Hawaii (1983: Doomsday)
From Alternative History
| Official languages | English, Hawaiian |
| Capital | Hilo |
| King | Andrew I (Andrew Piikoi Kawānanakoa) |
| Governor | Ka'apikapika Angel Pilago |
| Independence from USA | 26 Sept. 1983 (de facto) 1 May 1995 (official) |
| Population | approx. 80,000 |
| Area | 29,558 km² (claimed) 19,523 km² (actual) |
| Currency | Commonwealth dollar ($) |
| Associated state of |  ANZC
|
The Free State of Hawai'i (Moku'āina Ku'oko'a o Hawai'i) is one of the last surviving remnants of the United States of America. It is a constitutional monarchy and an associated state of the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand.
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[edit] History
[edit] Background
The Hawai'ian Islands were among the most militarized parts of the USA before Doomsday. The most populated island, O'ahu, was home to over a dozen Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force installations and was the headquarters for most American military operations in the Pacific. The Pacific Missile Range on Kaua'i was a key launch site and testing area for American missiles. The island of Hawai'i, called the Big Island, was home to a large tract that the Army used as a training center. The Space Surveilence Complex on Maui was an important observatory and radar station. The Navy owned the island of Kaho'olawe, but only used it as a blasting range.
Three separate Soviet thermonuclear missiles landed on O'ahu on Doomsday, 1983. A fourth landed at the Missile Range and devastated nearly all of Kaua'i and Ni'ihau. The military facilities on the other islands were not considered key targets. The equipment was rendered inoperable by the missiles' electromagnetic pulses. The Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island was left intact. It was nearly empty at the time of the attack but did have a few vehicles.
Therefore, Hawai'i after the war consisted of only four habitable islands: Hawai'i, Maui, Lana'i, and Moloka'i.
[edit] Response
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Most of Hawaii's population and almost all of its urban land had been located on O'ahu and caught between the blast zones of three thermonuclear weapons. The radiation from the attacks made the island inaccessible for years and caused first- and second-degree burns on Lana'i and Moloka'i. Nearly all of the state's political and economic leadership was lost.
The two remaining county governments, that of Hawai'i (Big Island) and Maui, took charge of recovery and rescue operations. Mayors Herbert Matayoshi (Hawai'i) and Hannibal Tavares (Maui) met hours after the attack. They immediately traveled together to Hilo and Wailuku, the respective county seats, and announced that they would be sharing administrative power for an unknown amount of time.
Hawaii's economy had depended on military money, tourism, and imports, so food was an immediate crisis with trade and communication to the Mainland apparently cut off. The islands' main crops were sugarcane and pineapples, neither a strong foundation for a good diet. Fortunately, the islands in the 1980s still had the remnants of a diversified agricultural economy, with plenty of livestock and poultry on the Big Island in particular. In addition, the Hawaiians realized that they would have to imitate their ancestors and depend on fish for much of their diet.
[edit] The socialist government
The age-old conflict between Hawaii's landowners and farm laborers was bound to re-ignite in this time of crisis, with the added element of people who had never worked in agriculture before but suddenly depended on local produce. The landowning companies were largely based at O'ahu, and within a month nearly all the agricultural land was in the hands of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Hawaii's powerful leftist labor union. The mayors worked closely with the ILWU, given the need to feed the population.
Many people resented ILWU's control over rations. A food riot broke out on Maui as hundreds of hungry people stormed a field and began taking food for themselves. ILWU and County security forces were unable to put the riot down. The rioting spread to the Big Island, where military vehicles from the Pohakuloa Training Area were employed, using up much of the precious remaining petroleum.
The riot was finally put down in February 1984. Union leader Louis Goldblatt was in firm control of the the islands' government and agriculture. He essentially collectivized Hawaii's entire economy. Officers on each island assigned agricultural or fishing work to people who had served in defunct service industries. Production and consumption were tightly controlled. In addition, Goldblatt began the gradual evacuation of the most heavily irradiated island, Moloka'i. In short, Hawaii under Governor Goldblatt achieved stability, at the cost of political liberty.
Meanwhile, Hawaii's medical supplies were running out. The increased reliance on traditional remedies, the fish- and pineapple-based diet, the sporadic violence, occasional repression, and chronic radiation poisoning were all taking their toll on the population. Some US military ships made their way to Hawaii during these years. Goldblatt submitted to their demand to use Pohakuloa as their base and also allowed them use of a formerly civilian port and airstrip near Hilo. The military, in need of food, participated in Goldblatt's ration system, often providing security and receiving rations.
[edit] Contact with USA
Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush stopped in Hawaii on their way to Australia in 1985. Each took a brief tour of the USA's last functioning state. The two conservatives were somewhat shocked at the Communistic turn Hawaii had taken, but were glad that the islanders were surviving. They secured Goldblatt's promise to hold elections in the near future.
When Bush assumed office as President of the American Provisional Government, he claimed authority over all remaining US military forces. Additional troops were sent to Hawaii in early 1986, but the lack of food and fuel made the mission an abortive one.
In 1987, Goldblatt was assassinated. Bush personally visited Hawaii months later and found the islands torn by civil war. The Australian and US troops accompanying him restored order, with the help of those troops still in Hawaii, who remained loyal to their Commander in Chief. The leader of one faction was the leading survivor of Hawaii's royal line, 23-year-old Andrew Piikoi Kawānanakoa. He ordered his supporters to lay down their arms and submit to US authority "for the good of our islands." Kawānanakoa, coincidentally descended from both of the old rival branches of the royal family, would remain a visible leader in Hawaiian politics.
A military committee responsible directly to the President was placed in charge of the islands. Interestingly, they largely kept Goldblatt's rationing in place. Conditions were eased somewhat by the first shipments of food and medicine from Australia. However, Hawaii's population continued to decline as many people left for Australia and New Zealand.
[edit] Return to normalcy
The military supervised elections in November of 1989 that brought Harry Kim of the Big Island to the gubernatorial office. He made Kawānanakoa his Lieutenant Governor, and the personal popularity of the two men helped stabilize Hawaiian government. However, as both were Big Islanders, the residents of the other islands felt somewhat under-represented.
Over the next seven years Hawaii, American Samoa, and the smaller US territories in the Pacific remained in contact with the American Provisional Administration in Canberra. Food supplies began to be shipped from Australia. When the US and Australian militaries began missions of exploration of the American coasts, Hawaii was the natural starting and end point for these voyages.
Two major incidents of violence were yet to occur during the Kim years. In 1990 food shortages again led to rioting. The military installation at Pohakuloa was targeted by bombers, and local officials on Maui attempted to sever ties with the Big Island, firing on US troops as they landed to restore order on the island. In 1992 the aggressors were the military itself, when a band of conspirators attempted to seize several ships, apparently to establish a private colony on the North American mainland. The scheme was stopped, not without bloodshed, in a showdown at the military port outside Hilo. In neither case did the unrest lead to a breakdown of the government's control, and Kim's administration helped infuse Hawaiians with a sense of shared nationhood.
Later in 1992, the USS Benjamin Franklin returned from its famous circumnavigation of the globe. Among its many stops had been the Bonin Islands, a small archipelago that administratively had been a village within the City of Tokyo, despite being located 1,000 km offshore. Cut off from the outside world for nearly a decade, the islanders were starving and impoverished. The following year, 1993, Hawaii mounted a rescue mission to bring the entire surviving population of the Bonin Islands - less than 1,000 souls - to resettle on Maui.
A squadron of Canadian ships arrived at Hawaii in 1994 as part of a tour of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The same ships stopped briefly at Hilo the following year on their return voyage, which famously discovered the Republic of Victoria, the most successful new polity on the west coast of North America. Together with the Franklin voyage and the Bonin expedition, the visits signalled a begining of an end to the isolation of the Aftermath period.
[edit] Independence
| 1983-1984 | Mayors Herbert Matayoshi and Hannibal Tavares |
| 1984-1987 | Governor Louis Goldblatt (unelected) |
| 1987-1988 | Civil war |
| 1988-1990 | US/Australian military occupation |
| 1990-1995 | Governor Harry Kim |
| 1995-1996 | Interim Governor Alan Arakawa |
| 1996-2004 | King Andrew I; Governor John Waihe'e |
| 2004-2009 | King Andrew I; Governor Linda Lingle |
| 2009-present | King Andrew I; Governor K. Angel Pilago |
In 1995, it was announced that Australia and New Zealand would soon form a Commonwealth together, and that the US Provisional Government would then disband. The people of Samoa and other territories voted to join the new ANZC, but Hawaiians did not. The results of their referendum:
- Join the Commonwealth as an equal member: 26%
- Become an associated state of the Commonwealth: 58%
- Separate from the Commonwealth: 16%
On May 1, 1995, Governor Kim proclaimed the Free State of Hawaii, stepping down in favor of an interim government led by Alan Arakawa of Maui. The beginning of the Constitutional Convention on that same day marked a new era of optimism in Hawaii. To the surprise of their Aussie and Kiwi allies, the delegates showed a strong inclination toward restoring the monarchy, though within a democratic framework. Elections were quickly held in November; they confirmed as Governor Big Islander John Waihe'e, one of the chief proponents of the Constitution and a committed monarchist. On January 20, 1996, Waihe'e and the first Congress of Hawaii were sworn in at Hilo, and King Andrew I was crowned on the same day.
[edit] Recent history
Hawaii has seen positive growth in the last dozen years. The population has stabilized as a more diverse range of staple crops has been planted from Australian seeds. In 1997, production began on the Big Island of sugarcane-based automobile fuel. This has become a major industry in Hawaii. The strict labor quotas and food rations have been relaxed somewhat, but remain an inescapable part of life on the islands.
In general, Hawaiians came to feel a great sense of pride in their islands during the early Free State period. For the first time in a century, Hawaii was a nation - a point of view encouraged by Governor Waihe'e's beliefs and style. The growing nationalism proved an embarrassment when representatives of CRUSA - the anti-Commonwealth Committee to Restore the USA - arrived in Hilo to drum up support for a local chapter in 1999. A crowd gathered to jeer and deride their devotion to the old country. When police arrived, they took the side of the crowds, and a nasty brawl erupted between police and the CRUSA. In the end, the CRUSA "agitators" were given asylum by the Free State Militia, but were politely asked to return to Australia.
Governor Waihe'e was re-elected in 2001. At the finish of his second term, the constitutional maximum, Linda Lingle of Moloka'i was elected in 2003. She was re-elected in 2007.
A long territorial dispute between Hawaii and the Commonwealth only concluded in 2005. Both Hilo and Canberra claimed authority over a number of former US islands that had not been part of Hawaii or the various territories that had joined the ANZC in the mid-90s. These included: the Midway Islands, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll, the ruined air base on Okinawa, and the US Miscelaneous Pacific Islands (Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra Atoll). The dispute dragged on for years and became a running joke: none of the islands were inhabited and both governments admitted that they did not have the means to administrate them. In 2005 it was finally agreed that Okinawa and the Miscellaneous Islands would go to the ANZC, while Hawaii would get Midway, Wake, and Johnston.
Marcus Island was not in dispute: the US military had maintained the last functioning LORAN station there since Doomsday, and had signed it over to the ANZC in 1995.
On February 12, 2009, Linda Lingle resigned, citing a skin cancer condition that prevented her from fulfilling her duties as governor. Like so many Moloka'ians, she suffered from long-term effects of nuclear radiation. Her very visible scars had helped her identify with many of her constituents, but throughout 2008 and 2009 the cancer had grown steadily worse, forcing her to spend days at a time in the hostpital. After an emotional farewell press conference, King Andrew confirmed First Deputy Governor Ka'apikapika Angel Pilago, a Big Islander, as the new governor.
During her first term, Lingle began the process of resettling her home island. Goldblatt had begun the evacuation of Moloka'i during his rule, and the US miliary had taken nearly all remaining residents to Maui, leaving only some fishing settlements on the eastern end. The decades since Doomsday had made it safe again, and in 2006, at Lingle's urging, Congress commissioned agricultural scientist Lani Weigert to head a program to plant and settle Moloka'i. Called Imua Moloka'i (Forward Moloka'i), the project took three years to plan. Actual planting and construction did not begin until June 2009, after Lingle had resigned. Still, the new settlement at Kualapu'u is considered a crowning achievement of her administration.
In 2008, Lingle had sent a delegation to Japan to discuss resettling the Bonin Islands (in Japanese, Ogasawara) as a territory of Hawaii. For sixteen years, the Ogasawarans had lived on Maui as a distinct survivor community. In recent years many Ogasawarans had begun to fear that their community was losing its cultural distinctiveness, and they also began to express the wish to return home. Dr. Kyoichi Mori, an Ogasawaran-born marine biologist at the University of Hawaii, helped found the Ogasawara Community Alliance in 2000 and spoke with members of Congress about creating a new Hawaiian colony in the Bonins. The ANZC government was upset that Lingle had begun discussions on her own, but they joined in three-way talks anyway, eventually allowing Hawaii to annex and settle the Bonins. In October 2009, the Ogasawara Bill authorized the creation of the new settlements; the bill's sponsor, Congressman Dennis "Danny" Mateo, explains the details of the agreement and the law in this interview, "Resettlement of Ogasawara".
[edit] Today
[edit] Territory
Hawaii's claimed territory covers the entirety of the old US State, plus the uninhabited Midway Islands, Wake Island, and Johnston Atoll. It only has effective control over the four remaining main islands, plus tiny Kaho'olawe. A small fishing settlement was built on Kaho'olawe during the Goldblatt era, so that island is no longer uninhabited. Moloka'i, on the other hand, has been almost totally emptied in the 25 years since Doomsday. The military installation at Johnston was hit with a nuclear attack, but the airstrips on Midway and Wake remain intact. The ANZC and Hawaii have cleaned off the airstrips and use them for occasional exercises, but have not established permanent bases there.
Hawaii is subdivided into 25 districts. They were created by Goldblatt as "work areas" for ensuring that everyone was doing meaningful work and receiving rations. Today the Work Committees remain, but they have less power than they used to. The districts vary greatly in size and population. Hardly anyone lives in Kaho'olawe or Pohakuloa Districts, for example, while Hilo District is a bustling city with a much larger infrastructure to oversee work and rations. The uninhabited islands are formally administered by a five-person department within the Free State Marine Militia.
[edit] People
Hawaii's population remains one of the most diverse in the world. A look at its last five governors illustrates this well: Kim (Korean), Arikawa (Japanese), Waihe'e (Hawai'ian), Lingle (Jewish), and Pilago (Filipino) represent only a part of Hawaii's ethnic spectrum. English and Hawai'ian are both official languages. Japanese and Philippine languages, however, have increased in prominence; owing to the resurgence of the Diaspora communities.
Since Doomsday, some immigrants have arrived from mainland North America and other Pacific islands, but this has been offset by Hawaiian emigration to Australia or New Zealand. Hawaii's net losses due to emigration only began to reverse in 2001, the first year that the population increased.
[edit] Military
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As an associated state of the ANZC, Hawaii hosts a few Commonwealth Army and Navy bases. Hawaii also maintains the Free State Militia, divided into Land, Air, and Marine divisions. The FSM uses a combination of US equipment salvaged from its own territory, US equipment brought to Australia, and new equipment bought from the ANZC.
Nothing was salvagable from the blast sites on O'ahu and Kauai'i. A number of tanks, jeeps, and Humvees were left in Pohakuloa Army Training Area in the center of the Big Island. Today many have been moved to other locations on the other islands. The ANZC has expanded the former National Guard post at Keaukaha, near Hilo, into a combined air-sea base. It has become a crucial link between Australia and the Americas. Most usable equipment from the small Midway naval facility has been brought to the main islands.
The World Census and Reclamation Bureau, an ANZ-led organization for seeking out and making contact with surviving societies, has its Central Pacific Command in Hilo, with offices downtown and substantial port facilities just west of the city. The Command has been responsible for exploring much of North America, as well as coordinating WCRB activities in central and eastern Polynesia and occasional expeditions to the Russian Far East. The base harkens back to Hawaii's historic role as a military center, although the WCRB's goals are exclusively peaceful. As the Bureau becomes more internationalized after its recent transfer to the League of Nations, the Central Pacific Command will likely be reduced in size and importance, since more of the North American work will be done by units based in South America.
[edit] Government
Hawaii's 1996 Constitution was based on that of the USA and the old State of Hawaii. Despite the return to monarchy, Hawaii kept the modest title of "Free State" out of deference to the Commonwealth. The monarch is constitutionally "a symbol of the history and unity of our isles, a living link to our past, and a voice of sober second thought to our elected officials." He has limited power to send legislation back to the Congress but has otherwise no political authority. He has a residence in Hilo and one on Maui, but makes his permanent residence in the restored Hulihe'e Palace on the Big Island.
The Congress of Hawaii has one chamber and is led by a Speaker. The chief executive is elected independently of the Congress; she still has the title of Governor as a tribute to Hawaii's American past, and out of deference to the Commonwealth. Hawaii continues the American practice of November elections and January inaugurations.
Hawaii's relationship with the ANCZ is similar to the past relationship between Puerto Rico and the USA. Hawaii governs itself internally, and the Commonwealth has some say over foreign trade and defense. Hawai'i sends one non-voting delegate to the Commonwealth Parliament. Hawaii sends a voting delegate to the new League of Nations. Although Hawaii is not fully sovereign, the LoN is small enough that it is welcome at the table.
[edit] National symbols
Hawai'i uses the same flag that it has used since its days as a Kingdom in the early 19th century, combining elements of the British and US flags. The British flag in the canton has a new meaning today, showing Hawaii's relationship to the ANZC.
National holidays:
January 1 - New Years' Day
March 26 - Prince Kūhiō Day
Good Friday
Easter
May 1 - Independence Day
June 11 - Kamehameha Day
September 26 - Remembrance Day
October 7 - King's Birthday
Last Monday in October - Labor Day
Fourth Thursday in November - Thanksgiving
December 25 - Christmas
- Ben
[edit] See also
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