Letters for Sunday, May 12, 2019

Appreciate the new bench

Mahalo nui loa to the North Shore Lions Club for providing a lovely “memorial” bench. It is in the perfect spot with a beautiful view, and is much appreciated.

Heather Riggins, Princeville

Grass shacks might be helpful

This morning (April 15) in The Garden Island paper I read in the Forum section if we have any ideas for housing for low-income families.

I grew up in Southern California all my life and do not know much about the Hawaiian Islands. As a child, I used to read about grass shacks and people living in them a long time ago.

Why don’t you building grass shacks today? It may solve some of the housing for low-income folks.

Much aloha

Yoshiko San, Susan Matsumoto, Lihue

People need to know about threats to species

My name is Keria Moritsugu-Vandehey and I am a student at Waimea High school. I have read your article, “UN report: Humans accelerating extinction of species,” and I found it very touching, because, in my philosophy class, we studied upon this topic.

When we studied this topic I found it something that people don’t really know or even understand, and I appreciate that you brought this topic back up.

I feel it’s important because it directly affects the vitality of humankind, like in the case of aesthetic appeal and stabilization of nature. If there is any other way you could get this information and data out I would appreciate the action taken.

Keria Moritsugu-Vandehey, Waimea High School student

Stop the nuclear madness

The Garden Island reported on April 25 that HOT SHOT missiles were launched from PMRF to advance “the next generation of … technologies supporting the U.S. nuclear stockpile.” It’s Kauai’s contribution to the nuclear arsenal upgrade undertaken by the Trump administration.

We’re told this upgrade, priced out at $1.7 trillion, will make us safer. It includes developing “low-yield nukes” that have a wider range of uses. That consequently makes the possibility of their use more thinkable. Miscommunication, like last year’s false missile alert, would become exponentially more likely as well.

What happens next is unpredictable, when the adversary retaliates. We know a resulting exchange of only a small number of megatonnage warheads would create a nuclear winter, a planet-wide dust cloud blotting the sun for years or even decades, likely bringing human civilization to an end.

Of course, Kauai citizens were not asked if they want to participate in this madness. But we can express our wish to avert a nuclear holocaust later this year when the Golden Rule sails into Nawiliwili Harbor.

In the 1950s both the U.S. and Soviet Union were detonating nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. Radioactive fallout circled the earth, and turned up in cow’s and mother’s milk. Americans began questioning if their government knew what it was doing.

In 1958 the four crew members of the Golden Rule were the first environmental justice activists to attempt to interpose themselves between the U.S. government and its nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. En route from Hawaii the Golden Rule was boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard. The crew was arrested, tried and jailed in Honolulu. Their example ignited a storm of worldwide public outrage against nuclear weapons that resulted in the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

After 51 years, the same gaff rigged, wood-hulled Golden Rule has set sail on a “Peace in the Pacific” voyage bound for all the Hawaiian islands, then on to the central and western Pacific. Kauai kumu Puna Kalama Dawson blessed the vessel at port in San Diego. Kauai sailing veteran Connie “C Be” Burton is a crew member.

The Golden Rule will be a seagoing classroom advocating a peaceful, sustainable future that must include elimination of the nuclear doomsday threat.

Kip Goodwin, Kapaa