Sandwich Islands
The long history of warfare among the Polynesian tribes might have been expected to end with the unification of the Kingdom of Hawaii under Kamehameha in 1810, but strife continued as European powers set their eyes upon this would-be tropical paradise. In the decades between unification and the American Civil War, there were numerous skirmished with the French and British. In 1864, US Secretary of State William Seward negotiated a treaty of reciprocity with Kamehameha V, but it failed to pass the Senate by the requisite two-thirds vote. The next President, Horatio Seymour, was more concerned with disposing of the national debt run up during the war and pursuing a treaty of commerce with the Confederates, and American designs for the Sandwich Islands faded away.
A crisis erupted in 1873, when Kamehameha, lacking a male heir lay on his deathbed. He summoned his eldest daughter and offered her the crown, but she refused, and the throne remained vacant upon his death. The British, the only power on the scene (the US having lost interested and the French rocked by their defeat to Prussia) immediately swooped in and installed a favored relative of the king, David Kalakaua, on the throne, and helped royal forces suppress a republican rebellion. Kalakaua, in turn, signed a treaty of reciprocity that was quite favorable to British traders, who grew to monopolize power on the islands.
The US still recognized the Kingdom of Hawaii as sovereign, so it was not until that country was defeated in 1882 that they moved once more. With the US helpless to intervene, the increasingly assertive Kalakaua was forced to abdicate in favor of his sister, Liliuokalani. The queen proved ambitious herself, and rebelled against British rule in 1895, in the forlorn hope of attracting American support. She was defeated and exiled to French Polynesia, and the Kingdom of Hawaii was no more, replaced by the crown colony of the Sandwich Islands. Sanford Dole, an American citizen who had backed the British in overthrowing the queen, was made a British subject in recognition for role and appointed governor, at the head of a civil service that came to be staffed by both Englishmen and Islanders. A native rebellion led by Robert Wilcox (who had fought against Liliuokalani alongside the British) was suppressed in 1897, and Wilcox's death sentence was commuted to exile at the behest of Governor Dole. The Sandwich Islands remained peaceful for nearly twenty years.
As tensions with the Americans increased over the Nicaragua crisis, the British came to see the Sandwich Islands less as a commercial opportunity and more as a strategic bulwark. A large naval base was constructed at Pearl Harbor on Oahu to house a squadron of the Royal Navy, while a regiment of Royal Marines was kept on hand to supplement the local Honolulu Rifles. On a ceremonial tour in 1911, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, judged the position too weak (he had just completed an official visit with the United States Navy, and witnessed the success of the superfiring turrets on the new Maine-class battleship) and ordered one of the inventive schemes for which he was to become notorious. The result was Fort William Rufus, an artificial island completed in 1913, universally known as the "Concrete Battleship."
(Though officially named for an English king in medieval times, Churchill may have intended it as a gibe at President Aldrich's Secretary of State, William Rufus Day. In series of increasingly hostile private notes, Day and then President of the Board of Trade Churchill had dueled over Aldrich's protectionist policies. In one letter, Churchill asked "Do you intend to be a fortress unto yourself, shielding the fair shores of the New World from any commerce with the Old?" When Day published the correspondence following his retirement from politics, Churchill was rebuked by Prime Minister Asquith and laterally promoted to the Admiralty.)
In August 1914, three-fourths of the US Navy's Pacific Fleet launched an attack on the Sandwich Islands. Their timing was marvelous, as they struck the first blow less than twenty-four hours after the declaration of war had been received in London. The task force sailed around the northern end of the island chain and attacked Pearl Harbor from the west, avoiding those few Royal Navy ships that had put to sea. The battleships Dakota, New York, Rhode Island, and Delaware were able to suppress the coastal forts, and the British flotilla was forced to attempt a breakout through the narrow mouth of the harbor. Facing broadsides and only able to return fire with their forward turrets, the Royal Navy force was annihilated. A division of the Sixth Army and a brigade from the Third Marine Division landed and took the forts and base from the rear. (Another Marine brigade landed on the north shore of Oahu and captured the Dole Barracks, while two others invaded the islands of Hawaii and Maui.)
The Sandwich Islands were taken, but unusable as long as the Concrete Battleship blocked Pearl Harbor. The American warships could close and fire upon it, but the enormously thick concrete walls of the fort withstood all attempts to reduce the Battleship, while its twelve-inch guns wreaked havoc, sinking the John Paul Jones and several destroyers, as well as damaging the New York and the Delaware, putting the latter out of action for several months. The Concrete Battleship thus did more damage than the entire Sandwich Islands Squadron had managed in the main battle. Admiral George Dewey, the task force's commander, offered the garrison an honorable surrender and safe passage to Japanese and British waters, but this was refused. Finally, a Captain King of Admiral Dewey's staff hit upon a brilliant idea - realizing that the rear of the fort was uncovered, he had a mixed force of sailors and marines make a landing using a freighter, and pump the Battleship full of fuel oil. When the combat engineers' charges detonated, the fort went up in an explosion that would go unrivaled until the destruction of Petrograd thirty years later.
The Sandwich Islands belonged to the United States, even if the Islanders had not. Over nearly two decades, the native population grew used to the relatively light British hand, and many came to be proud at their status as one of the most important outposts of the British Empire. Although acts of violence and sabotage against US forces were relatively rare compared to Kentucky or Belgium, an elaborate espionage network soon grew into place. As the Englishmen who'd owned and managed the enormous rice and sugar plantations came under immediate suspicion, the most effective operatives tended to be Islanders. (The Japanese underclass which toiled on the plantations tended not to notice who owned the islands at any given moment.)
Thanks to their efforts, the Royal Navy knew within days how many ships had entered Pearl Harbor, and how many had left. One such spy was John Liholiho, a descendant of Kalakaua and son of a senior civil servant to the last British governor, Lorrin Thurston; after a tip from two American sailors, he was captured and executed in 1917, giving up the names of several compatriots and compromising the entire network in the process. The exception was the prostitute and businesswoman Maggie Stevenson, who passed on information from 1914 all the way to 1944, when she liquidated her many assets and fled the Sandwich Islands for parts unknown.
The US kept the islands after the war, and they were organized as an territory in 1923, though racial sentiment and military necessity cut short any debate over statehood. The Supreme Court repeatedly held that the Constitution did not apply there throughout the 1920s, decisions supported by both the Socialists and the Democrats. Still, the Islands were much freer than Canada, and no major uprising occurred over the next thirty years, even during the Pacific War with the Empire of Japan - the growing Japanese middle class remained loyal to the government under which they were leaving serfdom.
In contrast to 1932-1934, the Japanese Combined Fleet made an all-out effort to invade the Sandwich Islands in the Second Great War, but the Second Battle of Midway ended the threat. With the Utah War over as well and the US government determined not to allow another rebellion, Congress in 1945 authorized the exile of several thousand Mormons (military, commercial, and religious leaders) to the island of Molokai, the site of an old leper colony. The Mormons are strictly isolated on a peninsula protected by enormous sea cliffs, and the exiles are serving a lifetime sentence.
In 1946, the United States Congress narrowly defeated a bill to incorporate the territory, granting Constitutional protection to its residents.
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