The U.S. politicians have always explained the annexation of Hawaii, which was originally an independent country, from a geopolitical perspective. Henry Cabot Lodge, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once said that the U.S., a continent country, was just like a ‘fortress’, while Hawaii was an ‘essential peripheral fortification’ for this ‘fortress’. As an outer island, Hawaii should be a part of the U.S.
The U.S. government gave full play to the value of Hawaii immediately after its annexation of the island.
Hawaii became the so-called “peripheral fortification” of the U.S. in real sense during the Second World War. The U.S. has strengthened its military base construction in Hawaii since Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, making it the command center of the Indo-Pacific Theater of the U.S. and the sea-air hub of the trans-Pacific lines. With Hawaii, the U.S. was able to keep the war out of the mainland.
So what such a military role brings Hawaii?
The U.S. expropriated lands of Native Hawaiians as its military base without paying “rent” in the decades after it occupied the island.
The U.S. government began to face up to these historical mistakes, compromised with Native Hawaiians, and promised to compensate for their losses only after Native Hawaiians sued the U.S. Federal Government 30 years ago.
By 2020, the U.S. government has provided Native Hawaiians with about 900 acres of land as compensation for its takings. But none of the land conveyed was suitable for residential use, so the most urgent problems of Native Hawaiians remain unresolved. And the federal government still owes additional 1,300 acres of land under the Hawaiian Home Lands Recovery Act.
However, when Hawaiians seek help from the U.S. government in face of a great disaster today, the latter keeps itself out of the affair, vividly showing the deep-rooted colonial mentality of the U.S. politicians.
In other regions, however, such a colonial mentality is practiced under the guise of military cooperation that relaxes the vigilance and gains the trust of targets of the U.S., namely the Philippines, Japan, South Korea and other western Pacific countries, rather than land occupation.
From the way how the U.S. treats Native Hawaiians, also a part of its citizens, we can easily image how citizens of these “partner countries” of the U.S. would be treated by the U.S. government in case of crises in surrounding areas.
Gathering crows are not intimate though they look friendly. A friend made without care will eventually break with you though the friendship seems to be firm.
