Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-25-2024

Research Program

Library Research Award

First Advisor

Dr. Yuka H Kishida

Abstract

Independently, there is an abundance of research into the path to Hawaiian statehood, the militarization of the islands, and the racism that has historically centered American discourse about Hawai‘i. There are very few scholars, however, that have sought to synthesize these ideas or investigate them in relation to the Vietnam War. The literature on Hawai‘i’s role in the war consists almost exclusively of a single book chapter: “Race War in Paradise: Hawai‘i’s Vietnam War” in Soldiering Through Empire by Simeon Man. Man provides a detailed account of the specific ways in which the Hawaiian Islands contributed to the US effort in Vietnam. This paper seeks to supplement evidence collected by Man with Congressional evidence of the ideological nature of Hawaiian statehood. By contrasting how Hawai‘i was intended to be perceived and how it was put into practice in the Vietnam War, this research illuminates the polarities of Hawai‘i as an American state. It concludes that American militarists and political leaders used the narrative of Hawaiian statehood as a symbol of democratic, racial harmony and tried to reproduce that symbolism in Vietnam. Doing so, however, revealed the contradictions between Hawai‘i’s simultaneous identities as a cosmopolitan paradise and as a violent facilitator of military imperialism. Hawai‘i’s role in the Vietnam War proves that it was not democracy that the 50th state extended into the Pacific, but rather American values of imperialism and racial violence.

Comments

Library Research Award 2024, Second Place

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