Letters to the Editor
Anti-gay attack case shows need for law
"I ask the court to set aside the emotion that's surrounding this case," remarked one of the attorneys representing one of those charged in a vicious attack on a group of gay campers on Kaua'i. The other attorney thought the charge should not be attempted murder, but rather "reckless behavior."
The governor doesn't even think gay people encounter threats like this in Hawai'i.
The emotion in this case is a manifestation of a deeply embedded culture of homophobia. It is also the motive for the attack and thus profoundly relevant.
More than simply threatening the lives of the victims, the perpetrators demonstrated hatred against all gay people, proclaiming the moral authority of God and the Bible to "kill all faggots and sodomizers."
Blame for this cowardly act also rests with those in our community who are silent in the face of anti-gay discrimination, and especially those who champion it in the guise of protecting traditional family values.
I call on the governor to sign the hate-crimes bill and for the Board of Education to implement its anti-harassment rule, known as Chapter 19, immediately to address the very real threat of anti-gay violence in our schools and communities.
Eduardo Hernandez
State must address serious health issues
On May 6, Mike Markrich wrote about "The terrible costs of childhood obesity." I have been wondering if people in our state government and in the Department of Education read it. If they did, I am curious to know their reaction. Isn't this social malady correctable?
Why do the people of Hawai'i have to pay millions per year to treat diabetes, just one of the diseases caused by obesity, when it is often preventable? This price tag is almost a hundred times higher than what it would cost to pay for certified physical education teachers in our elementary schools. Isn't an ounce of prevention still worth a pound of cure?
The war against obesity, diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer and many other problems is abetted by our state's system before our children are given a fair opportunity to be competitive in this struggle. In too many cases, the battle is lost before our students enter intermediate school.
I commend Markrich for his frank appraisal of the ensuing health epidemic. Those whom we have taking up the fight for us are too often state bureaucrats who are not keyed in to the specific problem or may not be sure how to proceed. Our children deserve advocates in government and educational institutions who will vigorously address the serious health issues faced by our youth.
Jody Hisaka
President 2001-2002, Hawai'i Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance
Gambling won't work in this Island setting
"Gambling firm halts floating casino plan" was a good enterprise story on June 5. This is the first concrete information I have seen about a possible location for a casino. Why West O'ahu? I thought this facility was for tourists.
People believe gambling is a "pot of gold," but it frequently does not work out. That's why the barge firm pulled out. If it can't have a facility that it can float away when it goes bankrupt, it is not interested.
Louisiana is an excellent example of what can go wrong for a state beyond the tragedy of individuals who become gambling addicts. The body politic can become very sick. In Louisiana, gambling created a big scandal of graft and corruption. What local political saints would we trust to be on the state commission that would regulate gambling here in Hawai'i?
Furthermore, the multimillion-dollar Louisiana facility that was built by Bally went bankrupt. It seems people travel to New Orleans to visit the French Quarter to dine and party. They do not come to gamble. Likewise, I suspect, people come to Honolulu to enjoy the outdoors and the surf, not to gamble.
Robert J. Conlan
Marine ornamentals must be protected
Your May 27 article "Scientists seek to raise yellow tang" and the May 30 editorial "Fish discovery helps our economy, ecology" highlight the need and opportunity for increasing the culture of marine ornamentals.
It is well to note, however, that most of the ornamentals in the marine aquarium trade come from developing countries and only 2 percent of the fish in this global trade are aquacultured. Therefore, the primary need is to ensure that wild reef fish worldwide are collected using environmentally sound practices and handled and transported using standards that minimize loss and maximize health.
The Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) is a Honolulu-based international nonprofit organization that has developed best-practice standards and a certification system to ensure sustainable use of reef ecosystems and the handling and transport of healthy fish from reef to retail. Hobbyists, industry operators, conservationists and other interested parties have worked together to develop and promote the MAC initiative.
The first MAC-certified fish should be made available to consumers late this year. To help protect reef ecosystems worldwide and acquire healthy, long-lived fish, we urge hobbyists to ask for MAC-certified marine ornamentals and services.
Paul Holthus
Director, Marine Aquarium Council
It didn't have to happen
The mother of the 20-year-old Wahiawa man shot by police was quoted as saying, "it didn't have to happen." She's right. Perhaps if we enacted tougher gun laws, it wouldn't have.
Lane Woodall
Hawai'i Kai
Teachers must now cater to the children
The recent HSTA strike held our children's education hostage by immobilizing our public education system. I feel this was an infringement on the rights of Hawai'i's children to an uninterrupted education.
The timing of this strike was obviously staged during the most critical time of the school year. Then to add insult to injury, they used young children in their strike lines to elicit public support. I can only speculate the reason for this as being a learning experience for those kids. Surely they didn't have to be a part of the strike to learn about or from it.
Lost school hours, canceled functions, kids going without meals, graduations left hanging in limbo and unexpected costs to parents for childcare were some of the sacrifices made by many families who depend on the public education system to do its job,
I find the HSTA's ideology totally unethical and unprofessional. Shame, shame!
Now that the HSTA has achieved its goals, it's payback time. Time to start earning those raises. There's no longer room in our education system for glorified baby sitters. It is now the teachers' responsibility to make sure that no student continues to suffer because of the strike.
After all, from day one, shouldn't the first priority have been the children?
Kris Hookano
If it takes privatizing, then let's get job done
The state Department of Health has been struggling with federal compliance issues relating to needed changes at Hawai'i State Hospital for 10 years. That translates into more than 10 years of below-standard inpatient care for persons with serious mental illness at an estimated cost of $71,000 per year per client and a ratio of more than 5 staff to 1 patient.
Our state has spent an enormous amount of time, energy and money in "fixing" the problems, with no end of the dysfunctional system in sight.
Meantime, negative images of people with mental illness get exacerbated by reports of escapes, assaults and lawsuits.
There are more than 21,000 people with mental illness in our community, of whom fewer than 153 were in the hospital between July 2000 and April 2001. In the frenzy to address the State Hospital dysfunctions, we are adding to the stereotypes and neglecting the needs of the vast majority of people with mental illness who, with appropriate services, can maintain themselves in the community.
If privatizing the State Hospital means stopping the tail from wagging the dog, and moving on to building a better integrated and coordinated system of mental health services, by all means, let's do it. In any event, let's move forward.
Joanne L. Lundstrom
CEO, Mental Health Kokua
Bikers, joggers already have ample facilities
Mark Dougherty, in his May 23 letter, proposes converting part of the Ala Wai Golf Course into a greenbelt with bike and jogging paths, to the extent of downsizing the current 18-hole course to 9. He says golfers need to compromise.
Hold it right there. What will bikers and joggers compromise? And will they pay for the upkeep of the greenbelt to offset the loss of revenue from the golfers?
There are lots of other parks that the bikers and joggers already can use for free. Golfers have few and limited choices. Golfers just can't go to any park and hit balls as they want.
The city or state does not have to spend any more money for new special-purpose parks. There are hundreds of parks and school grounds that joggers and bikers already can use. Go knock yourselves out!
R.A. Noguchi
Pearl City
'Red Sun' events weren't 'dry'
I would like to register my disappointment with Ann Sato's May 17 review of the book "Red Sun."
Although she praises the book's concept of alternate history (the Japanese invading and occupying Hawai'i after Pearl Harbor) and the careful historical scholarship that makes the fictional history "more than mere speculation," she complains that the military history and first-person narratives were "dry," lacking the full entertainment value of a novel with rich character development.
As an educator who labors every day to get students to understand the big picture, and the decisions we make in the present and how they may influence the future, I think Sato missed the true value of this book both as entertainment and education.
I found the probable scenarios captivating and chilling, and their careful integration based on real events impressive: forced marches of prisoners from the 'Ewa plain to a Diamond Head POW camp, comfort women in Waikiki, the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy, mass suicides off Makapu'u, an atomic bomb dropped on Midway Island, and as the authors note, "millions of unlived years ... in numberless graves" of people who may have been "doctors and scientists, poets and lovers that will never be."
These are hardly dry scenarios.
As Sato herself concludes, this book sets the stage for all of us to use our imaginations to fill in the character details. How would our loved ones of the Hawai'i World War II generation have faced and reacted to this alternative history? "What conflicts of conscience, loyalty and family interest might (they) have been caught up in?" The book was not intended to be another thousand-page "War and Peace."
From an educational and entertainment perspective, this is an important work of fiction aided by historical fact. Those who are ignorant of history not only repeat it, they fail to take the present and our actions seriously as well.
As the authors conclude, "There is no inevitability."
Every Pearl Harbor veteran will tell you that they can't go anywhere near Pearl Harbor without feeling a kind of chicken skin of the soul, and their greatest frustration is in knowing that later generations simply take in the event as "dry history."
The recently released movie "Pearl Harbor," in spite of its flaws, helps tremendously in bringing to life real history via fiction. The book "Red Sun" makes a similar contribution, but is far superior in its marriage of real history and fictional entertainment.
Arizona Memorial historian Daniel Martinez said he had to watch the movie "Pearl Harbor" twice to appreciate its true value. Sato should read the book "Red Sun" again.
Ronald C. Pine
