May is known as the “Merry Month” for its longer days and warm sunshine.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of the world observes May 1st as International Workers’ Day or celebrates the ancient pagan rites of spring.\u00a0 But in the U.S., the radical legacy of May Day has been suppressed and supplanted by the typically tame Labor Day.\u00a0 In Hawai’i, on the other hand, “May Day is Lei Day,” a holiday invented in 1927 as the perfect marketing gimmick for the tourist industry. This year, the Occupy movement across the U.S. called for an international day of action on May 1st.\u00a0 Thousands took to the streets in Oakland, New York and other major cities. DeOccupy Honolulu also held a solidarity rally.<\/p>\n
While the action did not amount to a general strike, the spirit and symbolism of the action was significant.\u00a0 Activists painted a banner depicting Kanawai Mamala Hoe (The Law of the Splintered Paddle), a Hawaiian human right law that protected ordinary persons from harassment even when sleeping along the side of the trail.\u00a0 This has been a theme of the DeOccupy movement in Honolulu to resist the harassment and eviction of the poor and homeless and to defend access to the commons. A few weeks earlier DeOccupy activists stood with houseless families on the west side of O\u02bbahu as the City of Honolulu raided and swept them from their dwellings.\u00a0\u00a0 But the artwork that was to be featured at the May Day event was seized by City workers the day before the event. This led Laulani Teale and other activists to confront Mayor Peter Carlisle at a public May Day concert in Waikiki, where Teale was arrested for “disturbing the peace” to a chorus of tourists applauding her removal. Such is the state of ‘aloha’.<\/p>\n
The month of May is also Asian-Pacific American Heritage month in the U.S., but you would never know that in Hawai\u02bbi. Although Asians and Pacific Islanders comprise most of Hawai\u02bbi’s population, few if any claim “Asian-Pacific American”<\/a> as their identity.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 One reason is that since there are so many Asians and Pacific Islanders, people tend to claim a multi-ethnic “Local” identity or else identify with their particular ethnic groups.\u00a0 However, I think the main reason is that despite whatever\u00a0 political affinity with the U.S. a person may have, deep down they realize that Hawai\u02bbi is not of<\/em> America.\u00a0 A glance at any map immediately presents this problem to the viewer: Hawai\u02bbi is 2500 miles from America.<\/p>\n Which brings us to the lingering problem of the U.S. having invaded and occupied the independent Kingdom of Hawai\u02bbi in order to establish a strategic military outpost in the Pacific and coincidentally to the annual observance that occupies the most space in the month of May in Hawai\u02bbi:\u00a0 Military Appreciation Month<\/a>. \u00a0 Most states have an military appreciation day, or a week, but that’s not enough tribute for the game masters of Hawai’i.\u00a0 Orchestrated by the Chamber of Commerce of Hawai’i, the same business association that pushed for the cession of Ke Awalau o Pu’uloa (Pearl Harbor) to the U.S. in 1876 in exchange for duty free sugar exports to the U.S., Military Appreciation Month is a dizzying public relations blitz that can leave one confused about who belongs to this place anyway, which is precisely the point. There are military discounts at restaurants, theaters, and other businesses (no local discounts), special events and media spectaculars, and even a glossy full-color booklet insert in the newspaper.<\/p>\n For the military, this is a good month for announcing military expansion plans<\/a>\u00a0 or the reoccupation of land formerly returned<\/a> by the military. It is a good month for an aircraft carrier to make a port call<\/a> and for the Navy to announce that sonar training may be twice as dangerous<\/a> to marine mammals than previously thought. It is an excellent month to conduct missile tests on Kaua\u02bbi only a month after sharply criticizing North Korea for doing the same<\/a>. \u00a0 The Missile Defense Agency reported “Second-Generation Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System Completes Successful Intercept Flight Test”<\/strong><\/a> (May 9, 2012):<\/p>\n The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS LAKE ERIE (CG 70) successfully conducted a flight test of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, resulting in the first intercept of a short-range ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean by the Navy\u2019s newest Missile Defense interceptor, the Standard Missile \u2013 3 (SM-3) Block 1B.<\/p>\n At 8:18 p.m. Hawaiian Standard Time (2:18 a.m. EDT May 10) the target missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, located on Kauai, Hawaii. The target flew on a northwesterly trajectory towards a broad ocean area of the Pacific Ocean. Following target launch, the USS LAKE ERIE detected and tracked the missile with its onboard AN\/SPY-1 radar. The ship, equipped with the second-generation Aegis BMD 4.0.1 weapon system, developed a fire control solution and launched the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IB interceptor.<\/p>\n