Noah Dolim

The United States says no.

And she says, oh, if you're not going to give me the lands, I'm going to, you know, sue you for a sum of money.

So her last request, I believe, was in like 1912.

It was like for $400,000, which now seems absurdly low for how much land that was, you know.

over a million acres of land, and the United States, again, says no.

And so Liliuokalani is never properly compensated for those lands that were lost, those crown lands.

I mean, those crown lands, until today, until we're now in 2026, are a huge part of land issues in Hawaii.

Because of their suspect transition to between the Republic and the United States and also because a lot of important infrastructure in Hawaii was built upon those particular lands like airports and other forms of public infrastructure.

So that website in 1959, and really the push for statehood began in the 1840s, so post-World War II.

Again, it's a long history that we don't have, you know, hours to talk about, but a lot of it was driven by returning Japanese American veterans.

So the second generations who had fought in World War II.

And of course, Hawaii has a very big Japanese American population and also push back against what we call the big five.

So the big five were these five corporations who began in the Hawaiian Kingdom period.

Again, this is missionary descendants, other American and European businessmen.

who basically formed the oligarchy.

And this is, again, the same group of men that we've been talking about.

But their power and their grip, the economic and social grip over Hawaii lasts well into the 20th century.

So there's this pushback there.

And also, like you had explained, not only just World War I, but definitely World War II kind of proved the need for the United States to hold on to Pearl Harbor as an important geopolitical location as well.

Yeah.