'Slight' to Kamehameha draws rebuke
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
The naked truth is that there's no truth to the naked statue story.
Advertiser library photo
This fact was uncovered yesterday after Hawai'i representatives Ed Case and Neil Abercrombie demanded that the architect of the U.S. Capitol correct frequent "insulting" mischaracterizations being made by tour docents and congressional staff about the statue of King Kamehameha the Great in Washington's Statuary Hall.
The statue of King Kamehameha stands draped in lei at Statuary Hall.
Those statements include colorful and oft repeated, though wholly inaccurate, yarns about how the statue's placement out of sight in a remote corner of the hall is punishment for being scantily clad.
The two representatives want the historically incorrect descriptions to cease. They also want the statue — a duplicate of the famous Kamehameha statue outside the Supreme Court building in Honolulu — to be moved to a better location in the hall.
"King Kamehameha I is by far the most prominent figure in the history of Hawai'i," said a letter Case and Abercrombie sent to Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman.
"... Any slight to the statue, however innocent, can easily be perceived as a slight upon Kamehameha, Native Hawaiians, Hawai'i Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and minorities everywhere."
The statue flap is the result of concerns Case and Abercrombie have about the way the statue has been portrayed in general, and one such characterization caught on tape in particular.
That tape, made last Friday and aired in Hawai'i on Tuesday, showed a congressional staff member conducting a tour with a constituent who also happened to be a KITV news reporter on vacation.
The guide, who was not an official Capitol guide, said after the statue was donated to Congress in 1969, it was shipped back to Hawai'i because "it wasn't wearing any clothing." The statue was later returned to Statuary Hall clad in a loincloth, claimed the guide, "but even then Congress wasn't happy because he wasn't that decently dressed ... and so they decided to put him back here as punishment."
Such statements are not only factually incorrect, but insulting, concluded the letter. "We believe it is fair that Kamehameha have his turn at a position of prominence in the front lines of the statues in Statuary Hall," Case and Abercrombie said.
