Charlottesville, Va., is more than 4,700 miles away. Hardly any place seems quite as distant from Honolulu as it once did — thank social media and 24/7 news coverage for that.
But there has remained a certain sense of insulation from the uglier elements of racial aggression, the kind that was on display, illuminated by torches, on the University of Virginia campus during last week’s demonstration, stemming in part from proposals to remove a Confederate-era monument from a city park.
Reminiscent of the Third Reich and Ku Klux Klan night marches and rallies, the white supremacist, anti-Semitic chants and such expressions seem remote from the Hawaii experience.
Except … perhaps it is not entirely foreign to the islands, either.
The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii last week held a ceremony to honor internees held during World War II at the Honouliuli Internment Camp. It featured a vintage taiko drum, discovered at a Buddhist temple in Nuuanu, which was found with an inscription in Japanese indicating it was used in prayer at the camp, in 1944.
The historical significance of the internees’ imprisonment, civilians whose American citizenship could not inoculate them against suspicion in the U.S. war with Japan, is what led to the camp’s preservation as a national monument. That monument provides the context for teaching future generations what injustices can arise — in wartime but also in peace.
Conversely, the Civil War monuments erected across the old Confederacy taught no such lesson. Statues were placed on pedestals in town squares a century ago not as war memorials but decades later. The statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee was positioned prominently in a Charlottesville park, for example, in tribute to the goal he pursued.
And that goal was to create a nation in which the trafficking of slaves could continue. The continuing presence of the statue sent a plain message: Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, the freed slaves would still be subjugated.
Slavery, and the years of Jim Crow laws mandating segregation, represent a blight on our nation’s honor. The full story of slavery, a violent practice that reverberates to this day, should be told in the context of a museum, turning historic tragedy into an inducement for progress.
That aim, and the offensive racist rhetoric of the far-right groups demonstrating Aug. 12, drew the counter-protesters to rally in opposition. Many mourned when one of the oppositionists was fatally injured by a terrorist who drove a vehicle straight into the crowd. Two law enforcement officers also died in the line of duty that day.
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, dismayed because President Donald Trump did not emphasize the injury of racist rants but insisted both sides shared the blame, took to Twitter to register his distress.
“As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment,” he wrote. “This is not my President.”
Tough words. But the alt-right chants of “Jews will not replace us” rang even more harshly. The president, whose own daughter is a convert to Judaism, should have underscored such affronts as the principal offense.
The hate kept coming all week, as did the pushback, including from Hawaii. State Rep. Beth Fukumoto decried racist hate mail she received that made a mockery of her grandparents’ internment. U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono urged the Justice Department to form a task force to address hate crimes. U.S. Reps. Colleen Hanabusa and Tulsi Gabbard similarly spoke out in denunciation.
There were shouts of anti-racist outrage coming from all corners, as there should be. But we also treasure the taiko drumbeat for peace coming from Honouliuli, which has turned its own tear-stained pages of history but has not forgotten.
