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How did life change in Hawaii and at Pearl Harbor after the attack?

The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Hawaii was at that time a U.S. territory, rather than a state. The day after the attack, Hawaii’s Territorial Governor, Joseph B. Poindexter, declared martial law, which suspended some civil liberties and imposed a curfew on the island to maintain security. National Guard troops were mobilized on the island to maintain order.


About one third of...

The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Hawaii was at that time a U.S. territory, rather than a state. The day after the attack, Hawaii’s Territorial Governor, Joseph B. Poindexter, declared martial law, which suspended some civil liberties and imposed a curfew on the island to maintain security. National Guard troops were mobilized on the island to maintain order.


About one third of Hawaii's population at the time was made up of people of Japanese descent, who had been coming to the island to work on the plantations since the 1800s. In fact, there were more people of Japanese descent in Hawaii than in the mainland U.S. While Japanese and Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps on the mainland—a process that clearly violated the Constitution—very few people of Japanese descent (about 2,000 out of 157,000) were placed in internment centers in Hawaii. They were too essential to running all sectors of the economy and there were too many of them to be interned on the island.


Large numbers of military personnel came to the island and were stationed at Pearl Harbor. Commercial shipping was paused during the war, as all shipping operations were related to the military. Before the war, Hawaii's economy was mainly agricultural, and its main exports were pineapples and sugar. However, the Great Depression had hit the island hard, and the economy was in the doldrums. World War II caused a huge growth in the island's economy, as new businesses developed to meet the needs of the arriving military personnel. In addition, the construction industry boomed. 


Labor union activity was not allowed during the beginning of the war, and, under martial law, wages remained frozen. In 1943, restrictions on labor were ended, and many of the workers at the Hawaiian sugar plantations began to unionize. In fact, workers were unionized at all but one of the island's 35 plantations. However, the plantations faced a decline in the midst of an ongoing construction boom and the growth of other industries, and they never recovered after the war. Following the war, tourism became one of Hawaii's main industries, and it became a state in 1959.

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