Hawaii Paperback – July 9, 2002 by James A. Michener (Author), Steve Berry (Introduction) (Random House)

A couple of years ago, I began reading Chesapeake by Michener and got so bored with the geological formation of the Chesapeake Bay and its surroundings, that I put the book down. Concluding in my mind “well, maybe someday I’ll read this book”. After completing the reading of Hawaii, I looked through all my books trying to find Chesapeake, to no avail, especially after several moves. I learned that I have to finish the book that I put down too quickly. I will do so soon.

Hawaii was a Kindle purchase from Amazon, and as such there was no way I could be intimidated by its weight and scary thickness dimensions. Though, I have to say, that when the Kindle measured chapters in the number of hours to compete the chapter, it was almost as intimidating. Chapter one was 10+ hours; chapter two was 22+ hours and they kept getting longer. I am not sure how many hours it took me to read this tome but I read it in a two week period of time, where I took every free moment I had available to read. The book was completely captivating for me, so it was more a burden of love and pure enjoyment.
Hawaii begins with “million upon millions of years ago”….wherein Michener describes the geological formation of the islands of Hawaii. I must have greatly matured in my reading efforts since my aborted reading of Chesapeake where this geological formation bored me to no end. I truly did enjoy in Hawaii, the way the islands were formed and how primitive life was transported to these islands far off from everything.

Sometime around 800AD, man still did not appear on the islands but about 2,500 miles away on the islands of Bora Bora, man, later described as Polynesians, had thrived there for many centuries and had developed a culture with mores and beliefs and for all intents and purposes the life there was a kind of Paradise with a freedom and a nakedness that was almost poetic. However like all cultures that have existed there were differences of a political/religious nature which required human sacrifices, sometimes on a regular or as needed basis to appease angry Gods. It was during these times that individuals sought out “a better place” to live. Because the people of these islands were sea farers, though limited. That some headed out to the East in search of legendary locations. They initially set out on this great Odyssey with only men and finally reached the islands of Hawaii thousands of miles east of Bora Bora. Because they discovered the wonderful location some of them reversed their journey to transport women to the Hawaiian Islands. This journey was both arduous and dangerous so it was not something the people took lightly. Because of the experiences of the first trip the people developed the necessary skills to fine the islands of their future generations. One of the things the people tried to do was eliminate human sacrificing but when confronted by angry “Gods” the priests fell back into this practice but in a lesser degree than the priests in Bora Bora.

For many centuries the people thrived on the Hawaiian Islands living a peaceful and bountiful life. However as European man began to circumnavigate the world and traveled to far off locations the islands of Hawaii were discovered and provided shipping or commerce ports until the early 1800’s when American missionaries were called to “save the souls” of these native peoples. The missionaries struggled and did change, to a degree, the ways of the natives. However, when the European men found the islands, they transported diseases and practice that he natives could not survive due to not having the immunological defenses that were built up with the European and ultimately the American missionaries.
With the Protestant American value system, the missionaries began to cultivate the land and agriculture to the point that labor sources were needed over the course of several decades, Chinese labor was transported to Hawaii followed quickly by Japanese peasants to work the lands. Both groups of labor were more ambitious than the native Hawaiians and quickly deleted the native strains so that by modern times there were fewer and fewer native Polynesians left.

The book was so enrapturing to me, especially because I am a lover of history, that it became an almost obsession for me. Michener’s writing style was superb and comfortable to me as a reader. I have to say reading this work on the Kindle was a delight especially since the built in dictionary was right there and I had to have added several dozen words to my vocabulary list. The book was worthy of high praise