Growing up on the Windward side in the haole populated Kailua, I was always exposed to the themes presented in Tattoo but never to a degree as depicted in Ka’a’awa, an even more country side of the Ko’olaus. Being born and raised on O’ahu, particularly in what’s considered the country side (what I would later find out in my life) most things seemed natural, so much so that you never thought much of it. I remember that after years of attending the same church, when the church began to see an influx of attending Caucasians, I thought what was wrong? I believe that was the first time in my life that thoughts of ethnocentrism entered my mind and I had noticed the pattern of increasing Caucasian families taking up residence in Kailua and the coming and going of military. It was the first time in my life I started to feel animosity towards people of light skin, people who had been living around me all my life only now in greater numbers bringing about change.
Time has only increased these trends as nowadays, it’s strangely common to see tour buses coming into Kailua Town dropping off Japanese tourists for a five minute walk to the beach. Earlier in the semester we were asked if we thought that Hawai’i was imperial project. The first thing that came to mind was first the instillation of islands in Kailua Town as ‘beautification’, then the renovation of the stores and restaurants on the strip, and then most recently even further remodeling and relocation of stores, all for the beautification of Kailua, the increase in the number of tour buses bustling through, and the increase new luxurious homes being built, particularly on the lakefront properties of Enchanted Lake, an artificial lake.
The book covers themes of racism not thought about much by many Americans – racism towards Caucasians. The idea of an ingroup and an outgroup as well. At a point in the book, Koa and Ken are talking about Japanese and katonks, Japanese Americans from the mainland, and Koa clearly states that Ken is one of them: he’s a local, even if he may be of Japanese heritage. These sorts of things are actually all too common in Hawai’i, this idea of multiple identities and groups. We are locals first, then our ethnicity, and Americans last – if even that to some people, or when convenient.
I cannot call myself any different than the two adolescent Koa and Ken. I recall going to the beach nearly every weekend and having it mostly to ourselves with the exception of other local families. Then suddenly, it became overcrowded with tourists to the point we stopped going. Sand was kicked up everywhere, the water was no longer clear from there being too many people, and you couldn’t help the feelings arise of wanting them to leave - wanting things to go back to the way they were.
Although Hawai’i has been slowly assimilated since the plantations first began as a booming business, it still continues today. Hawai’i, a rich ecosystem with numerous natural resources is almost solely dependent on tourism for gross domestic product and extremely dependent on imported food and fuel, even though in the past Hawai’i possessed some of the greatest and most refined agricultural systems involving utilization from mountains to sea.
Even though the presence of ingroups and outgroups in locals and mainlanders is strong, it does not mean the two do not get along. Just that, many of those in the ingroups always view the outgroup members and just that – always the “other”. However, there is an exception I have found over the years. Locals within the ingroup tend to accept outsiders readily if they live here and graduate high school locally. High school is highly prized locally as identity and a fast track to acceptance by the ingroup. On the mainland they ask, ‘Where did you go to college?”, however locals instead first ask, “Where’d you go high school?” Roots are very important locally and hometowns create even further breakdowns of ingroups and outgroups locally, but there is always the presence of the greater local ingroup identity of being raised in Hawai’i.
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