The military’s impact on the islands is pervasive, but the pollution they create is not openly obvious to anyone visiting the islands for two weeks. It is not even very obvious to most of the local residents. For the most part you can’t see, smell or taste this pollution. I lived on O’ahu for five years and my first impressions of that island was that, though crowded, it seemed beautiful and pristine. Years later I found out, that impression is only a façade. In reality the Hawaiian Islands are extremely contaminated with military toxins. An actual fact is that the military is an unregulated environmental polluting industry that many people will not want to believe, but the simple truth is...
"Where the U.S. Military goes, so goes... 'the Biggest Unregulated Dirty Industry Polluting Planet Earth!'” (Quote from the International Military Toxics Conference 2005)
The military has installations on all of the major islands but we are especially concerned about the two U.S. Army live-fire training ranges, one on O’ahu at Schofield Barracks and the other site on Hawai’i Island at Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA). We also have information about the U.S. Navy’s impact on the island of Kaho’olawe and their current impact on the NW Hawaiian Islands Marine Sancturary and the War Game activity they practice there seven days a week.
Munitions today are more toxic; toxic to veterans practicing war, toxic to families living downwind. This pollution is also toxic to the aina (land), fresh water aquifers and to the ocean. These awesome Hawaiian Islands are home to over a million residents. Hawai’i is a refuge for endangered species. In Hawai’i, there are more endangered plants and animals than are on any other U.S. Military Base. “As of Feb. 2015 there were 435 endangered and threatened species in the islands. (67 endangered and threatened animal species and 368 endangered and threatened plant species).”
Unexploded ordnance is also a problem, even now maiming and even killing people who stumble across it. (For example, see this story about a recent find on Maui. And this story about unexploded ordnance on Hawai'i island.)
Lindafaye Kroll says, "I became involved in these issues as a volunteer, someone who had never been politically active before. I began working with many ethnicities of Hawai’i residents who love these awesome Hawaiian Islands. I am concerned about contamination and negative impacts on the land and in the sea and how that military war game activity pollution potentially impacts public health. I've spent ten years of researching about Hawaiian and U.S. Military history and how that long standing, not so friendly, relationship impacts island life today."
CALL TO ACTION: HALT LIVE-FIRE TRAINING HAWAI’I
Please kokua (help) us in Hawai’i with your Aloha by adding your support and solidarity in our efforts to stop the toxic pollution caused by military live-fire training. We want all live-fire ranges to be decommissioned in the islands.
Show your support by writing to Hawai’i officials, military and news media.
Hawai’i Political and Military Contacts:
Governor of Hawai’i - governor.hawaii.gov/contact-us*
Protect Hawaiian Land and the Public Health of the Hawaiian people: Halt All Military Live-Fire Training in Hawai’i.
Decommission U.S. Military Live-Fire Training in Hawai’i. The radioactivity and the toxic heavy metals of munitions used in live-fire training have a cumulative negative impact on the environment and on the public health of Hawai’i residents. Seventy-five years is enough, Support the Decommissioning of Live-Fire Training and begin clean-up.
I support the environmental activist movement in Hawai’i to decommission all U.S. Military Live-Fire Training Bases. Plain and simple: 75 years (from 1941 to 2016) is already too much military toxins for the Hawaiian Islands to absorb! Cease and desist and begin clean up!
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