With 6 percent of its land occupied by military bases, Hawai‘i is our most densely militarized state. But young activists are rejecting recruiting efforts and military influence.
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April 17, 2024 / Saliha Bayrak / The Nation - Pete Doktor was lost. Living in Southern California, with the end of high school approaching, he wanted to be a musician, but had no idea how he would pay for music school. His father, a World War II veteran with a wealth of stories on fighting fascism, told him the military was offering money for college.
Doktor had no intention of joining right away, but decided to take a qualification exam. The recruiters started pressuring him, asking if he was too “scared” to enlist and telling him that experience as an army medic would help him later find work. The idea of being able to find such stability and fulfill his “kūleana”—the Hawaiian word for responsibility—was eventually enough to persuade him.
But when Doktor left three years later and started searching for jobs, employers told him the basic first aid training he received was not nearly enough to find work in medicine. He felt misled. “[The military] has an arsenal of things to use to trap people wherever they’re most vulnerable or desperate,” he said.
Motivated by this dissolution, he instead sought to reconnect with his mother’s side and teach English in Okinawa, once a sovereign kingdom in the Pacific that became a military colony of Japan. His next move was to Hawai‘i, where he would learn demilitarization from the Kānaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiians, and “fight the global military empire.” For over 10 years, he worked to ensure that the most vulnerable of his students did not become prey to military recruiters as he once was.
