Offering their aloha (love and affection) to U.S. and Allied soldiers, hula dancers serve as state hostesses, while island men are relegated to the backdrop of these

Military personnel came to the islands, instead of Hawaiians going to the continent to entertain as they had in previous decades.

new technologies endowed islands with new significance. Aviation meant they could serve as landing strips; radio meant they could host transmitters. In 1935 the State Department announced that it was annexing Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands in the central Pacific. Two days later, it hastily rescinded the announcement. The United States didn’t ne

West Side Story was phenomenally popular; it’s had some forty thousand productions since 1957. In 1961 the producers turned it into an equally popular film (with the controversial verse modified), which won ten Academy Awards, including for best picture. It quickly became, as it remains today, the first point of reference for mainlanders thinking a