Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 3, Number 4, 1 April 1986 — Use of Aloha [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Use of Aloha

By Gard Kealoha T rustee-At-Large Editor's Note: The following tesfimony by Trustee Kea - loha was given Feb. 26 before the Hawaii State Senate Committee on Government Operations.

On the crown of Puowaina, within sight of the Makiki property purchases of a Marcos-owned corporation, lie the graves of thousands of Americans who gave their lives during world and other wars in the defense of universal liberty and justice for all. Many of those buried lost their lives in the Philipine Islands.

I sp>eak as a concerned individual in pointing this tragic irony out to you to remind us all of those who so loved the principles of democratic governance buried at Punchbowl and to protest the proposed weleome of a discredited tyrant to our beloved islands. Are the lives of those who rest at Punchbowl given in vain? Have we forgotten the simple message of their profound sacrifices? Those sacrifices, the giving up of their lives, is what is being crowded out at this very hour in the expediency of having to explain the failures and lumbering reversals of our dismal history of American foreign policy for the past 30 years. T o the credit of our present federal administration's realistic albeit late appraisal and recognition of a people's mandate

in the Philippine Islands, Cory Aquino now sits in a justly earned seat of leadership in a sovereign Philippine nahon. That recognition I must emphasize, rests on the supreme sacrifices made by freedom loving people in their own nahon and nowhere else.

As a proud American and a proud native Hawaiian, I cannot keep silent at the proposed abuse of our aloha spirit. T o characterize the aloha spirit as one that embraces a discredited leader responsible for the theft of millions of dollars from the mouths of his own people and for the murders of his own people demeans aloha, insults its intrinsic value and dishonors its universal message. It is not for us to redeem Marcos. He must seek that for himself with his own people. And only when that is done, ean he expect the respect and aloha accorded to all men of all races, good will and honor.

In our society we insist that a person who commits dishonorable acts face the responsibilities of rehabilitation squarely himself. Are we now condoning two sets of laws — one for our own American citizens and one for corrupt foreign dictators? Are we now to hide the truths of a despotic rule that will continue to reveal itself in the months to eome in the quiet serenity of a Makiki hillside? Are we now to pretend that we have the return of an allied war hero in our midst? And are we now part of a process that delays just solutions? I strongly suggest that leaders responsible for the safe passage of Ferdinand Marcos, not use our word, aloha. Use whatever word you wish for the purposes you want. Leave aloha out of it. Respect aloha. Honor aloha. Cherish aloha. Do not soil it with human frailties. Do not demean the spirit of my ancestors with the rhetoric of political expediencies. Aloha is yours and mine. It is a precious value that blesses and endures.