Island returned to Hawaiians after 62 years

Sixty-two years after Pearl Harbour the US Navy is returning control of a sacred island to Hawaiians.

The uninhabited 115 square kilometres (45 square miles) of Kahoolawe are sacred to native Hawaiians who feel the island, untouched by tourists, connects them with the spirits of their ancestors.

Now, after spending 10 years and US 460 million dollars to clean up a half century’s worth of shrapnel and unexploded bombs, the US Navy is returning control of Kahoolawe to the Hawaiians.

The transfer will take place on Tuesday, which is Veterans Day in the United States.

More than a decade after the last round of ammunition was fired, native Hawaiians are preparing for what they hope will be the rebirth of the island as a place where their cultural traditions can be celebrated.

“You can get a feel on Kahoolawe of what it was like to live on Hawaii at the time of our ancestors,” said Davianna McGregor, a native Hawaiian with the cultural preservation group Protect Kahoolawe Ohana. “It’s important for us to have a place where we can practice our traditions without it being a spectacle, without it being some kind of tourist attraction.

“It’s one place we can go to be in communion with our natural life forces.”

The island and its more than 600 archaeological and culturally significant sites are on the National Register of Historic Places. Those sites include old houses, religious artefacts, shrines, remnants of ranches and a centuries-old quarry.

The island will be set aside for cultural, education and archaeological activities, with no commercial development allowed, and access to Kahoolawe will be controlled by a state agency.

Ten kilometres (six miles) south-west of Maui, Kahoolawe is the smallest of the eight major Hawaiian islands. It is 17 kilometres (11 miles) long and 11 kilometres (seven miles) wide. The US Navy has controlled Kahoolawe since martial law was declared after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

It was used as a target and training area until 1990, when President George Bush ordered a halt to the exercises after years of protests and lawsuits by native Hawaiians. Congress later agreed to clean up the place and return it to local control.

Cleanup crews already have removed some 11,000 tyres and about 4 million kilograms (nine million pounds) of scrap metal – enough steel to construct a frigate and a destroyer, according to the US Navy.

But the effort is not complete. By October 31, about three-quarters of the island had been cleared of unexploded ordnance

The US Navy is set to leave for good on March 12, but will return to clean up any dangerous material found in the future.