"Here is the enthralling story of Hawaii during World War II as shown through a fascinating text and hundreds of rare and historic photographs. World War II s disruptions were felt throughout the United States, but nowhere more strongly than in Hawaii. Beginning with the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the years of change and the restrictions that in 1945 caused the islands to undergo an experience unlike anywhere else in the country." From Amazon.

When war struck December 7, 1941, the people of Hawaii were not unprepared. Within minutes after bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, a well-rehearsed disaster relief plan went into full operation. Thousands of volunteers of all ages and races toiled selflessly to bring order out of chaos. Even before the pall of smoke had died away, air raid trenches had begun to crisscross lawns. By nightfall, windows were blacked out, curfew stilled the darkness, and citizen-soldiers stood girded for a last-ditch fight. During the following tension-ridden days, the entire populace was fingerprinted and inoculated; gas masks were issued and evacuation kits prepared. Barbed wire entanglements, taped windows, sandbag barricades, camouflaged buildings, gas alarms—everywhere were constant, grim reminders of total war. No other American community felt the tensions and shapeless fears the Islands knew during those first months after Pearl Harbor. And, as the Pacific war progressed, no other American community felt its impact so much as Hawaii. Headquarters area, training, staging, and supply area, repair base—Hawaii served as the springboard of the Pacific offensive. Hordes of troops and war workers deluged the Islands; land and buildings were taken over by the armed forces. Controls of every type plagued businesses and individuals. No phase of Island living was left untouched by the war. Hawaii's War Years, 1941–1945, the official history of Hawaii's dramatic part in World War II, is a comprehensive, unbiased account based on material collected over a six-year period by the Hawaii War Records Depository. Written by an Island newspaperwoman with the proper perspective for a subject of such scope, the book does not attempt to render judgments. It is primarily a book of record, a straightforward presentation of facts.

Just as World War I introduced Americans to Europe, making an indelible impression on thousands of farmboys who were changed forever “after they saw Paree,” so World War II was the beginning of America’s encounter with the East – an encounter whose effects are still being felt and absorbed. No single place was more symbolic of this initial encounter than Hawaii, the target of the first unforgettable Japanese attack on American forces, and, as the forward base and staging area for all military operations in the Pacific, the “first strange place” for close to a million soldiers, sailors, and marines on their way to the horrors of war. But as Beth Bailey and David Farber show in this evocative and timely book, Hawaii was also the first strange place on another kind of journey, toward the new American society that began to emerge in the postwar era. Unlike the largely rigid and static social order of prewar America, this was to be a highly mobile and volatile society of mixed racial and cultural influences, one above all in which women and minorities would increasingly demand and receive equal status. With consummate skill and sensitivity, Bailey and Farber show how these unprecedented changes were tested and explored in the highly charged environment of wartime Hawaii. Most of the hundreds of thousands of men and women whom war brought to Hawaii were expecting a Hollywood image of “paradise.” What they found instead was vastly different: a complex crucible in which radically diverse elements – social, racial, sexual – were mingled and transmuted in the heat and strain of war. Drawing on the rich and largely untapped reservoir of documents, diaries, memoirs, and interviews with men and women who were there, the authors vividly recreate the dense, lush, atmosphere of wartime Hawaii – an atmosphere that combined the familiar and exotic in a mixture that prefigured the special strangeness of American society today.

Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941--in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, "a date which will live in infamy." More than 350 Japanese bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes struck Hawai'i in two waves, sinking or disabling eighteen ships and destroying more than two hundred aircraft. Close to 2,500 American military and civilians died that morning, another 1,178 were wounded. The Hawaiian Islands had been pulled into the Pacific War and the lives of its citizens were irrevocably changed. Hawai'i Chronicles III: World War Two in Hawai'i looks at the human and social impact of the war on the people of Hawai'i from 1938, when speculation of a Pacific War first surfaced, to the era of postwar prosperity that followed. Editor Bob Dye has selected articles that originally appeared in the popular monthly magazine Paradise of the Pacific (now known as Honolulu magazine). An introduction describes the history of the magazine and the colorful characters who published and edited it. Dye then poses the question: How did Hawai'i's citizenry cope with the war? Blackouts, media censorship, gas and food rationing were imposed. Schools were commandeered, jobs were changed or modified to support the war effort (lei makers were set to making camouflage netting). And soldiers were everywhere: stringing barbed wire (along Waikiki Beach!), guarding public buildings and searching anyone who entered, worrying parents when they dated their daughters. Paradise of the Pacific provided its readers with an informative, perceptive, and often entertaining look at these and other everyday experiences of life in wartime Hawai'i.

Micronesians often liken the Pacific War to a typhoon, one that swept away their former lives and brought dramatic changes to their understandings of the world and their places in it. Whether they spent the war in bomb shelters, in sweet potato fields under the guns of Japanese soldiers, or in their homes on atolls sheltered from the war, Micronesians who survived those years know that their peoples passed through a major historical transformation. Yet Pacific War histories scarcely mention the Islanders across whose lands and seas the fighting waged. Memories of War sets out to the fill that historical gap by presenting the missing voices of Micronesians and by viewing those years from their perspectives. The focus is on Micronesian remembrances—the ritual commemorations, features of the landscape, stories, dances, and songs that keep their memories of the conflict alive. The inclusion of numerous and extensive interviews and songs is an important feature of this book, allowing Micronesians to speak for themselves about their experiences. In addition, they also reveal distinctively Micronesian cultural memories of war. Memories of War preserves powerful and poignant memories for Micronesians; it also demonstrates to students of history and culture the extent to which cultural practices and values shape the remembrance of personal experience.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched an attack against United States naval forces stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. But what if the Japanese followed up their air assault with an invasion and occupation of Hawaii? With American military forces subjugated and civilians living in fear of their conquerors, there is no one to stop the Japanese from using the islands' resources to launch an offensive against America's western coast.