Looking beyond totals makes vote suspect

Wendell Nakamura writes that “94 percent of the people of Hawaii voted yes to becoming the 50th state” in 1959 (Letters, May 18). Fact check: Only 22 percent of the population even voted in the so-called plebiscite for statehood.

More importantly, though, are the questions of who was allowed to vote, and for what. Any U.S. citizen who had resided in the islands for a year was allowed to vote, which included large numbers of American military servicemen and their families, who were essentially the occupation force that has held Hawaii since the purported annexation in 1898. Imagine U.S. soldiers being allowed to vote in Iraqi elections today!

The question on the ballot was: “Shall Hawaii immediately be admitted into the union as a state?” Yes or No? Yet, the U.N. resolution guiding the process for removal of territories from the List of Non-Self-Governing Territories under which Hawaii was administered (Resolution 742) stated: “the manner in which Territories . . . can become fully self-governing is primarily through the attainment of independence.”

Why was the option of independence not on the ballot in 1959?

But with the wrong question asked of the wrong population, even the vote in 1959 was not a valid act of self-determination, and did nothing to legitimize the occupation or legally transfer Hawaii’s sovereignty to the United States.

Scott Crawford
Hana