Give Native Hawaiians a voice.
That was among the most resounding feedback that about 10 kupuna Native Hawaiian veterans gave Thursday to representatives from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.
The representatives were in Hilo to gather input about what veterans would like to see in a planned $15 million national public memorial dedicated to Native Hawaiian, American Indian and Alaskan Native men and women who served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Once completed, the memorial will be located at an undetermined location at the Washington Mall in Washington, D.C. It will join an elite group of monuments already in the park, including the Lincoln Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial.
“Hawaiian vets, I don’t think we get enough attention,” Hilo resident and Vietnam War veteran Curt Sharp, 72, told museum representatives during the meeting, adding he advocated for a simple, minimal maintenance memorial. “I’ve got a lot of braddahs out there who need help, and they’re not getting that. And I think this (memorial) is one way of bringing that out.”
The museum has hosted more than a dozen similar meetings throughout the country to gather input, hear stories and connect with veterans from various native groups. Earlier this week, it had a meeting on Oahu, its first in Hawaii so far.
Thursday’s meeting was light on details — those will come throughout the next year or so, museum representatives said, once a design competition gets underway and a design is finalized in 2018. Construction is slated to begin in 2019 and the memorial will be unveiled on Veterans Day in 2020.
So far, the museum has raised about $1 million and has about a dozen additional meetings planned through the spring.
Data show that native people served in every conflict since the American Revolution, in higher numbers per capita than every other segment of the population. About 44,000 Native Americans served in World War II and 42,000 served in the Vietnam War.
Some figures show about 9,547 Native Hawaiian veterans currently live in Hawaii, among about 121,000 veterans statewide.
Attendee James Pihana, local chapter commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart and Hawaiian cultural practitioner, told the museum he’d work to get the word out to more members of the island’s native community.
“I’m glad you people came out here to get our input as Native Hawaiians,” Pihana said. “I’m glad we can contribute.”
Those who were unable to attend Thursday’s meeting can submit comments via email to nmai-nativeveteransmemorial@si.edu.
Updates on the memorial can be found on the museum’s website at https://nmai.si.edu/nnavm/.
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
