United States, Hawaii

The hawaiian archipelago—located in the central Pacific—comprises eight larger and inhabited islands in the southernmost part, and other minor unpopulated islands, reefs and atolls, extended to the northwest along 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers). The inhabited islands are Ni'ihau, Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Lana'i, Kaho'olawe, Maui, and the island of Hawaii. The northwestern islands are Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll, Pearl and Hermes Atoll, Lisianski Island, Laysan Island, Maro Reef, Gardner Pinnacles, French Frigate Shoals, Necker Island (Mokumanamana), and Nihoa. The islands belong to the Hawaiian Ridge, a volcanic chain of seamounts, residuals of old volcanoes, or active volcanoes with a northwest-southeast direction. It was formed in the last 30 million years from an active hot spot approximately located in the island of Hawaii, which is the youngest of the chain, as the result of the movement of the Pacific Plate.

Polynesian settlement occurred at least by 600 c.e. after long-distance voyaging across the Pacific, although first discovery might have happened three to four centuries before. Those explorers carried with them domesticated plants—at least 29 species—and animals to secure food for the journey. Once in Hawaii, their cultivation provided a source for carbohydrates that was not available in the islands. This was succeeded by the relatively late European discovery and settlement, compared to the other Pacific islands, in 1778. In his third voyage of Pacific exploration, the English Captain James Cook found the islands, which were named the Sandwich Islands. This last discovery initiated a rapid process of colonization because of their strategic position in the Pacific Ocean.

Population at the time of European contact, although still a matter of debate, was 300,000 native Hawaiians. A census completed by missionaries in 1831–32 gave an account of 130,000 and in 1876 a Hawaiian government census reported 54,000. This sharp decline of the native population was due to the period of wars and famine during King Kamehameha's mandate, the various diseases fatal to the local population introduced by the European navigators, and the migration of natives to work as sailors.

During the plantation era, a large labor force was needed and immigration was organized by the estates to supplement the diminished local force. Labor immigrants arrived from 1850 to 1950; the waves were first Chinese, then Portuguese, Japanese, Portuguese for a second time, and finally Filipino, which led to the present high ethnic diversity. About 180,000 Japanese and 168,000 Filipino departed to the islands. Thus, population begun to grow from 1876 onwards, as mortality rates dropped and birth rates increased. By 1940, the population exceeded 400,000 and rapidly doubled with the arrival of military and defense workers during World War II.

After the war population dropped with the departure of military and employees but increased again with the expansion of tourism by the mid-1950s. As of the 2000 Census, population was 1,211,537, mostly concentrated in O'ahu (73.3 percent), with population densities of 1,441 persons per square mile (547 per square kilometer); while the biggest island, Hawaii, only had 12.2 percent of the population, with a density of 36.8 persons per square mile (14.2 per square kilometer).

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