Flight to Freedom
December 17, 2007 > MAUI TODAY, > Maui Yesterdays No Comments |
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Wright Brothers Day
HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Lele: Flight HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY —“Life is placed where it can take only a brief flight.”
December 17th - 23rd: Saturnalia
Today thru December 30th:
Maui Film Festival’s First Light Screenings
December 17th , 1944: The U.S. Government decides that the approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent are really not a grave threat to the government, or freedom, and releases them — most never get back their lands, property, goods or good names. Strangely most of the Japanese in Hawaii are not affected.
Executive Order 9066 from President F.D. Roosevelt, ordered that that any local military commander could exclude any person from sensitive locations, and authorized the internment. In 1944, shortly before they were released, the U.S.Supreme Court ruled that the lockup was constitutional. Nonetheless, President Ronald Reagan officially apologized to the internees in 1988, and in 1990 the U.S.Government began to pay reparations to surviving internees. Many refused, saying the amount was too small, and no price could be put on their freedoms.
On this same date three years earlier, rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was relieved of his duty as commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, just ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Kimmel took the fall like a good soldier, but declared that FDR knew of the attack all along.
HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY – December 17th
1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates England’s King Henry VIII
1777: France recognizes the independence of English colonies in America
1790: An Aztec calendar stone is discovered in Mexico City
1791: New York City create the first one-way street
1821: Kentucky abolishes debtors prisons
1852: The first Hawaiian cavalry is organized
1895: The Anti-Saloon League of America is formed
1903: First sustained motorized aircraft flight is made by Orville & Wilbur Wright
1946: The U.S. V-2 rocket reaches 183 km in altitude
1947: A blizzard hits New York City, covering it with 27” of snow
1967: U.S. Clean Air Act passed by Act of Congress
1992: President Bush I, sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
1997: President Clinton signs the No Electronic Theft Act into law, removing protection from anyone stealing copyrighted works by downloading them from the Internet, even if they receive no direct financial gains
BORN ON THIS DAY – December 17th
1778: Sir Humphry Davy, discovered several chemical elements
1807: John Greenleaf Whittier, poet
1873: Ford Madox Ford, novelist/editor
1894: Arthur Fiedler, conductor
1903: Erskine Caldwell, author
1929: William Safire, political columnist
1937: Art Neville, singer
1939: Eddie Kendricks, rocker
1939: James Booker, R & B musician
1942: Tom Lloyd, wind surfer
1942: Paul Butterfield, blues musician
1948: Jim Bonfanti, rocker
1949: Paul Rodgers, rocker
1974: Giovonni Ribisi, actor
1974: Marisa Ribisi, acress
At the Waikaloa Community Church on Friday Nov. 16, I attended the first of a series of joint U.S. Army and Hawaii Health Department informational hearings on Depleted Uranium (DU) held at Kona, Hawaii. The hearings were the result of Big Island citizens monitoring high background levels of radiation downwind from the Pohakuloa gunnery range during Army Stryker maneuvers at the range, April 22. Normal background levels are in the area of 10 to 20 counts per minute (CPM) but on April 22nd the citizens’ measurements went as high as 93 CPM.