Hawaii is green — for an increase in military moves, the Pentagon said today.

The Secretary of Defense signed a memo on May 22 moving to a conditions-based, phased approach to personnel movement and travel and today released a list of “green locations” for travel.

The “green” designation for Hawaii follows a recent state easing of 14-day quarantine conditions for military family members arriving on official orders. The same exemption already was in place for arriving military members.

Hawaii, 37 other states and the District of Columbia “meet the conditions to lift travel restrictions, subject to the assessment of conditions at individual military installations within these areas,” the Defense Department said.

The criteria are: Removal of shelter-in-place orders or other travel restrictions, a 14-day downward trajectory of flu-like and COVID-19-like symptoms and 14-day downward trajectory of new COVID-19 cases or positive tests.

“The secretaries of the military departments, commanders of the combatant commands, and the chief management officer will assess specific DoD installations, facilities, or locations under their purview,” the Pentagon said today.

How this will immediately affect overall travel moves to and from Hawaii is still not clear. Bahrain, Belgium, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom also were added to the “green” list.

The Defense Department typically moves more than 400,000 service members, defense civilians and their families each year. Many of the moves occur in the spring and summer.

Hawaii already was seeing some arriving military personnel who were exempt from the “stop movement” order — 118 on Thursday and 220 on Saturday alone, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

“While the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic still presents risk to DoD service members, civilians, and their families, improving conditions warrant a transition in our approach to domestic and overseas personnel travel to a conditions-based, phased approach to personnel movement and travel,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in his May 22 memo.

Esper said that in general service members would continue to “stop movement,” both internationally and domestically unless certain conditions were met. The restriction was subject to exceptions.

Conditions to resume unrestricted travel rested on two overarching factors — state and/or regional criteria based on the White House’s Opening Up America Again guidelines and installation-level criteria based on conditions in and surrounding DoD installations, facilities, and locations.

Esper said stop movement applied to official travel, including temporary duty travel; government-funded leave; and permanent duty travel, including Permanent Change of Station (PCS) travel.

DoD civilian personnel and dependents of DoD service members and DoD personnel whose travel is government-funded would continue to stop movement, both internationally and domestically as well due to COVID-19.

However, some military members continued to come to Hawaii as needs arose.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said last week that the Department of Homeland Security exempted military members traveling on official orders to Hawaii from the state’s quarantine, but the command instituted its own “restriction of movement” — which means service members are prohibited from going out for 14 days except for “essential” trips such as to the grocery store, doctor or pharmacy.

Homeland Security, meanwhile, asked for the state to also exempt military family members moving on orders to Hawaii from the quarantine, officials said.

Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, incident commander for the state’s coronavirus response, said in a recent memo that military members coming to Hawaii on official business were already considered “essential travel for critical infrastructure” and exempt and that he was adding family members arriving on “permanent change of station” orders to the exemption list.

The restriction of movement is mandatory for service members and advisory for family members, according to Indo-Pacific Command at Camp H.M. Smith.

The state’s COVID-19 Joint Information Center previously deferred questions about military exemptions to the 14-day quarantine to the Camp Smith command.

Still unclear is whether the state is tracking the numbers of arriving military members and their families getting a pass on quarantine.