century.”
14
The Sanitary Commission in 1911 wrote: “We believe the wet land problem
presents a serious and difficult question, the economic aspect of which cannot be ignored.
We are unanimous in the opinion that wet agriculture in the city limits should be
stopped… Meanwhile certain swamps and low lands must be filled in order to protect our
public health. Thus there will be a supply in excess of demand of land for dwellings…”
15
Act 61 was the first legislative act passed in the Republic of Hawai`i to ‘improve’
land in Waikiki in the name of ‘public health.’ The title of the Act reads: “An Act to
Provide for the Improvement of Land in the District of Honolulu Deleterious to Public
Health, and for the Creation and Foreclosure of Liens to Secure the Payment of the
Expense So Incurred.”
16
The Legislation of the Act allowed the Board of Health in the
Republic of Hawai`i to determine whether land was unsanitary and if found to be so to
“recommend to the Minister of Interior the operation needed to improve such land.”
17
As
Barry Nakamura emphasis in his Master’s Thesis in History, Act 61 then becomes
Chapter 83, sections 1025 to 1034, of the 1905 Hawaii Revised Laws of Hawai`i after the
“annexation” of Hawaii to the United States.
18
This law became the primary legal vehicle
that allowed for the dredge and fill project of Waikiki in the 1920s.
14
Nakamura; 50.
15
Nakamura; 65,
16
As quoted in Nakamura from Hawaii Republic Laws, Statutes, etc., Laws of the
Republic of Hawaii Passed by the Legislature at its Session,. 1896, Honolulu, 1986; 201-
204.
17
Nakamura; 43.
18
This annexation was never valid under US Constitutional Law because it based its
precedent on the Newlands Resolution that was used to acquire Texas as a state, as
opposed to abiding by international law, which prohibits other states from acquiring one
another through the internal legal structure of one state, as opposed to a joint agreement
by both.
Convention