Waging pretend war is becoming popular on O`ahu’s lush northeastern landscape. In the last couple of years, war movies starring Nicholas Cage and Bruce Willis, filmed at Kualoa and Waikane, made rubber-neckers out of anyone driving the winding two-lane road up Ko`olauloa. Pyrotechnics blew by day and bright camera lights glowed at night.
Now the U.S. Marines want in – or, rather, back in, to be precise.
While some believe the proposed explosive-free jungle warfare training will be far less disruptive than the movies, many in the rural community around Waikane have some unfinished business with the military. Decades of artillery training on land leased to the Marines by the Kamaka family left the land contaminated with ordnance. When the family tried to force the military to clean it up, as lease terms required, the Department of Defense instead condemned the land. The cost of cleaning up the land for unrestricted use was, the DOD said, many times higher than purchasing it outright. Now, more than a decade after the condemnation, the Marines want to resume training at Waikane.
The proposal has struck a raw nerve among the Kamaka family, area residents and the wider community of activists who are pressing for the restoration not only of Waikane, but of Makua Valley in West O`ahu, the island of Kaho`olawe, and other areas in the islands where the military’s scars on the land run deep.
The Marines are in the process of conducting an environmental assessment for the jungle training plan, first disclosed last July. While the EA is not the full-blown environmental impact statement that the community has asked for, the Marines are seeking out public comment in a way that is unusual for a standard EA.
“There was a consensus [among community representatives] that you need to have a public meeting where people can come to hear each other,” says June Cleghorn, a cultural resource specialist at the Marine Corps Base Hawai`i.
How that concession to the community will influence the outcome remains to be seen. A draft EA is expected in June or July, according a Marine Corps spokesperson.
What’s on the Table
Preparing the EA is Honolulu firm Wil Chee – Planning Inc., with help from a handful of other local contractors studying the proposed action’s effects on terrestrial and aquatic biology, water and air quality, archaeology, traffic, socio-economics, environmental justice, and noise.
What exactly do the Marines have in mind?
For a few days two to three times a month, 100 to 150 Marines will board as many as four buses at Kane`ohe Marine Base, zip across H-3, and then follow the winding route up the two-lane Kamehameha Highway to Waikane. On “rare” occasions, they’ll make the 25-minute trip in Humvees or seven-ton trucks. Once parked, they’ll walk up the gravel and dirt road to the training area, where they’ll split into platoons and squads, according to informational materials on the proposed action.
While sporadic use will be the norm, military documents state that the Marines may occasionally use the area for two months straight, “to meet mission requirements.” Sometimes, the place will be left alone for up to two months. At the training area, troops will learn how to navigate streams, ridges, and dense foliage, while avoiding fake mines and booby traps, according to a summary of actions. They’ll also practice hostage rescue and attacking each other with blanks, chalk bullets, paintball, or laser guns. Reconnaissance through tree-climbing and rappelling down the valley ridges is also part of the plan.
The MCBH emphasizes that no aviation or mechanized support will be involved and that no live fire will be used. Prohibiting live fire weapons and ammunition “was an important concession to make to the surrounding communities,” said Major Chris Hughes, public affairs director for the Marine Corps Base Hawai`i, in a press release last year. The training, he concluded, was “exceedingly important now, post 9/11.”
Two years ago, the Islamic militant group Abu Sayyaf took two American missionaries and a Filipino nurse hostage in the jungles of Basilan Island, in the Philippines. American troops from Hawai`i flew in to help hunt the guerrillas, but returned saying that they were inadequately prepared for operating in thick jungle. Since Waikane has a “triple-canopy” jungle, similar to that in the Philippines, the Marines decided to revive the old training ground. That, at least, is the account offered by the Marines.
However, the idea that Marines need to train for operations in the Philippines is disputed by the Demilitarize Hawai`i — Aloha `Aina Campaign (associated with American Friends Service Committee, or AFSC, a Quaker organization). A flier it distributed notes that Filipinos erupted in “massive protests” against the intervention of U.S. troops in the Philippines, making their further use there unlikely. In addition, the flier says, “the Philippines’ constitution prohibits foreign military operations in the Philippines.”
Once a Farm
Ten years have passed since District Court Judge Samuel King approved the government’s condemnation of the Kamaka family land. Raymond Kamaka, who was the last Kamaka to farm the land, can now only watch as the jungle overtakes places he once cared for. He sometimes makes the trip up Waikane Valley Road to gather and visit the sacred heiau named after his great-great grandfather, Kahukukala, which sits on a ridge overlooking the Waikane Taro Flats, a site Raymond’s father, Ronald, had registered as one of the nation’s historic sites to protect it.
A flimsy wire fence that runs along the proposed training area, posted with danger and keep-out signs, is supposed to deter people from coming in, but on the weekends, Raymond says, “It’s nothing but dirtbikers and pig hunters.”
But what really bothers Raymond is that his neighbors, who are “ten steps from our property line,” are still able to farm. “They found bombs on their land. But [the government] didn’t stop them from farming,” he says.
Although many people trespass within the off-limits area, the jungle-training proposal flies in the face of everything the public and the Kamakas had been led to believe about the hazards buried within the 187-acre parcel, part of a larger Waiahole-Waikane training area.
Through World War II up until the 1960s, the military shot up and bombed land it leased from the McCandless and Kamaka families, which had controlled the area since at least the early 1900s. Under the lease terms, the military was supposed to have restored the land to its original condition and remove all ammunition, shells and explosives when the lease ended. The lease also required that the military replant the impact area.
In June 1976, Colonel Robert E. Switzer of the U.S. Marine Corps informed the Kamakas that the U.S. government had fulfilled its lease terms, and that the property was “free of ordnance hazards, well covered with vegetation and in good state of police.” The Kamakas, however, found the area was littered with shell casings and explosion craters. So from August to September 1976, the Marines cleared the land of 24,400 pounds of ordnance and scrap. A report of the cleanup concluded that the area’s heavy vegetation, rough terrain, steep slope, and embedded shells made it impossible to certify the land as ordnance-free.
Ignorant of the USMC’s conclusion, the Kamakas lived and farmed on 30 acres of their property for several years without incident, digging with plows and tractors to depths of more than five feet at times. But in December 1983, heavy rains exposed thousands of unexploded rounds on the property. A military sweep that month yielded 480 3.5-inch rockets.
On January 18, 1984, the U.S. Marines prepared a preliminary environmental assessment for ordnance removal. To clear the Waikane parcel, a series of up to 2,000 rounds would have to be detonated, one at a time over 90 days, to set off the potentially explosive ordnance buried within the parcel. The environmental impacts, the preliminary EA states, would be noise and vibrations during explosions, minor vegetation damage and one-and-a-half to two-foot wide craters, six to eight inches deep. The EA noted that there would be some damage to the Kamaka family shrine, as well. To do the cleanup, a state Conservation District Use Permit would have been needed, since part of the land is within the state Conservation District.
In February 1984, the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force began a three-month cleanup of the area over 85 percent of the property’s surface. The effort yielded 16,000 pounds of ordnance. The rest of the land, which was covered with vegetation, and all underground ordnance remained untouched.
After the cleanup, Raymond says, he threw a thank-you party at the Kane`ohe Marine Base, killing one of his pigs for the event. To his surprise, however, finding that it would be too costly to continue, the Marines gave up on the clean-up effort and began condemnation proceedings – a move that the Kamakas would fight in court.
Condemnation
Congress authorized the property’s purchase in November 1986, and in January 1989, the military filed its for condemnation and deposited a check for $735,000, the estimated amount of compensation, in an account. The Kamaka family filed its opposition that June.
U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra found that the military had not proved that it couldn’t clear the land practically and at reasonable cost, and allowed the military time to determine whether that was possible. The case was later given to Judge King, who, on June 16, 1993, after reviewing the results of the government’s surveys and studies, ruled that the U.S. government had proved that Kamakas’ land was so contaminated with unexploded ordnance that it had no choice but to condemn it.
Judge King’s Findings of Fact (FOF) states that for about two-and-a-half weeks in June 1990, the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Center had tested its ability to clear the land using available technology. The FOF states that 75MM shells could have penetrated as deep as 100 inches into the soil – too deep for the military’s best metal detectors, which can only detect shells embedded in the soil as far as 40 inches deep.
Clearing ordnance that lay deeper “could only be achieved by clearing the property of all vegetation and then either removing enough earth to get the ordnance items within the range of he locators or by mass soil processing,” the FOF states. “Either method would cause destruction to the environment.”
If the Kamakas wanted to farm, recreate and construct sheds, pipelines, and the like, the land would have to be cleaned to a depth of at least 10 feet. And even then, there would still be the risk of future exposure by erosion or disturbance, the FOF states.
Cleanup would not only be impractical, King wrote, it would also cost too much. The property’s estimated market value, $735,000, was a pittance compared to the $5.8 million it would cost to do a shallow clearing, one to two feet deep, or the $7.3 million it would take to do a slightly deeper one, one to four feet deep.
A Settlement
All of the 30-plus Kamaka family heirs, except for Raymond and McRonald Kamaka, accepted the court’s judgment (although McRonald did sign on years later). “We couldn’t disprove that it wasn’t that bad,” says Judy Tsutsui, one of the Kamaka family heirs. After the initial ruling by King allowing condemnation, the next phase was to determine a fair market value that all parties could agree on. The Kamakas felt their property was worth much more than the initial $735,000 the government had proposed.
Tsutsui and Leroy Chung, both Kamaka family heirs, suggested that the land could be valued anywhere from $5 million to $14 million, considering the fact that the family could have built many homes on the property.
The Kamaka family brought in Davianna McGregor of the University of Hawai`i to relay to the government the importance of ancestral lands to native Hawaiians. The government dismissed her testimony, saying it had nothing to do with appraisal. In the end, the family agreed to a sum of $2,099,922 for their property, except for the lo`i and the heiau, which they felt were too sacred ever to be sold.
According to the May 1994 agreement that laid out the final settlement terms, the family could regain title to the property if the Secretary of the Navy decided it was able to clear the property of all explosive hazards, and if Congress appropriated the money to do so. Title to the property, or a portion of it, would be returned to family members who provided written consent to the reconveyance and agreed to pay the fair market value of the land at the time of taking — $1.75 million plus interest — or fair market value at the time of resale, whichever amount was lower.
The agreement also states that every 10 years, the Kane`ohe Marine Corps Air Station’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel must assess whether it’s feasible to clean the area.
“The United States and the Defendants recognize that the probable presence of unexploded ordnance on the subject property presents a danger to those who enter the property,” the agreement stated. But acknowledging the Kamaka family’s ties to the land, the agreement allows the Kamakas three visits a year for as long as three hours each to the ahu (shrine) and the lo`i, solely for cultural or religious purposes. Visitors, as many as ten at a time, must be escorted by Kane`ohe Marine base Explosive Ordnance Division personnel, and must all be named defendants in the case or their lineal descendants, and be 15 years old or older. Visitors must provide written notice of their intent to visit 10 days ahead of time.
Throughout the trial, Raymond Kamaka never wavered in his opposition, stating that the Kingdom of Hawai`i still exists, making the condemnation process illegal. He also refused to pay his federal taxes, which landed in him in jail from 1993 to 1995.
“The news media made like it was tax evasion and postal fraud, but I was fighting to save my land,” he told Environment Hawai`i. “The fine print was that I was harassing the governmentÉ[But] after I got out, I got an apology from the government.”
In August 1994, after the rest of his family had agreed to a settlement, Raymond wrote to King from federal prison in California that since he had not signed or agreed to the settlement, the court should not distribute the settlement money. Distribution can come about only after all parties named in the dispute over our family’s ancestral land have signed, he wrote, adding that he would be lodging his case with the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee.
Because of Raymond’s resistance, the case remains open and status conferences with Judge King and attorneys from both sides continue. At a 1998 status conference, Judge King told the parties that “this case has Hawaiian problems and cannot be closed out at this time.” In subsequent status conferences, Raymond expressed that he did not want his $60,000 portion of the settlement, but wanted his land back. The next status conference is scheduled for October 17, 2003.
Reaching Out
“I still have my property as far as I’m concerned,” Raymond says. But when he found out about the Marine Corps’ plan to resume training, he was stunned.
“Somehow the land cleaned itself up and they can come back in. We never had too much people up there, mostly farmers. Now there are bike riders, pakalolo growers, DOFAW [state Division of Forestry and Wildlife] and hunters. There was supposed to have been an eight-foot fence with barbed wire to keep people out” — a shibai, he says. Now with the jungle training proposal, he says, “Some of the family felt, ‘What is going on?'”
Tsutsui says when she found out, “It didn’t surprise me that they would pull that. There they go again.”
Against this history, the Marine Corps knew its proposal to begin sending hundreds of troops to tromp around Waikane every month would be met with outrage.
Last August, shortly after news of the jungle training broke, Hughes, the public affairs director for the Marines in Hawai`i, briefed the Kahalu`u Neighborhood Board.
Immediately, he was asked the obvious question: if the land is not safe for the Kamakas to use, how can it be safe for Marines? To this, Hughes replied that an environmental assessment would help discover what hazards are still there and if it’s found to be too dangerous, “the game is over.”
One resident at the Neighborhood Board meeting said that condemning land that the Marines had promised – but failed – to care for was the same as stealing it. If the land was safe enough to conduct training, he said, it could be safe enough to return.
Some board members believed that an EA was a waste of time and that the Marines should immediately begin preparing an environmental impact statement, including a cultural impact statement. In addition, the board discussed the idea that among the alternatives considered in the environmental assessment, the Marines should give as much weight to clean-up and return of the land to farming as it did to use of the land as a training area.
In the end, the board voted to ask the Marines for an EIS that would include “an assessment of restoration opportunities for environmental, cultural, and social values associated with the whole ahupua`a.” It also asked for funds that would allow the community to hire its own consultants for an independent evaluation of the planning documents.
Despite this vote, the Marines have kept with their plan to produce a less comprehensive environmental assessment. No decision had been made by mid-April as to what alternative actions to lay out in the document (other than the no-action alternative), but cleaning the unexploded ordinance from the land was not among options being considered, sources told Environment Hawai`i.
Around the time of the neighborhood board meeting, Major Robert Rouse, in charge of shepherding the jungle training plan through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, was quietly gathering input from individuals in the Waikane community — a tactic that, according to Kahalu`u Neighborhood Board president Amy Luersen, only served to deepen suspicion.
Raymond Kamaka says he didn’t find out about the proposal until someone called him saying, “Did you know the military is having meetings with WWCA [the Waiahole-Waikane Community Association], trying to get on people’s good side in the community?” The meetings, which were indeed held, were “with the wrong people,” he adds, “mostly lessees, not landowners…none of them know the real story of Waikane mountain.”
Taking advice from Luersen and others, the Marines agreed to create a Community Advisory Group with members of the Kahalu`u Neighborhood Board, area legislators and others. The group would advise the Marines on how to address the broader community.
The first product of that group was a community meeting held at Windward Community College March 5. Comments made during that meeting, the Marines promised, would be addressed in the environmental assessment and posted on the EA website. Such extensive public participation, they stressed, goes beyond what is required for an EA.
That evening, Major Rouse received a non-stop verbal blasting from some of East O`ahu’s preeminent environmental and cultural watchdogs. Most of the attendees were adamant that the military needed to clean the lands it contaminates.
A Filipino graduate student at the University of Hawai`i protested the justification the Marines were offering to reopen Waikane. U.S. military involvement the Philippines violated the country’s sovereignty and destabilized the peace process there, she said, adding that the expense of reopening Waikane simply to train soldiers so they can eradicate a few hundred guerrillas was outrageous.
Because he dealt only with fulfilling the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, Rouse said, he couldn’t speak to the foreign policy of the United States. But under NEPA, he said, a need only has to be stated, not justified, adding, “There is a continuing requirement to have jungle training. The Philippines is just an example.”
Others, like Cathy Mattoon of the Punalu`u Community Association, didn’t believe the Marines needed “one more square foot!” According to the Demilitarize Hawaii – Aloha `Aina Campaign, nearly a quarter of the island of O`ahu is controlled by the military. Kyle Kajihiro, who spoke at the meeting and works with the AFSC’s Honolulu office, told Environment Hawai`i, “The pattern has been whenever the U.S. is at war, it uses the occasion to acquire more land in Hawai`i.”
Paul Reppun, a taro farmer from Waiahole, said at the March meeting, “I don’t care if you go in there with bedroom slippers,” if the land can be farmed, it should be put to that use immediately.
Yet another testifier told the Marines to, “grow your own jungle.”
The testimony was music to Raymond’s ears. Not one to make a loud fuss out of respect for his family, Raymond says he had long felt like he was alone in his fight and was “so happy” to hear his position acknowledged by others in his community.
The strong community opposition was enough for John Morgan of nearby Kualoa Ranch to withdraw an offer he made last year to the Marines to look at the ranch as an alternative in case Waikane could not be used.
Cleanup
At the March meeting, some people felt the land could be opened up to the public if it was safe enough for Marines to stomp around. Rouse, however, responded that the land was still unsafe for unrestricted public use, which might include farming and digging.
“Marines have a different standard of safety,” he said.
Tsutsui says, “At that meeting, what I didn’t have a chance to say was they kept telling us-and this is not in the records, it was pre-court time when they were trying to get us to accept the $735000-they kept telling us they wouldn’t put one of their soldiers back on there again,” because it was so unsafe.
When someone asked Rouse if he thought the Kamakas had been wronged, Rouse was booed when he said no. He added afterwards that it is Congress’ place, not his, to issue apologies. Rouse also rejected the idea of cleaning the area under the current NEPA process.
Despite the community’s sentiments, Rouse’s position is “going to hold,” says Cleghorn, whose supervisor is Rouse. The current EA is only looking at the proposed action, not cleanup, “but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen,” she says. “It’s just not going to happen under MCBH process.”
“If you look at the military’s history in Hawai`i, it stinks,” she continues, and the “legal technicalities” that led to the condemnation of the Kamaka land were “unfortunate.”
Except for Rouse, she notes, all of those involved in preparing the EA live in Hawai`i. “We don’t like the fact we can’t clean it up, either,” she says. “We knew that was going to be one of the first things that came up. One of the family members stood up [at the March meeting] saying, ‘You want to dirty this valley, why don’t you clean it?’ People at the Marine base are very sympathetic to that. It’s a no-win situation in terms of cleaning. We say, ‘Go to your congressmen.’ You hate to hear that,” she says, but that’s what will be required to get the valley cleaned.
On the other hand, suggestions the advisory group have made to require water quality testing, allow restoration of ancient sites and access to cultural sites by the public, Hawaiians, and school groups, are “definite possibilities,” Cleghorn says.
Raymond Kamaka continues his resistance to the condemnation. “When you make a promise to the kupunas (elders), you don’t go back on that,” he says. As for the MCBH’s plan to do jungle training, “I pray on it,” he says, “and let the Lord take care of business.”
To comment or to find out more on the EA, visit [url=http://www.mcbh.usmc.mil/EA/ea_home.htm]www.mcbh.usmc.mil/EA/ea_home.htm[/url]
For background on the Kamaka condemnation, look up the August 1992 issue of Environment Hawai`i.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 14, Number 5 November 2003
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