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The centennial of Hawaii's annexation to the United States frames a debate over two newly published books. Tom Coffman, whose Nation Within drew from seven petitions he found in the National Archives — signed by the vast majority of the roughly 37,000 Hawaiians then alive — argues that native Hawaiians overwhelmingly opposed annexation and that U.S. expansion into the Pacific was deliberate policy, not accident. Thurston Twigg-Smith counters that Hawaiian legislators dominated the territorial legislature for two decades after annexation, voting unanimously for statehood in 1903, and that Coffman implicitly paints all Hawaiian supporters of annexation as collaborators. Jim Mee calls the period more complicated and points to figures like Robert Wilcox who held shifting, contradictory positions. Historian Ed Crepeau traces American expansionism to James G. Blaine and notes that annexation required a joint resolution rather than a Senate two-thirds vote. David Forman draws parallels to colonialism across Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines. Chuck Freedman argues the book promotes understanding rather than division. Callers press on the petition's legal standing, whether annexation was inevitable, and what moral obligations — if any — flow from events a century old.
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Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
