HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0377.609 2024-2026From: HULI Hawai'i
Sent: Monday, September 1, 2025 9:06 AM
To: Council Testimony
Cc: Kimball, Heather; Kagiwada, Jennifer, Onishi, Dennis; Kierkiewicz, Ashley, Kanealii-
Kleinfelder, Matt; Galimba, Michelle M.; Villegas, Rebecca; Inaba, Holeka; Hustace,
James o
Subject: Please continue your SUPPORT for Res. 234-25 �;4 CC-)
cn C o
Aloha Chair and Council Members, �r
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I strongly support Resolution 234-25 to protect the health, safety, and cultural integrity of Hawai'i Istand.
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For decades, the P6hakuloa Training Area has been bombed, burned, and contaminated, leaving a toxic -
legacy of depleted uranium, heavy metals, PFAS, dioxins, explosive residues, and white phosphorus. These
poisons seep into our soil and aquifers, directly threatening drinking water for both east and west Hawaii. They
also spread through dust clouds, placing entire communities at risk. Sacred burial grounds and cultural sites
have been desecrated, despite our State Constitution and laws requiring protection.
The Army has repeatedly failed to meet environmental review standards. The Board of Land and Natural
Resources denied its Environmental Impact Statement twice this year. Their partial "clean-up" efforts are not
stewardship —they are bargaining tactics to secure more land. A tactic used since they arrived.
Financially, the cost of the military's presence far outweighs the supposed "benefits." The often highlights 200
local jobs, but independent research shows the economic impact of the U.S. military in Hawai'i is overstated,
while the hidden costs are immense:
Billions in lost land use— land tied up in military leases could otherwise support housing, agriculture,
or renewable energy projects that strengthen our island's. economy.
Contamination costs —cleanup of sites like Red Hillis projected in the billions, yet Hawaii taxpayers
and residents bear the health and environmental burden.
Displacement— Native communities are denied access to sacred lands, burial grounds, and
traditional practices.
For 200 jobs, we are sacrificing the health of thousands, our clean water, and sacred places. If we truly
invested in clean-up and land restoration, we would create far more local jobs —while building an economy
rooted in innovation, culture, and sustainability rather than destruction.
Hawai'i has already seen the damage from military occupation: Kaho'olawe, Waik6loa, Ka'ula, South Point,
and Red Hill. We cannot allow P6hakuloa to remain another sacrifice zone.
This is not only a Hawai'i issue. Around the world, other island peoples continue to suffer from the same
pattern of U.S. military occupation and contamination:
Marshall Islands —nuclear weapons testing poisoned the land and ocean, displacing generations of
families and leaving health effects that continue today.
Puerto Rico (Vieques) — decades of bombing and toxic dumping by the Navy left cancer rates
significantly higher than the U.S. average. 3 ,
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1 Ref. To:
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• Guam — heavy militarization and contamination of land and water have disrupted native CHamoru
culture and caused long-term health crises.
• Kaho'olawe (Hawai'i) — used as a bombing range for 50 years, breaking its water table, it remains
scarred and contaminated, with restoration still ongoing.
These places show us that military occupation damages land, water, and lives for a lifetime. Pohakuloa cannot
be another addition to this long list of sacrifice zones.
It is also important to see the bigger picture. The same U.S. military system that bombs and contaminates
lands abroad is tied to the rise of militarized policing and immigrant detention at home. The Department of
Homeland Security, ICE, and private prison contractors use military technology, funding, and strategies to cage
migrants —including Pacific Islanders displaced by environmental and economic crises worsened by U.S.
militarism.
The surveillance drones used at the border are developed by military contractors.
• Military budgets fund weapons and riot gear used against communities and protestors.
• The same contractors who profit from bombing ranges like Pohakuloa also profit from immigrant
detention centers, treating human beings as commodities.
This is one system of militarization —whether through land destruction at Pohakuloa, nuclear testing in the
Marshall Islands, bombing in Vieques, or ICE detention cages, it is the same machinery of violence and profit
that sacrifices people, land, and culture. And.now, the pattern continues: Fort Bliss —an Army base once used
to intern Japanese Americans during WWII —is being converted into the nation's largest ICE detention center,
targeting communities of color once more.
This is one system of violence —military trains bombed lands, displacements ignored, and then repurposed to
detain immigrants, many of whom are Pacific Islanders displaced by precisely these same environmental and
economic harms.
Resolution 234-25 is a step toward breaking that cycle here in Hawaii. Protecting this land is protecting our
future, and it is also refusing to be complicit in the broader system of militarization and incarceration that
damages lives everywhere.
Protecting this land is protecting our future. I urge you to adopt Resolution 234-25.
Mahalo,
Maki Morinoue
Holualoa