| Kalia
Road separates the Hilton Hawaiian Village from the Army's Fort DeRussy
and marks the confluence of tourism and militarism, two interdependent
expressions of the colonial impulse.
In May
1968, while students and workers half a world away brought France to
the edge of revolution, a handful of peace advocates gathered here to
greet members of the Hawai'i Army National Guard who had been called
to active military duty, with many ordered to serve in Vietnam. The
peaceful gathering drew armed police officers with riot control weapons,
and ended in the arrests of several people who stepped into the street
and sat down as trucks carrying the troops approached. Fort DeRussy was also the induction center where Hawai'i draftees were processed into the Army during the years of the Vietnam War. It remained a center of controversy throughout the period. At least
one man refused to respond to the call-up. UH student and Manoa resident
Richard Tanimura openly opposed the Vietnam War and slipped out of the
U.S. several weeks after the DeRussy sit-in, later surfacing in |
[for followers
of local Hawai'i politics - Henry Peters, a National Guard cook, filed
suit against the Army to block transfer to Vietnam, and ended up serving
his time in Hawaii while others were shipped into the war zone. Peters
jumped into politics after his Army stint, and went on to serve as the
powerful speaker of the state House of Representatives. He was also
a trustee of the Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, before being ousted
(along with the other trustees) by an unexpected uprising of native
Hawaiian 'beneficiaries' of the estate and subsequent legal action by
the state Attorney General.]
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