Oahu: Kingdom, Infamy, Memory

Royal houses, war harbors, and the institutions that hold Hawaii's story

Six places on Oahu where sovereignty was made, taken, and mourned: the only royal palace on American soil, where a queen was imprisoned in 1895; the kingdom that 162 sailors and marines from the USS Boston ended in 1893; the harbor where 2,403 Americans died on December 7, 1941; the memorial that straddles the sunken Arizona; the museum a grieving prince built for the last Kamehameha heir; and the tuff cone the Hawaiians named Leahi before British sailors mistook its crystals for diamonds.

Itinerary

1. 'Iolani Palace — The only royal palace on American soil stands beneath banyan trees in downtown Honolulu. King Kalakaua built it in 1882 with electric lights before the White House had them. Its throne room hosted his coronation -- and, in 1895, the trial of Queen Lili'uokalani, who was then imprisoned for nine months in a room upstairs, where she sewed a quilt that still hangs there.
2. Hawaiian Kingdom — Kamehameha I unified the islands by 1810; for the next century the Hawaiian Kingdom had a constitution, a postal system, its own currency, and ambassadors in Washington, London, and Paris. Sugar undid it. In January 1893, 162 sailors and marines from the USS Boston backed the coup, and Lili'uokalani yielded under protest to a force she could not resist.
3. Attack on Pearl Harbor — At 7:48 a.m. on December 7, 1941, the first of 353 Japanese aircraft swept over the Koolau Range toward Battleship Row. Within two hours 2,403 Americans were dead, eight battleships hit, and the Arizona destroyed when a bomb reached her forward magazine, killing 1,177 of her crew. The attack meant to cripple the Pacific Fleet instead awoke a sleeping giant.
4. Pearl Harbor National Memorial — Alfred Preis's 184-foot memorial straddles the sunken Arizona without touching it, its sag in the center meant to express "initial defeat and ultimate victory." Below, 1,102 sailors and Marines remain entombed, and oil still rises drop by drop -- the "tears of the Arizona." Behind it the battleship Missouri, where Japan surrendered in 1945, faces the wreck in watch.
5. Bishop Museum — Charles Reed Bishop built this museum in 1889 for a wife who could not see it -- Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last legal heir of the Kamehameha dynasty. Its koa-wood Hawaiian Hall now holds the world's largest collection of Polynesian artifacts, over 24 million natural-history specimens, the war god Ku returned in 2018, and the personal papers of Queen Lili'uokalani.
6. Diamond Head — The Hawaiians named it Leahi -- lae, browridge, and ahi, tuna -- for a ridgeline that traces a yellowfin's dorsal fin. British sailors in 1825 saw calcite crystals in the sand, called them diamonds, and the wrong name stuck. The tuff cone is 400,000 years old, was fortified as Fort Ruger in 1908, and on New Year's Day 1969 hosted Hawaii's Woodstock.