Act of War

This movie was really eye opening for me to say the least. When I first came to the island I met one of my good friends who is a local. She would always complain to me about how people were always coming in and taking the land and turning it into commercial property. She would always tell me that it was sacred land. To be totally honest, I would always tell her to shut up because I did not understand why this land was any different from somewhere else or why it was different from any land in another state like California where they are always building new things. 


The movie, “Act of War”, has helped me see why. I definitely learned a lot of interesting facts about the history of Hawaii. One of the very first things that caught my attention and really pulled me into the movie was the fact that Hawaii was long before the United States and England. As I mentioned earlier, my friend would always complain but I did not know that so many people felt so strongly about Hawaii being taken away. In the video there were numerous amounts of people just screaming and chanting how they will NEVER be American and that they will die Hawaiian and they will not accept anything else. I remember one lady saying how even though it may have seemed like Hawaii did not have anything, the Hawaiian people were happy as ever even with the simple life that they had. The same lady also said that the Hawaiians were so efficient with catching their wild food that they were able to have a lot of leisure time to do whatever. And a lot of times this extra time let to the Hawaiian people creating lots of creative things and art. 


As I mentioned earlier I did not really know the history about how Americans made progress with taking control of Hawaii. But something that stuck out to me was how the Americans were trying to make, what is now Pearl Harbor a place of refuge for the Americans. Obviously this was just one of many ways that America has taken control of the State of Hawaii. I think that it is sad for the people of Hawaii to basically lose what was once their land but sometimes life is not fair and we have to go through many trials and tribulations. Sometimes these hard times make us realize and appreciate the things that we do have.