This is an edited transcript from a YouTube video posted in 2017
In the early 1970s, several Hawaiians landed on the target island, Kahoʻolawe. I say target island because military, the U.S. government, had taken control of Kahoʻolawe in World War II to conduct training exercises and bombing practice.
It was more or less an uninhabited island because thereʻs no good supply of fresh water there. But by the early 70s, Hawaiian consciousness was raising, particularly in terms of who owned and controlled land. Large tracts of land in Hawaiʻi that had been seized by the people who overthrew the Queen in 1893. These lands were later ceded by the provisional government that had taken over after the overthrow. These lands were ceded to the United States government, who turned around and gave most of them to the State of Hawaii after statehood in 1959.
George Helm, Walter Ritte, and others made a number of illegal landings on the island so they would force to military to stop bombing Kahoʻolawe while the military was searching for these people. They didn’t want to harm them.
This picture here is at a preliminary hearing in the case where it wasn’t just a couple of young, hunter-type guys from the Hawaiian Movement who went to Kahoʻolawe to protest the bombing. This was a group of about a dozen, mostly women, who were members of the then-forming Protect Kahoʻolawe Ohana. This was at their arraignment hearing in Federal Court, the old Federal Courthouse.
For reasons that I donʻt recall, many Hawaiians that day wore to the hearing a traditional attire, which you see here. I took a number of pictures which have become…reproduced many times because they capture a feeling of, to me anyway, a feeling of sadness that their lands were taken forcibly by the U.S. military. And as a gesture of defiance and protest, as to the continued occupation of various military bases in Hawaiʻi.
Since this picture was taken, the U.S. government did stop the bombing on Kahoʻolawe. Congress appropriated about $400 million to clean up the island, which my understanding is the money is spent but they haven’t finished cleaning up.