New report refutes claims it brings economic, social, and cultural benefits
By ray levy uyeda
For decades, the U.S. military has touted its presence on the islands of Hawai‘i as beneficial to the state’s economy and culture, while portraying itself as a responsible steward of the land. But a first-of-its-kind report challenges these claims and offers up an opposing conclusion: The ongoing conduct of the armed forces constitutes a public health disaster.
“The True Cost of the U.S. Military in Hawai‘i,” published by the progressive, Washington, D.C.-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies, claims that the financial benefit of the military has been overestimated by roughly 30%, while its degradation of land, culture, water, and community health has been vastly underestimated. The report offers a comprehensive analysis of the military’s impacts and suggests that the federal government has proven itself incapable of proper care and stewardship of the state’s resources and communities.
“It is important to challenge and question the assumption [of] the military’s economic and security benefit,” said Kyle Kajihiro, an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and co-author of the report. “No one’s really questioned how they calculate that economic analysis of its impact, and no one has really done a deep and critical analysis of the true costs.”
Since the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. military in 1893, the six branches of the military have used Hawai‘i’s land and oceans for weapons testing, live-fire training, strategic operations, and to host the biannual Rim of the Pacific exercises, which allow militaries from 25 countries to engage in war simulations.
While all of these activities are contested, Native Hawaiians take particular issue with the military’s destruction of sacred sites, such as the bombing of the island of Kaho’olawe starting in 1941, and occupation of Pōhakuloa, a place of spiritual significance in the center of Hawai’i Island, known as “the Big Island.” The expiring lease for Pōhakuloa, along with those for thousands more acres of crown and government lands, were agreed to in 1964 for $1.
Wherever the military operates, public health concerns follow, the report finds. Impacts are disproportionately leveled against Native Hawaiians, who most acutely experience the consequences of the theft of land and attendant loss of language, culturally relevant foods, placed-based cultural practices, and unmitigated access to healthful resources such as clean water, among many other repercussions. The greatest concentration of Native Hawaiians live on Waiʻanae Coast of Oʻahu, where military bases take up approximately 34% of the land.
“We see a strong correlation on the island of Oʻahu between the high density of military land use, Native Hawaiian residents, fair or poor health, and access to health-promoting resources,” the report stated. “This suggests that … military land use overlaps with Native Hawaiian communities in ways that reflect a longer history of displacement and constrained access to land and resources—patterns that continue to shape present-day health inequities.”
The report’s findings come at a critical juncture. This year’s gubernatorial race will likely see the reelection of Josh Green, the state’s sitting governor; the National Defense Authorization Act, which would make it easier for the military to claim public trust lands, is making its way through Congress; and the leases for 46,000 acres of land in Hawai‘i contracted out to the military are set to expire in 2029, the potential reauthorization of which Native Hawaiian-led groups want a role in deciding. When combined, that makes for a political opportunity that hasn’t come around in a while.
Decades of sustained political pressure by dozens of Native Hawaiian-led organizations pushed Green to create an advisory panel in 2025 to help guide recommendations for the future of the tens of thousands of land parcels leased by the military. But when Green issued a letter to military officials that included recommendations not approved by those on the panel, it seemed to many that state leadership was more invested in the military’s goals for land acquisition than upholding its role as trustees of these sacred lands.
“The community benefits package that the governor put forward in his public statement was something that came out of the blue—no one was asking for those things, and the numbers he was using were not anywhere near what we think the cost has been on back rent and the damages,” Kajihiro told Prism.
The report also found that for 65 years of back rent, the state of Hawai’i is owed $32.8 billion to $133.7 billion. The upper-end is a more likely total when using the Human Rights Standards Damages Model, which calculates an estimate for land beyond its financial valuation by accounting for harder-to-determine losses, such as the cultural and emotional loss of land.
Persistent pollution resulting from military activities, including the presence of chemicals such as polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment, will also cost tens of millions of dollars for remediation, possibly for the indeterminate future. Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not break down, PFAS are known to cause any number of health impacts, from cancer to hormone disruption.
Wayne Chung Tanaka, the executive director of the Sierra Club chapter in Hawai’i, calculated the cost of treatment for three military sites where water and soil tested positive for PFAS, finding that at least $493 million would be required to remediate.
“[That estimate] is just really scraping the surface of the true environmental burden that we’ve incurred and that we’re going to pass on to our kids,” Tanaka told Prism. “To me, it reiterates how under-informed the governor has been in his negotiations.”
Tanaka added that it’s just one piece of the puzzle. To remediate the land of the banned carcinogen polychlorinated biphenyls, depleted uranium, or unexploded ordinances, will require millions more dollars. The stakes are high for a place such as Hawai’i, where in an emergency, freshwater can’t be trucked in from elsewhere. Following the 2021 fuel leak at Red Hill that poisoned tens of thousands military and civilian families, many of Hawai’i’s residents no longer believe that the military operates with integrity for the state’s public resources.
ray levy uyeda is a staff reporter at Prism, focusing on environmental and climate justice.
Source: prismreports.org, June 10th, 2026