Kahoʻolawe (Kohemalamalama o Kanaloa)
Maui County, Hawaiʻi, United States
The smallest of the eight main Hawaiian islands, dedicated to Kanaloa and reverenced as a storied place and refuge, closed to the public after decades of Navy bombing left unexploded ordnance across it; entry runs only through authorized programs.
Kahoʻolawe lies southwest of Maui, the smallest of the eight main Hawaiian islands. Hawaiians settled it by about 400 CE, and surveys through 2004 inventoried nearly 3,000 archaeological and historical sites: the island served as a center for voyaging navigation, an adze quarry, an agricultural area, and a place of ceremony. Tradition dedicates it to Kanaloa, deity of the ocean, and it carries the name Kohemalamalama o Kanaloa.
The modern history is harsher. The United States Navy took title in 1953 and had used the island as a bombing range since 1941. Beginning in 1976 the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana occupied the island, and litigation including Aluli v. Brown (1977) forced environmental review; bombing stopped by presidential order in 1990, the deed passed to the State of Hawaiʻi in 1994, and control of access returned to the state in 2003. When the Navy's clearance project ended in 2004, about 75 percent of the island had been surface-cleared and 10 percent cleared to four feet; the remaining 25 percent, 6,692 acres, is uncleared and unsafe for unescorted access.
Visiting
The Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve Commission states plainly that access to the Reserve is restricted because of unexploded ordnance: entry only with KIRC authorization, through volunteer restoration projects or cultural access with the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana. Trolling is permitted in waters deeper than 30 fathoms on two scheduled weekends a month, with no anchoring. The KIRC publishes the rules and the volunteer calendar.
Photo: dronepicr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kahoolawe_island_and_Molokini_Crater_%2844826034095%29.jpg))
Visitor stories