Hawaii: the Pacific Paradise

Gorgeous cinematography highlights this engaging popular history of the discovery, settlement, and eventual annexation of Hawaii. The first volume, Hawaii: Paradise Sought chronicles the discovery of Hawaii some 1200 to 1300 years ago by Polynesian sailors, the growth of Hawaii's indigenous population, and the coming of Captain Cook in 1778 with his gifts of cholera, smallpox, and measles. Signaling the "beginning of the end," Cook's landing would be followed by a free-for-all in which British, French, American, and Russian governments would seek to carve out control over the islands. But the islands were initially united from within, not without, when King Kamehameha put the muscle big time on rival tribes and became the first of five ruling Kamehameha's. But it was too late: in less than a century from Cook's arrival the native population had dwindled from 300,000 down to an alarming 50,000. The second volume, Hawaii: Paradise Found, opens with the inspiring story of the Belgian priest Father Damien and his work with a Hawaiian leper colony in the latter half of the 19th-century (the subject of the documentary Molokai-Kalaupapa: The People, The Place, The Legacy, reviewed in our January 1991 issue). Also covered are the growth of the tourist industry, the wave of immigration (from China, Portugal, Korea, the Philippines, and Japan) that worked the sugar fields, the attack on Pearl Harbor (a segment handled with too much melodrama), and Hawaii's statehood in 1959. The last half of the second volume offers an overview of each of the islands. A good combination of history, culture, and sightseeing, Hawaii: The Pacific Paradise is highly recommended. (R. Pitman)