That we are an island state is perhaps our greatest strength. It also may be our greatest weakness.
Islands, and island states, are fragile. By definition they’re isolated and vulnerable and have to work harder to stay on the same page. Kamehameha I had to use force to settle the unification question in 1810. Does that question somehow linger in our island state today? The past is always in the present.
Indeed, living in a state of islands is different from living in a state in which all parts are contiguous. Hawaii is the only island state in the country. It’s unique and becoming more unique, or so it seems, all the time. That makes us all the more a laboratory, including a laboratory of insularity.
For our own self-awareness, we need to understand our barriers. Will we be a state of islands or an island state?
At statehood our islands were ohana. But in recent years we’ve felt the drifting of the islands away from each other on initiatives common to the welfare of all of them. A discernable enmity has filtered into the islands’ relationships with each other, slowly substituting separation for solidarity.
Is it big city versus country lifestyle? Not necessarily. The tension seems to start in the country and work its way to the city, then back again. Although the neighbor island population has grown faster than on Oahu over the past 10 years, 70 percent of us still live on Oahu, and the neighbor islands are still intimidated by the prospect of undifferentiated crowds descending on them from Oahu. Will this change at 50 percent?
This disparity in population is linked to other disparities, too — socially, politically and economically. Its distancing effect is felt everywhere. The neighbor islands have come to see themselves as more local than Oahu, which isn’t really so. Do they pity Oahu for its compression or resent it for its affluence?
They don’t want whatever ails Oahu to come to their islands, too, so there’s an understandable wish to impose a protective barrier. It wasn’t whales or berries that made the people on Maui and Kauai so determined to stop the Hawaii Superferry. The benefits of the barrier outweighed the benefits of the ferry.
This "insular drift" admits a defeat in access to interisland travel. Our seagoing adventures in Seaflite and Superferry have failed so perfectly that no one will invest in interisland passenger travel again. We don’t have an interisland ferry system or even a plan to develop one, and that’s frankly pathetic.
These days, you can always find indicia of insular drift, where local people don’t visit other islands as much as they once did, and where islands don’t care to share or cooperate with other islands as much as they once did.
The result is that our interisland relationships are simply not as close as they once were.
After statehood people thought nothing of flying round trip to a neighbor island at $30. Airfares have increased tenfold since then. Coach airfare is now almost $300. That’s prohibitive for most of us. We don’t go unless we’re well heeled, and even then we don’t go often, families included.
The severity of insular drift was revealed when a group in Molokai recently took it upon itself to blockade the harbor and write a manifesto restricting who could visit the island. Inherent was an old hostility against tourists and tourism, the diametric opposite to any friendliness or hospitality. The Molokai B-movie works to blockade tourists, locals and investors. Can we stand by? Yet we do.
The sea change of insular drift swells as populations shift, incomes grow in disparity and airfares rise further beyond our reach. Some people don’t want to connect because they can’t afford to. Others take invidious comparison to outright resentment when they ask, "Am I my neighbor island’s keeper?"
Insular drift is disconnecting our islands and boiling us in the pot. Molokai has dropped out and Lanai isn’t far behind. Although there’s a quiet acceptance of that on Maui, Oahu is unsympathetic.
It’s time for a healing, for cheaper fares, for a ferry and for equalized prices and rates throughout the islands. To build our economy and energy future, we need to review and redefine our interisland relationships.
After all, no island is an island. What better time than now for us to be unified again?
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Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.
