Hawaii History

“The Aloha State” became the 50^th state in 1959, but the history of Hawaii goes back centuries earlier. Roughly 1,500 years ago, Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands first set foot on Hawaii's Big Island. With only the stars to guide them, they miraculously sailed over 2000 miles in canoes to migrate to the Islands.


500 years later, settlers from Tahiti arrived, bringing their beliefs in gods and demi-gods and instituting a strict social hierarchy based on a kapu system.

In 1778, Captain James Cook, landed on Kauai at Waimea Bay. Naming the archipelago the "Sandwich Islands" in honor of the Earl of Sandwich, Cook opened the doors to the west. Cook was killed only a year later in Kealakekua Bay on Hawaii's Big Island.


In 1791, North Kohala born Kamehameha united the warring factions of Hawaii’s Big Island and went on to unify all of the Hawaiian Islands into one royal kingdom in 1810. In 1819, less than a year after King Kamehameha's death, his son, Liholiho, abolished the ancient kapu system.


In 1820, the first Protestant missionaries arrived on Hawaii’s Big Island filling the void left after the end of the kapu system. Hawaii became a port for seamen, traders and whalers.In 1898, Hawaii became a territory of the United States.

In the 20th century, sugar and pineapple plantations fueled Hawaii's economy bringing an influx of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese immigrants. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Oahu. Four years later, on September 2, 1945, Japan signed its unconditional surrender on theUSS Battleship Missouri, which still rests in Pearl Harbor today.