POLICE PRESENCE

ENFORCEMENT NEEDED TO FIX TRAFFIC PROBLEMS

I am a 15-year resident of Honolulu and, over the years, I've seen our traffic problems go from bad to worse. The main reason is a near total lack of enforcement. I hardly ever see police doing enforcement during rush hours.

The best way to stop traffic violators (and resulting accidents) is with presence. The police really don't have to do anything but be there. When folks see the blue lights they almost automatically become good citizens. The mayor should insist that police have a presence in places such as the H-1/H-2 merge, the airport viaduct, various places along the H-1 and H-2, at the entrance to and/or exit from the zipper lane and the Nimitz contra-flow lane. In addition, there should be roving patrols to police for speeders, reckless drivers and the many, many inconsiderate fools who never give turn signals or check for traffic before changing lanes or making turns.

Also, our police officers need to set a good example. They shouldn't speed unless in an emergency situation and they always should use their turn signals.

NATURAL DISASTERS

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY, HEED NATURE'S ALERTS

J.M. Comcowich (Letters, July 21) blamed government and Charles McCreery of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for not getting the information about the Java tsunami out to the news media. It made me wonder: whatever happened to responsibility of personal safety and heeding nature's warnings.

For example, I'm out golfing, and I notice dark clouds gathering. I also hear thunder in the distance. Do I need a government agency or the media to tell me to get off the golf course? Uh, Nope.

If you feel an earthquake or you don't but you notice the ocean receding rapidly, that's your cue to get to higher ground or move inland. Don't even wait for a Civil Defense siren. A near-shore tsunami can strike in less than 15 minutes.

With the exception of earthquakes, nature will give you a warning of impending disaster. It's a reminder that there is a greater force at work here.

SLATER COLUMN

TOURISTS VISIT HAWAI'I BECAUSE OF ITS CULTURE

Excellent article by Cliff Slater (July 22) but two things need to be kept in focus.

The first is that the 113-year-old overthrow is not settled history so long as there are folks continuing to attack Hawaiian programs based on the U.S. Constitution. These people have the mind set of Lorrin Thurston, W.O. Smith, and John L. Stevens. The Blount Report is still a matter of record.

The second thing to keep in focus is the reason why tourists choose to visit Hawai'i. They do so because of the Hawaiian culture. We don't have a lock on sun, sand, surf and handsome people. The American missionaries initiated a "cultural bomb" on the Hawaiians by limiting hula, discrediting Hawaiian history and ancient chants and discrediting ancient practices like caring for the land and the ocean. Their grandkids banned the Hawaiian language in 1896. The population collapse from 1778-1893 is also a matter of record. If the Hawaiian culture is removed, then you can bid aloha to tourism as we know it today. Guam, Australia and New Zealand will attract Asian visitors, while Mexico and Florida will attract the Mainland visitor.

The bottom line is political correctness, but it is a two-way street.

BENEFITS

USE OHA'S MILLIONS ON BETTER EDUCATION

Thank you for publishing the article on OHA by Cliff Slater. So rarely do we hear a contrary point of view on the so called "Native Hawaiian" situation. Mostly everybody dwells on the "wrongs" and need for redress. And yet, why is OHA allowed to spend so much money on consultants, travel, etc., instead of improved education for poor Native Hawaiians?

We constantly hear about the lack of adequate teaching staff and school facilities for Native Hawaiians.

All of our public and elected officials supported the Akaka bill. The core issue repeated over and over again was that failure of the bill to pass would result in a loss of benefits to Native Hawaiians. I think that the rest of us Hawaiians are fair enough not to let that happen.

It is also fair to say that the millions of dollars currently available to OHA should be used properly and not to further the interests of the few.

PEARL HARBOR

ARIZONA VISITOR CENTER BELONGS ON FORD ISLAND

If you've driven by the Arizona Memorial Visitor Center at Pearl Harbor lately, you may have noticed an ugly duckling on the front lawn. It's a drilling rig, contracted by the National Park Service to find solid rock on which to build the new visitor center. It's a sure giveaway that the site of the newly planned center will be built at the same site as the present one, only closer to Kamehameha Highway.

The first center was built on a floating foundation because the contractor was unable to find rock after drilling down to a depth of 70 feet. The scheme was for engineers to jack up sections of the visitor center each year as it settled. It was designed to sink only 18 inches, but since its construction in 1980 at a cost of $5 million some sections reportedly have settled more than 30 inches.

The history of the unstable land next to where Halawa Stream enters Pearl Harbor goes back more than 60 years to World War II. The land area was filled with tons of earth dredged up from the harbor bottom to create a landing for liberty boats carrying sailors from Ford Island.

The earth there is so mutable that a diver trying to recover a propeller lost from one of the tour boats in the 1970s dived down 25 feet of muddy water, then another 10 feet of dense sediment before abandoning his dive without success.

That's the hand-me-down problem the National Park Service has inherited from the Navy. Next year, it assumes overall management of the 6.4 acres of Halawa Landing from the Navy. Unstated in that arrangement is the real reason Ford Island is not a National Park Service option for locating the new visitor center. The Navy, according to the coconut wireless, was persuaded not to set aside any land for it.

As I learned from working on the staffs of 22 admirals during my Navy career in public affairs, sometimes the only explanation for a decision that comes down from the front office is politics.

Asked about the decision, Ray Emory, a survivor off the cruiser USS Honolulu and long-time historian of the Pearl Harbor attack, told me, "If the visitor center belongs anywhere, it should be at Ford Island where the battleship USS Arizona still rests on the bottom of the harbor with 1,177 members of its crew."

LEBANON

THE MIDEAST CRISIS IN 1990, AND AS WE SEE IT IN 2006

Sixteen years ago, reporter Vickie Ong interviewed me about my 11-year-old son being stuck in Saudi Arabia because Iraq had invaded Kuwait. He was visiting his father, who was working at ARAMCO in Dhahran, and initially, they were oblivious about Kuwait. I was terrified. CNN was just 10 years old and was still a legitimate 24-hour news network. I knew plenty about the invasion of Kuwait, and the U.S. drumbeats for war in the Gulf. My son and his father knew nothing.

When he arrived in Saudi Arabia, "the Saudis" had taken Ian's passport (for safe keeping?) as they had taken his father's, and when Iraq invaded Kuwait they weren't giving them back. Because his dad was a physician, they would not be among the first to leave the country.

In the meantime, we were calling them hourly to tell them what we had seen on the news. It wasn't long before word spread around their compound, someone got BBC radio and they were in touch. At the summer school bus stop each day, another new friend was gone. Ian reported to me that their families had left. He couldn't understand why he wasn't leaving.

The headline of Vickie's story said "Island Mother Wants Son Out of Arabia." I was quoted as saying that the Mideast crisis was my crisis, too. Looking back, as we have watched close to 2,500 of our soldiers killed, reporters and other citizens beheaded, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens dead, that comment seems at once self-indulgent and prophetic.

For me in 1990, hours turned into days, days into weeks. Ian still wasn't home. CNN developed the first sonic identity for a war and there was no getting away from it. As the U.S. prepared to invade Kuwait, those who lived on the ARAMCO compound asked the powers that be to put up air-raid signals. They put them up, but didn't turn them on, because "they didn't want anyone to be afraid." Ian started making up escape solutions and told me people were being outfitted for gas masks and trained with scuba tanks in their bathtubs so they could breathe in the event of an attack.

Today I hear kids who are in college in Lebanon, not much younger than Ian is now, trying to sound brave as they talk to news people about "their plans" to leave. Their plans are just like Ian's were: in the hands of somebody else. The bombs are much closer than they were to Ian, and their families back home are terrified.

Ian made it home before The Gulf War actually started. At school, one of his first assignments was to make a poster of his hopes and dreams. He was afraid of "big angry crowds and scary people." For the coming year, he wanted "Straight A's" and "Saddam Hussein Dead." He didn't get either. And since then, the Mideast crisis has become everyone's crisis.