World War II
On December 7, 1941, a wave of Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor, jolting the USA into WW II. The attack caught the US fleet totally by surprise. Within minutes the USS Arizona went down in a fiery inferno, trapping 1177 men beneath the surface. Twenty other US ships were sunk or damaged, along with 347 aircraft. More than 2,500 people were killed.
Throughout the war, Oahu served as the command post for US Pacific operations. Hawaii was placed under martial law, and Oahu took on the face of a military camp. Already heavily militarized, vast tracts of Hawaii’s land were turned over to the US forces for expanded military bases, training and weapons testing. Much of that land would never be returned to Hawaii ownership.
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Queen Liliuokalani
 Queen Liliuokalani (1891-1893) was even more determined than Kalakaua to strengthen the power of the monarchy.However, in January 1893, as Liliuokalani was about to proclaim a new constitution to restore royal powers, a group of white business men, with the aid of armed US troops, declared the monarchy overthrown. They announced a provisional government led by Sanford Dole, son of a pioneer missionary. Wanting to avoid bloodshed, the queen stepped down.
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Kamehameha the Great
 At the time of Cook’s arrival in Hawaii in 1778, the islands were divided into separate warring chiefdoms. Kamehameha the Great, who by 1791 became sole chief of the Big Island, was to become the first to unite all the Hawaiian Islands after conquering Maui, Molokai and Oahu. Kauai was never conquered after several unsuccessful attempts due to the fierce seas surrounding it, but Kauai did agree to a treaty in 1810.
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 Captain James Cook is credited with discovering the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. He named them the Sandwich Islands, in honor of John Montague, the Earl of Sandwich. However, the islands may have already been visited by Europeans prior to Cook. There is speculation that Captain Gaetano of Spain had landed in Hawaii in the 16th century.
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 The first people to set foot on Hawaii were probably Polynesian fishermen, or perhaps defeated warriors whose canoes were drawn hopelessly northward into unfamiliar waters. They arrived by a combination of extraordinary good luck and an uncanny ability to sail and navigate without instruments, using the sun by day and the moon and rising stars by night.
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History of Hawaii
