Nearly a quarter of Oahu’s land is controlled by the U.S. military, a footprint so large that Kyle Kajihiro says the armed forces are “everywhere in Hawaii, yet hidden in plain sight.” Kajihiro, who teaches in ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii, argues that the islands’ image as a tropical paradise masks a physical reality most mainlanders never see — and that the same concentration of military power now places Hawaii squarely in the crosshairs of U.S.-China strategic competition.
Hawaii hosts the command center for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, making it the nerve center of American operations across the Pacific. Defense spending ranks as the islands’ second-largest economic driver after tourism. Yet Kajihiro says that reliance carries unequal costs, borne disproportionately by Native Hawaiians, and that any future Pacific conflict would hit civilians hardest because Hawaii imports roughly 85 to 90 percent of its food and most of its energy by commercial shipping.
Nearly a quarter of Oahu is military land
Kajihiro says the military’s holdings on Oahu rival the scale found in Guam and Okinawa, places facing similar land-use conflicts. Many of those holdings sit on crown and government lands dating to the Hawaiian Kingdom era, before the United States took over, land he describes as carrying a unique trust status.
The environmental toll, he says, includes contamination, unexploded ordnance and the destruction of ecosystems and cultural sites. Fifty years ago this year, Hawaiian protesters began occupying Kaho‘olawe Island to block live-fire training. They succeeded in stopping the bombing and securing partial restoration of the island for cultural use, but it remains contaminated with unexploded ordnance.
Mākua Valley on Oahu presents a live version of the same struggle: ongoing live-fire training, unexploded ordnance, and a Hawaiian community seeking the land’s return and restoration. Kajihiro says cleanup there will take far longer than the fight over the land itself.
Dependence and a target on the islands
Military spending sustains jobs, but Kajihiro says it also constrains Hawaii’s planning options, with political capital poured into protecting tourism and defense at the expense of other needs. He points to housing: generous housing allowances let military families out-compete local residents, driving up costs, and because service members receive the allowance as cash, expanding on-base housing has not solved the problem.
The burdens fall unevenly. Native Hawaiians represent some of the largest percentages of poor and unhoused people in the islands, while those who benefit from military contracts rarely pay the price, he says. He recalls that Hawaii was placed at the center of a war not of its own making when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, which he notes was a response to the massing of the Pacific Fleet there.
“Being a platform puts a target on our backs,” Kajihiro says, adding that the same holds for Guam, Okinawa and every other base of military power projection. “They are all in the crosshairs.”
A fraying bridge to China
Hawaii’s ties to China run deep, from 19th-century migration and trade to Sun Yat-sen’s education in Honolulu, where he founded the Revive China Society. Kajihiro says that where there was once open cultural exchange and academic collaboration, the relationship has become fraught: people worry that anything friendly to China could put them on someone’s radar as a security threat, and foreign students fear attacks on migrants and international students.
The pressure extends to budgets. Kajihiro says the East-West Center was hit hard by cuts during the second Trump administration, and that funding for ethnic studies and related social science and humanities work was threatened, withheld, slowed or in some cases canceled outright — some of it later returning. He says the University of Hawaii, a leader in climate science, also suffered significant cuts, describing the overall effect as a crippling of higher education.
Martial law, and a precedent for being left behind
If conflict with China comes, Kajihiro says civilians would not be a logistics priority. Hawaii’s history offers a precedent: during World War II, as a U.S. territory, the islands were placed under martial law for three years, with the economy, law and media run by the military. The military maintained a scorched-earth policy — critical infrastructure would be destroyed in the event of a Japanese invasion — and Kajihiro describes Hawaii as, in some ways, a sacrifice zone.
Between 30 and 40 percent of the population was of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens. During World War II, when Hawaii was a U.S. territory under martial law, between 30 and 40 percent of the population was of Japanese ancestry.
What leaders could do now
Advocates are pushing for greater food-system resilience — growing more locally and diversifying supply — because shipping would be a choke point in any crisis. Kajihiro says the broader answer is a shift away from concentrated militarization toward a more diverse economy and the return of lands to productive community use.
He frames the question in larger terms: why should geography be a curse for Hawaii, Guam and Okinawa? When Hawaii was an independent country, it sought neutrality through treaties, and he argues that a world order based on the rule of law and diplomacy should allow islands to exist without being used as anyone’s weapon or platform. The zero-sum assumption — that if it is not the United States here, it will be China — treats the islands’ vulnerability as automatic permission for occupation, he says.
The interview material leaves the final question open: whether Hawaii’s civilian leaders can build food, energy and economic autonomy quickly enough to matter if shipping lanes close, and whether Washington’s strategic posture in the Pacific will leave room for the neutrality the islands once pursued as a sovereign nation.
