Letters to the Editor
Mainlanders have taken too much already
I read with disgust in the May 23 Los Angeles Times that displaced and confused Californian Patrick Barrett has filed a lawsuit to halt benefits to Native Hawaiians.
I lived in Lanikai and went to Kailua elementary and junior high school in the late 1950s. Many of my friends were Native Hawaiians whom I had and still have the deepest respect for.
Hawaiians have always welcomed "outsiders" to share the beauty and hospitality of the Hawaiian Islands without condition. As a payback for their kindness, the "outsiders" are out to deny Native Hawaiians what is rightfully theirs.
Lease them land for $1 a year? That's outrageous. There should be no fee.
The Mainlanders have taken so much from these great people (like overdeveloping Waikiki) and have given them nothing but pain and suffering in return. Help them? Yes, by all means, but don't deny them what is rightfully theirs.
It's sad to see Mainlanders like Barrett wanting to take more and more away from them.
Leave the Islands, Mr. Barrett. You'll be happier someplace else.
Rich Huffnagle
Orange County, Calif.
All Japanese aren't to blame for atrocities
As a Japanese literature professor at UH-Manoa and an active participant in the Japanese peace movement, I'm responding to the May 17 letter by W. Thos. Hall concerning the new Japanese film "Merdeka" and Japanese military atrocities in World War II.
I'm in total agreement with him, if he is accurate, as I believe him to be, that the film is an abomination, as are so many of the ultra-right nationalist acts in Japan these past few years.
But, and this is a very big "but," I part company with him in what seems to be his blanket condemnation of all Japanese people, even the majority of the Japanese who were born after World War II and are thereby totally innocent of wartime crimes. I also disagree with his gentle treatment of U.S. military atrocities, with the palpably untrue statement about the "rabid and healthy hunger among Americans (all Americans, Mr. Hall?) to unearth the facts." I have to ask: Even about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
On the other hand, I can testify, from 23 years of the closest cooperation with the major Japanese peace and anti-nuclear groups, that all of the members of those groups, at least all the members I have come to know, do indeed have a "rabid and healthy hunger" "to unearth the facts" of the Japanese World War II atrocities, such as the ghastly death camps in Manchuria and countless others.
I also vehemently reject Hall's reference to the U.S. crime (not an accident, since the overkill power of the U.S. military is certainly not an accident) of the sinking of the Ehime Maru. The U.S. Navy fully deserves the wrath of all peoples, Japanese and American included. How can Hall possibly compare the end of a naval officer's career (I'm sorry for him too; he was clearly a scapegoat) with the deaths of nine innocent people?
Valdo H. Viglielmo
Why is Bob Dye touting Anderson/Hee ticket?
Two weeks of Bob Dye touting Andy Anderson for governor. Two more weeks of Dye touting an Anderson/Clayton Hee ticket.
Is Bob Dye their campaign manager? Their public relations arm? And when is The Advertiser planning to endorse the Anderson/Hee ticket? This week? Next week?
This blatant trial balloon, week after week, is shameful. But the joke is on you. While you continue to run Dye's propagandizing columns, the public at large is laughing.
Lynne Matusow
Med school could be built on 'superblock'
Why doesn't the state negotiate with the Wichman Family Trust and build the new medical and science school complexes on the "Ke'eaumoku superblock" across from Ala Moana Center?
There's plenty of space, they can go as high as necessary and it's still close to Honolulu's major hospitals. It would blend in better there than at the Kaka'ako site the state had been banking on.
Patti M. Inada
Blame rate increases on the drug industry
In response to Dr. Malcolm Ing's May 20 letter: Ing falls short of revealing the true cause of HMSA's and other private health insurance's recent increase in rates while decreasing provider reimbursements.
Think of it like this: Pharmaceutical companies, like big oil, tobacco and alcohol, have some of the biggest political lobbies in existence. With the Bush administration pressing to create a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, there is only one industry waiting to profit from billions of your tax dollars every year. You've guessed it, the pharmaceutical industry.
This industry has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. Research, flashy ads, politicking and FDA approval, spurred by big money, have created an incubus for the drug industry, which relies on the consumer — or shall we say the consumer's health plan? — to pick up the cost of these high-cost designer drugs.
Notice the new marketing campaigns, advertisements on national TV and the quadruple increase in drug reps and it doesn't take long to recognize that someone has to pay for it. That someone is the consumer, through increased health insurance costs as well as at the register.
As consumers, we all need to question our forced participation in making pharmaceutical companies billion-dollar grantees. And if you don't think there is price-gouging, then ask why the same drug selling in the United States can be found outside our borders for a fraction of the price, or why generics here are usually half of name brands.
It's not the ingredients, folks; it's all smoke, mirrors and profit-taking, plain and simple.
B. Wailani
