U.S. Army Pacific has bestowed its Mana O Ke Koa Award on Jennifer Sabas, who served as chief of staff for the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye and who now is an influential lobbyist and consultant.

The Mano O Ke Koa Award is given annually to community members who have worked to foster positive relations between the Army and local community. Sabas previously accepted the award on Inouye’s behalf after his death in 2012. On Friday evening, USARPAC commander Gen. Charles Flynn presented her with the award in a ceremony at Fort Shafter’s Palm Circle.

“Since working for the senator, Jen has remained incredibly active both locally and nationally” Flynn said before presenting Sabas with the award. “And Jen has always had the interests of both the Hawaiian community and the Army in mind and helps strengthen the bond between them both.”

Sabas has been a consultant for and a member of the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii’s Military Affairs Council since 2013. She oversaw a major restructuring of the MAC that strengthened its connections with top leadership in the Pentagon and Congress and emphasized Hawaii as a key point for the military’s proposed “pivot to the Pacific” as some leaders sought to divert resources from the Middle East.

Sabas said she grew up knowing little of the military other than what she could see from her hometown of Kaneohe watching the bustle of training and activity at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. It wasn’t until she started working for Inouye, a war hero and medal of honor recipient, that she got a crash course in military policy and culture.

“I had the honor of leading the senator’s team in Hawaii. And I asked him to be considered for the chief of staff position,” she said in her acceptance speech. “And at the time, he told me that I needed to know and learn about the military in Hawaii — every service, every need, and every challenge. It was important to him, and so — for all you staffers out there — because it was important to him, it became important to me.”

Sabas said that she “set out on a learning journey that continues on to this day.”

Hawaii is the nerve center for all U.S. military activity in the Pacific region, with each branch having a presence and top command headquarters in the islands. As relations with China have deteriorated, the Pentagon now considers the Pacific to be its top priority theater of operations.

Military spending has historically played a key role in Hawaii’s economy, and concerns about China have meant that defense dollars continue to pour into the islands. But many residents have concerns about the impact of the military presence in Hawaii, especially since the November 2021 Red Hill water crisis, when jet fuel from the Navy’s underground Red Hill storage facility tainted its Oahu waterline, which serves 93,000 people.

The military has since removed most of the fuel from the facility and is currently working to clean the tanks and ultimately close the facility. But the Red Hill debacle has put all military activities across the island under increased scrutiny. For the Army, that’s meant officials and activists grilling it about the future of the Army’s presence on Hawaiian crown lands it leased from the state in the 1960s for a mere $1.

The Army hopes to retain most of that land for training operations, including parcels in Makua Valley on Oahu and Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island. Makua — which was seized from local farmers and ranchers after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor — has been particularly controversial. Despite promises to return the land after the war, the Army kept it during the Cold War and never left.

The leases expire in 2029. If the Army is able to persuade state officials to allow it to retain access to those lands, it’s expected that it likely will cost the service much more than $1 this time around.

“This has been an amazing, amazing journey, but there are big issues and large hurdles that lay ahead of us,” Sabas said. “There are difficult conversations, nuances (and) navigating that must occur as we move forward. What lays ahead is incredibly important to the Army and to our nation, and it will be a full team sport.”