The story of land in Hawaiʻi has important consequences for everyone living in Hawaiʻi today, affecting basic needs like the cost of food and housing. There are certain key moments in the history of Hawaiʻi where big decisions about land were made. One of those moments was the beginning of statehood in 1959, when federal land use and ownership in Hawaiʻi were renegotiated, including 40,000 acres of land leased to the Army for training. The Army land leases are expiring in 2029, which means we are currently in the midst of another pivotal moment where land use in Hawaiʻi can be renegotiated based on the needs of Hawaiʻi’s communities today. To better understand how to navigate this current moment, we can look back to the negotiations over land in 1959-1964. The primary sources here offer insight into that dynamic moment of history.

But first, it’s important to have a little context about how the federal government came to have so much land in Hawaiʻi by 1959. For generations, land tenure was governed by the evolving customs and politics of Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians), who developed sophisticated agricultural systems including loʻi kalo (taro patches) and loko iʻa (fish ponds) that sustained hundreds of thousands of people by the 1700s. In the face of European and American imperialism, King Kamehameha III (Kauikeaouli) adopted a European-style system of private property in the mid-1800s in an effort to help Hawaiians remain in control of their lands. That process, often called the Great Māhele or the Māhele of 1848, set aside a substantial portion of Hawaiian land as government land, whose revenue would contribute to the government budget of the Kingdom. Another portion of the land was set aside as crown land for the Mōʻī (King or Queen). Later legislation in the Kingdom made the crown lands inalienable, meaning no part of them could be sold or given away, even by the Mōʻī.

When Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown by missionary descendants with the support of U.S. marines, the new coup government lumped the government and crown lands together, calling them public lands. These so-called "public lands" were then given by the coup government (the so-called Republic of Hawaiʻi) to the federal government after the Newlands Resolution illegitimately claimed Hawaiʻi as an American territory in 1898. These lands are often referred to as "ceded" lands; however, this word is misleading. The crown and government lands were trusts whose revenues supported the Mōʻī and the Kingdom government's operation, respectively. They were seized by the coup government who gave them to the U.S., not ceded. The federal government later acquired even more land during World War II through direct appropriation, using the war as justification to evict residents and take their land for military purposes. From 1930 before WWII to 1960, military land use in Hawaiʻi had more than doubled from 24,556 acres (23,924 acres on  Oʻahu alone) to 55,500 acres (51,700 acres on Oʻahu).*

After WWII, first the territorial government and then the new state government tried to get land back from the federal government. The 1959 Admission Act returned "public lands" in Hawaiʻi (the government and crown lands of the Kingdom) to the new state government; however, it included large exceptions that allowed the federal government to hold onto lands that they viewed as "necessary" (for example, if they wanted land for the military to train). The federal government had five years from 1959 to 1964 to review all of its land holdings in Hawaiʻi, determine which lands were "necessary" and which were “surplus,” and return only the surplus lands to the state. In this process, the President had broad discretionary power to claim lands as federal fee-simple property through executive order, disregarding how public lands were actually seized trust lands.

In the primary sources, we can see some of the different actors involved in that process, their concerns, and points of tension among them. The decisions about what land was “necessary” for military use and what was "surplus” were products of the values held by leaders of that time. It's important to question what "necessary" actually means in concrete terms. Because land is limited in Hawaiʻi, any decision to use land for military training, for example, means taking land away from agricultural or residential use. 

The decisions of the early 1960s continue to affect us today. Much of the land claimed to be necessary for the military is still under military use, for example, Mākua Valley in Waiʻanae, Oʻahu. After seizing Mākua Valley under martial law during World War II, the federal government claimed most of Mākua Valley (formerly government lands) under fee simple ownership through executive order in 1964. The front portion of the valley is State-owned land but was leased to the Army (along with other lands) for 65 years for $1. That lease was issued in 1964 and expires in 2029. 

The Army is currently in the process of trying to secure new leases to continue using some or all of its leased lands, a process ultimately decided by the Hawaiʻi Board of Land and Natural Resources. Communities affected by these land decisions must evaluate what will best serve current and future generations.

Land tenure: A European concept for the system and rules that define how land is owned and used in a particular society

Government land: A category of land in the 1848 Māhele under King Kamehameha III that was set aside for the government of the Kingdom as a source of revenue

Crown land: A category of land in the 1848 Māhele under King Kamehameha III that was set aside for the person who is Mōʻī (sovereign, king, queen)

Public land: A category of land created by the coup government in the 1890s that combined government and crown lands together without any distinction

Surplus land: Land not deemed necessary for continued federal use and designated for return to the state

Fee simple ownership: A kind of land ownership where the buyer purchases land and holds the right to use that land indefinitely (with the time limit or expiration date of a lease)