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Understanding 9/11tv Tom Coffman Nation Within CSPAN October 7, 2018 6:38am-7:31am EDT
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the welcome committee of 100, the band, representatives of the white militia raced in the steamer towards it diamond to head to give a warm greeting of a low heart pure americans stopped at honolulu harbor a photographer for publication called the white a low saxon protestant quarterly-- i didn't make any of this up-- san francisco-- that's why i'm
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compelled to read this because if you just set conversationally in jet's sound so inflammatory and too many outlandish that it may seem as if it's being made up, so i feel a need to carefully report my research findings, so the photographer-- the best photographic record of the arrival of the american troops was indeed in the white anglo-saxon quarterly which is why was so aware of it. showing hundreds of troops: 2500 in all dangled from the decks, smiling and gawking at the well-dressed proud-- crowd below. the honolulu advertiser put out a boys in blue edition and the ladies and throughout, beer and bananas rolled out. the american troops marched before's the hanford dole at the
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palace. the photographs on every side by dozens of american soldiers. it was as if the white bearded symbol of the provisional government was at last that you were. if what was to become the most-- in what was to become the most obscure of all us wars, even more obscure than the spanish-american war, 4000 american troops were to die in the philippines. armed with the new guns at the republic of hawaii had been researching the american troops were to kill over and there's a disputed figure in the philippines, doctor paige i'm sure is well aware of. the figures range from 70000 filipinos killed to as many as 10 times that number.
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these were filipinos who initially believed americans had come to them in their struggle for liberation from spain. by the time of the final debate over annexation in washington dc much of the opposition had been beaten down. faceless businessmen and editors of ministers had swung behind annexation, people susan names we no longer recognize such as senator albert beveridge of indiana who announced we are a conquering race work in opposition, certain congressman tried to remind annexation this that they were in the grips of war fever. a representative from arkansas said annexations i've got more into their blood. they are about to do a foolish thing. he said american might easily
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annex hawaii and take other islands as well, but like the republic of rome it would destroy the americans republic in the process. in an extraordinary flight of rhetoric for such a quiet man president mckinley said we need hawaii just as much in a good deal more than we did california its manifest destiny. the private conversation with the prominence senator of the vermont-- i didn't make any of this up-- mckinley ran out his life that america had to act quickly to prevent a japanese takeover. we cannot let the islands go to japan, it can lay told him paired japan has her eye on them her people are crowding in their. to this he added an explicit endorsement of the conspiracy
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theory, i am satisfied the japanese do not go there voluntarily as ordinary immigrants to work in this plantation. japan is pressing them in their in order to get possession for anyone can interfere. senator who had welcome the hawaiian delegation into his home on a snowy night the previous february believed his commander-in-chief. he changed his position from now to guess the chairman of the senate committee of foreign relations said if they were to vote hawaii would be converted into a japanese commonwealth immediately. on june 12, this is now a little over five weeks going on six weeks after that attack on
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manila the american minister-- the minister of the government in hawaii in washington dc, the speaker of the house thomas reid who was an ardent opponent of annexation and ardent opponent of america over the empire, the speaker had been routed and in the process of abandoning their opposition longtime skeptics in the us house of representatives said the vote against the annexation of hawaii have become like voting against a war resolution while america was under attack. briefly, the greenhouse inflated senator lodge is hope to round up a genuine two thirds vote in the senate for a treaty of annexation reflecting-- there's
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a little more here i have to read. reflecting a concern for both the dignity and constitutionality of the method of annexation. after large and the others except-- assess the opposition the treaty that had been awaiting a vote for ivan years was discarded for good. when the senate proponents moved for passage of the house resolution the opposition responded with a filibuster. of the session was supposed to be over soon and they hoped to talk to resolution to its-- skipping for the resolutions this the filibuster went on for 17 days reflecting the profound division in the senate and it also reflected the expansionist giving up on their two thirds majority. the last thing of the filibuster was july 61898. senator bacon of georgia, again
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offered his proposal that annexation be approved provided a majority of real voters in hawaii to grieve. the proposed amendment was voted down by 22-42. senator pettigrew from south dakota who had gone to hawaii said he failed to find a single hawaiian who supported annexation. senator pettigrew proposed an amendment providing all males born or naturalized in hawaii be given the right to vote meaning standard then was for males to know, not females. the senate-- his proposal was voted down. of the senate now is on record as opposing any form of reptile-- referendum involving the traditional citizenry of hawaii.
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affirming in a acute way the description of the republic as a country without a citizenship. after the proposed amendments were defeated the vote at last came up on the main motion, warren thurston seven gallery watching. 42 senators voted yes and 21 voted no. 26 did not vote and of those who voted exactly two thirds voted yes but nearly a third of the entire senate set out on voting. as a result of america's annexation of the previously sovereign nation of hawaii rested on the votes of half the members of the u.s. senate. of the next day william mckinley in bold script wrote, approved a lot of his signature. the date was july 7, 1998--
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1898. [applause]. i would like to introduce the person who is here with me, he is the latest of several outstanding hawaii and the scholars including doctor john nazario to get phd's respectively in history and he is political. they have none did me in the previous subtitling of my book. the previous subtitle of my book was: the annexation of hawaii. because annexation legality and mutuality between nations i met moved to say the subtitle was
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inaccurate in terms of copies of english and semantics and the new subtitle is the american occupation of hawaii. last line, doctor wright's the challenge for the fields of political science, history and a law is to distinguish between the rule of law and politics of power. [applause]. >> i have a phd in political science and specialize in international relations and public law, in particular hawaiian kingdom, constitutional constitutional administrative also. i have a book coming out. my dissertation is being published by the university of hope lie press so it should be
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out next year and hopefully i will be here reading sections. tom and i are good friends. i met tom about 15 years ago. tom was very good friend of my family, antrim and so forth through the office of hawaiian affairs and it's interesting how our paths have crossed again. my research began i would say almost 15 years ago and that was just pounding the ground in getting things done. i used to be an officer in the army. i would apply a way of looking at information through military lens and that's what i began to understand hawaii. i would say may collegiate research began in 2002 that were refined that research into the
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phd level i wrote law journal articles on the topic of hawaiian sovereignty, the lack of annexation thus the word occupation. when we speak of occupation, occupation is a fact, but what i bring into the fold is the rule of law with the law of occupation as it applies to occupiers and i take hawaii's history were not just hawaii's history but the history of international law as it existed at that time and track it forward. we call the intertemporal law. with the events with that event and track its evolution until today, bad way you don't judge yesterday by today's standards. i read tom's book when it first came out in 1998. i hope tom distribute the book. we used to to give presentations back then i was part of a team
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that produced a video, we are who we were, that address the difference between a joint resolution of annexation and a treaty and how hawaii seceded preventing a treaty from being ratified. people didn't see that we in-- at the time. what tom had in his book was a particular narrative, the politics, who said what. for my dissertation what i color -- covers legal and political context. what tom provides in the book is a great benefit is it fills it with human nature, power, rhetoric, lies and the truth, but what it also shows and i made a comment in his book that speaks to help politically and legally astute hawaiian subjects were in the kingdom, which runs contrary to what we were led to
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believe was that we didn't know anything and a lot of these leaders back in 1800s, james: via the president of the hawaiian patriotic league and others were government officials. james was an attorney. david was the sheriff, so these are real people working in government as well as other people who were farmers and workers and laborers and mechanics and so forth came together because of a common calling which was to preserve the country and they succeeded. what this book shows us how they succeeded. they succeeded in preventing a wind from and asked illegally, but at the same time what they did not prevent or prevent was the power that followed, which is because of the spanish-american war and the occupation, so i just appreciate that i'm sitting side-by-side
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with tom and again the past have crossed because i come from that legal standpoint and tom comes from the people's standpoint. who said what and it's a powerful powerful book and i encourage everyone to get this book and when tom first-- well, not first called me. he called me a few months back and set them coming out with a revision, great. he said i'm changing the subtitle and i said really and then he said the subtitle: the story of america's occupation of hawaii. i said that the major change, but that is with their. than tom and i had a talk after and tom said he couldn't-- if i can share this he said i couldn't deny what i saw. 's twist just give that hump of occupation and i respected that because it is a hard hurdle to overcome because we were led to believe something that's not true, but it is what it is.
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my dissertation gets into not just occupation, but the law of occupation, rule of law, the effects of occupation, the violation of international law, but most importantly what i can read my book is how you write the wrong. that's my last chapter, chapter five. had you write the wrong within the framework of law associated with the law of occupation in you would be raised, it's very very fixable. i think the biggest problem we have is cutting through people's belief in what they thought happened and that's where it's crucial. i teach political science at a community college and a guest lecturer and i continue to write and i believe in education and i think it's a classic example of education. [applause].
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>> we do have a few minutes for questions and answers if anyone has a question they would like to pose. >> back to your subtitle, you said you had to get over the hump from annexation to occupation. how do you get over the hump given all of the other stuff that is out there, the celebration of annexation, the local newspapers, all of the stuff? headed to get over the hump-- how did you get over the hump? >> well, on the american college of no, printer to hawaii in this story privilege to get to know a lot of wonderful people in hawaii and i'm not a historian, but a journalist, but i ended up being a journalistic researcher of not the moment, but of 100
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years in history and it was from a painful process of research and digging in the national archives and digging in the archives of hawaii and slowly inching towards conclusion about my country has been that i really didn't want to, you know, believe it happened, so in a word slowly, painfully and with no great design aforethought. >> at the question here. [inaudible question] to find out about the culture and often times in our classes
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would explain various things that happened and often times it tells me i never knew that and i say simple it was not in your history books and if you think that's funny, i use the same history books you do it it was in my history books either, so i never knew that either. today, i get the response in retrospect to knot in my history book of well, back then was three characters to the elder hostel. two lines. today, history tells us to paragraphs and the response i get is, statehood. when to the history of exchange to include what you just shared
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with us? >> well, that's one reason why, you know, i wanted him to join us today and why i'm thrilled to be introduced by doctor crews. by that, i mean, this is a process that takes a tremendous effort because history of hawaii is very under such elaborate misconceptions, mythology and then trivializing imagery. of the trivializing imagery as of sun and the surf and the dancing girl. on which hawaii industry spent a fortune.
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it's by, you know, a very difficult i think it's going to be long-term determined effort to break through the smith, but i think that hopefully we are getting some kind of critical mass on that in writing, you know, some of the massive misconception. >> what's happening at the university level is people are now revisiting assumptions and they are being taken back to the original source documents and when you look the original source documents with the appropriate political, legal and historical theory that can next line it it automatically changes our perception today. at the university people are writing. they are challenging current scholarship, but most important they write articles. books are coming out.
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teachers are being educated on these are the original documents , do not read second, third hand information and through that process things are changing. there is the hawaiian society of politics which is multidisciplinary and they publish the hawaiian journal of politics made up of many different scholars or researchers that have-- or not just native hawaiians but multidisciplinary, so people from all over the world who are students at the university, our members, but their research is unbelievable. it's like the ground is opening and documents are surfacing. >> they now are writing, these are the things they may and be part of the process of changing the history? >> absolutely. i have my dissertation coming out titled the american population of the hawaiian kingdom beginning from occupied
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to restored state. another political science major is getting-- that did research on her great-great-grandfather and his relationship with the wind kingdom and territorial days and another who is in geography who also is writing a dissertation on the hawaiian chiefs of 1800 and the regency, not through manipulation, but how they did things and what accomplished. we are being published by university press, so the credibility is out there. first people they know this can be true. through the phd program they are able to break through barriers beyond-- because you up to qualify your research and it's becoming self-evident, so it's a very exciting time and not just university of hawaii. i think i'll over many of a broad are engaging this topic because there are so many different facets.
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land titles, culture, anthropology, ethnography, getting interviews, it's exciting time for hawaii. >> one final question. we are coming to an end. >> this question is for either. last year doctor crews and i attended a talk with linda wingo the governor of hawaii on campus and i had the opportunity to ask her the question where did she see the future in relation to the political aspect here in hawaii and consistently she said it was becoming a nation within a nation as your title suggests. you mentioned that it's a fixable solution. how do you see the future unraveling? how will it affect the realm?
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>> if we look at the bill, whether it's called that are not i think the key word is built. it's a piece of american legislation and i say congress passes two types of laws resolution i becomes droit resolution like the joint resolution of annexation or bills that become ask. both resolutions and-- droit resolution and act are legislation or laws of the us that have no effect beyond the borders of big us of a call-- before congress can leave-- legally affect hawaii is important to show a treaty exists a transferred hawaii sovereignty to the us's this authority can extend from congress to these islands. what research is showing is that annexation did not take place in that it was all a façade to give the impression american legislation has affect hawaii. in 1819 the u.s. congress could no more and-- nx hawaii by joint
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resolution then congress could say an x in iraq or afghanistan. it's still an american law. that's where we get into this idea of really can we understand the situation or do i want to pick a position. i suggest zero pick a position. we are starting to recovery our memory. this is recovering memory so once we get the context of how things are then i think actions can be understood to be taken that have like looking back in the past of what-- they did not just say let's make a petition for the sake of making a petition. the petition had a purpose, to be deposited with the u.s. senate to kill the creed-- treaty. we need to understand that before we can live with a purpose to understand what happened, so there's many things going on about the bill or
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colonization. i would suggest holdback event, take time to understand, allow the research to be developed because actions will lead more-- information will lead to action in the action may not be what you thought it should be. you might say we have been playing the wrong game on this time. it's actually the game of football and we have been coming up with baseball theories. wrong game spent closing comments. >> i will comment on that as well priestly. that is the question to me, i know this is a life-and-death question to certain people as whether the bill passes or not, but the question to me is not whether the bill passes, but whether the education process and either that whether the bill passes or the bill doesn't pass,
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it's likely going to pass. the struggle around these questions continues unabated because we are talking about dealing with many many decades of history and many layers of misinformation. >> thank you. [applause]. i ask you all to join us. we will have a discussion on the information presented today. acidic that wraps up book tvs look at hawaii over the past 20 years we covered several authors and books in the 50th state. watch the mama mynatt book tvs.org and a surge hawaii book at the top of the page.
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c-span launched book tv 20 years go on c-span2 and since then we uncovered thousands of authors book festivals including all 18 national book festivals. in 2015, astronaut buzz aldrin took your phone calls during the festival. >> i think we all pretty much agree, not sure who was the first one to say that the dust on the moon smelled like charcoal, burned charcoal from a fire or fireplace. i don't know how to explain why that would be that way. there were other people who said that the moon dust when you expose it to oxygen highwood fork, verse and the
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