The flags at the Embassy and at other American facilities around the world will fly at half mast today in commemoration of National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Since I’m in transit today, what follows is a revised version of my post from December 7, 2011.

The first seconds of the attack on Pearl Harbor, recorded from an enemy fighter.

At 7:55 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning 71 years ago today, waves of more than 350 hostile fighter, bomber, and torpedo planes darkened the dawn skies over Oahu in a surprise attack designed to cripple America’s defenses and advance a rival power’s aggressive expansion through the Pacific. No declaration of war had been issued.

On the rise and in need of resources to advance its regional objectives, Japan had already invaded Manchuria, China, and French Indochina. It was starting to push into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies to insure control of supplies of oil, minerals, and other resources needed to fuel its ongoing development.

USS Shaw explodes after being struck at the start of the attack.

Tokyo mistakenly believed that the United States would declare war when Japan launched its long-planned invasion of Great Britain’s Southeast Asian colonies. The preemptive attack by a Japanese aircraft carrier strike force on Pearl Harbor, home of the US Pacific fleet, was intended to cripple America’s ability to defend its Pacific neighbors.

While Pearl Harbor was burning, Japanese military forces attacked simultaneously in multiple other locations across the Pacific region. Guam, Wake Island, Manila, and Singapore were bombed. Malaya, Thailand, and the Philippines were invaded. Shanghai was seized. Japanese troops pushed toward Hong Kong and Burma. All the same day.

USS Arizona sinks in Pearl Harbor, taking 1,177 young Americans to their deaths.

In Pearl Harbor that day 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,247 were wounded. On American soil. While the nation was at peace. Eighteen American ships and approximately 340 American aircraft were destroyed or severely damaged.

In Washington, Japanese envoys arrived at the State Department after the attack had begun, to deliver a document from Tokyo criticizing the United States for not accommodating Japan’s demands in ongoing bilateral discussions. A declaration of war by Japan was not delivered until the next day.

USS California sinks in Pearl Harbor.

The morning of December 8th, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed an emergency joint session of the American Congress, beginning with one of the most iconic sentences uttered in American history: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

The address was broadcast live by radio to the American people. Twenty-one minutes after President Roosevelt finished speaking, the Senate voted 82-0 to declare war on Japan. Twelve minutes later, the House of Representatives concurred by a vote of 388-1. (The lone dissenting vote was cast by Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana.)

President Roosevelt addresses a joint session of Congress on Dec. 8, 1941.

A strong streak of isolationism has always run through the American psyche, including as war raged elsewhere during 1940 and 1941. The America First Committee and other non-interventionist groups remained strong despite growing anxiety over the hegemonic waves sweeping Europe and East Asia. The Roosevelt Administration had begun taking economic steps to aid beseiged Britain and the Republic of China, but strong majorities of the population and elected officials still opposed entering foreign wars.

The attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that. Americans were shocked — forever, I would argue — out of our belief that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans provide a safe buffer from the troubles and ills of the rest of the world. In a way that few other events have, Pearl Harbor altered the course of American thinking, history, society, and politics.

Lowering the Embassy flag.

For the next several years we and our friends will commemorate the 70th and 75th anniversaries of the terrible events of that era that shattered societies and changed the world.

Since December 7th last year we at American Mission New Zealand have focused on the joint service, shared sacrifice, and common values that bound Kiwis and Americans so tightly together during the War, and which still provide the bedrock on which our relationship stands today.

We continue the Septuagennial process by planning for several important 2013 commemorations including the 70th anniversary of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s iconic island-hop tour at the height of the Pacific War which brought her to New Zealand for a week.

Today, though, is about remembering Pearl Harbor, honoring those killed that Sunday in 1941, revisiting the lasting lessons learned, and drawing strength from how friends pulled together and persisted through even the darkest of days.

As President Obama noted in his Proclamation, “We pay solemn tribute to America’s sons and daughters who made the ultimate sacrifice at Oahu. As we do, let us also reaffirm that their legacy will always burn bright — whether in the memory of those who knew them, the spirit of service that guides our men and women in uniform today, or the heart of the country they kept strong and free.”

Welcome to the 6th installment of my series on great American universities and how to navigate our extensive, highly diverse system of higher education. Today I’ll be highlighting the University of Hawai’i campus at Mānoa.

The University of Hawai’i (“UH”) is an excellent example of the American phenomenon known as a “university system,” which is an integrated set of separately accredited tertiary education institutions within a particular geographic jurisdiction that share a name and an overall governing body.

Almost every one of our 50 States established and maintains such a public university system. In addition to UH, other great examples include the University of California (containing UCLA, Berkeley, and 8 other universities) and the State University of New York (the largest in the world, with 66 campuses and more than 468,000 students).

The University of Hawai’i system comprises 3 universities, 4 professional schools, 7 community colleges, and more than two dozen other educational, research, and training centers across the Hawaiian islands, with a total enrollment of more than 60,300 students. The University of Hawaii’s flagship campus is Mānoa (“UH Mānoa”).

The heritage Hawaii Hall, at the heart of campus.

Founded in 1907, UH Mānoa is located in the lush Mānoa Valley, a neighborhood at the edge of urban Honolulu only a mile (1.6 km) from the iconic beaches and entertainment of Waikīkī. Equally close is the vibrant Ala Moana shopping district. Downtown Honolulu is about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the school.

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As you know from a few of my prior posts, Hawai’i is one of my favorite places in the United States. In addition to the natural glories of a tropical paradise, Hawai’i has a rich history as well as vibrant indigenous cultural traditions. In my travels, I have noticed great similarities between Hawaiian and Maori customs and expressions, which is not surprisingly among Polynesian cousins.

Last year we brought Hawaiian performers from Oahu’s Polynesian Cultural Center to Wellington and Auckland. The musicians, singers, and dancers visited Kiwi schools to demonstrate and discuss elements of Hawaiian culture. They also performed at our Independence Day celebrations in Wellington and Manukau, as well as at Te Papa.

A few of our friends from the Polynesian Cultural Center performing in Manukau.

The visit was part of the Embassy’s robust Pacific Islands outreach program. We have also facilitated a couple of rugby exchanges between Hawai’i and New Zealand, and I appointed a professor from Hawai’i, Manulani Aluli Meyer, to the board of Fulbright NZ. Earlier this year, we were delighted to have the opportunity to help bring the complex Hawaiian art form, hula, to the Pasifika Festival in Auckland.

Hula encompasses a broad range of performance art, though it is predominantly known as dance accompanied by songs (mele) or chants (oli). Like fa’ataupati in Samoa and kapa haka in Aotearoa, hula is an avenue for indigenous people to express their traditional heritage and cultural identity.

Performers from the Ka Laua’e Foundation sharing hula in Auckland.

Now seen mainly as entertainment, it’s likely that hula began as a form of worship during religious ceremonies, and many native Hawaiians still view hula to be sacred.  Hawaiians appear not to have produced written records before European contact, and thus hula’s origins are recounted through oral history and legend. There are nearly as many stories involving the genesis of hula as there are Hawaiian gods, which number in the many hundreds.

Hula is a strict discipline, taught in schools called hālau. The teacher of hula is known as the kumu.  There are two main categories of hula – kahiko and ‘auana.  Kahiko, the ancient hula performed before European encounters with Hawai’i, is accompanied by chant and traditional instruments. ‘Auana evolved under European influence in the 19th and 20th centuries, and is accompanied by song and more modern instruments such as the ukulele or guitar.

The great popularity of hula during and after World War II led to a simplified caricature deployed for tourism, marketing, and advertising purposes. Beginning in the late 1970′s, however, a resurgence of interest in Hawaiian culture has gradually led to more widespread practice and appreciation of authentic traditional forms.

Blaine Kamalani Kia.

One of the drivers of the Hawaiian renaissance is Kumu Hula (hula master) Blaine Kamalani Kia.  Kumu Blaine exemplifies the living spirit of the “Hawaiian poetry of dance.” He is the driving force behind the Ka Laua’e Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote preservation, conservation, and perpetuation of hula.

Born in Honolulu, Blaine started dancing hula at the age of 5. He studied music theory at the Leeward Community College and also majored in music theory at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He founded his own hula school in 1987 and has dedicated his life since then to perpetuating Hawaiian traditions.

Blaine is currently a Kumu Hula for Halau Ka Waikahe Lani Malie (Peaceful Heavenly Flowing Waters Hula School), which has started fifteen local hula schools around the world including in Oahu, Kauai, Northern California, Utah, Montana, Tahiti, Japan, and New Zealand.  The Kiwi group is affiliated with the Pasifika Sway Polynesian Dance Theatre Company in Auckland.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Kiwi hula group, Kuma Hula Blaine brought dancers from the Ka Laua’e Foundation to Auckland to join Kiwi dancers in hula performances at the Pasifika Festival in Auckland, appearing on the Festival’s International Stage.

This year was the 20^th anniversary of the Pasifika Festival, which is now Auckland’s biggest annual free event. (More than 100,000 spectators attended this year.) The Ka Laua’e Foundation represented our Aloha State alongside groups from nine other Pacific cultures including Samoa, Fiji, Tokelau, Kiribati, Tahiti, and Tuvalu.

The Americans felt right at home. Given America’s vast size and great diversity, it’s sometimes easy for non-Americans to forget that the United States is a Pacific nation. Hawai’i lies near the heart of the Pacific Ocean. More American coastline touches Pacific waters than that of any other country. American territory is closer to Samoa and to the Asian mainland than is New Zealand.

Ka Laua’e Fndn performers at the civic ceremony opening the Pasifika Festival.

And of course, President Obama was born in Hawai’i, making him our first Pacific Island President. (For the record, I believe that our only other President thus far to be born west of the Rocky Mountains was Richard Nixon, born in Yorba Linda, California, just a few minutes drive from the ocean.)

Over the coming months I’ll talk more about our Pacific programs at the Embassy. In future years we’ll hopefully see a fully-fledged Hawaiian Village at the Pasifika Festival, supported by NZ-based Hawaiian communities plus local enthusiasts who, thanks to Pacific Sway and the Kuma Hula, have been bitten by the hula bug.

As I wrote back in 2010, one of my favorite State Department programs is the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). The IVLP seeks to build mutual understanding between Americans and people from other nations through carefully designed short-term visits to the U.S. for current and potential foreign leaders in a variety of fields including education, the arts, government, politics, business, philanthropy, community organizing, and the media.

I was doing a bit of IVLP work this week and came across photos from Nicola Toki (nee Vallance). Nicola is a conservation advocate for the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, New Zealand’s largest and oldest conservation organization. She was selected last year to attend an IVLP program on protecting natural resources, joining other delegates from around the Pacific and East Asia regions in a study tour of the U.S. 

The group flew to Washington, DC and then traveled to Maine, Montana, and finally Hawai’i, at each stop studying various environmental challenges and how we are dealing with them. Many of the specific issues they studied, including the impact of invasive species, catchment protection, land-use impacts on freshwater, and marine protection, are equally relevant in New Zealand as in the U.S., which is why Nicola was a great choice for the program and why I thought you might be interested in her impressions. She graciously agreed to write a few notes about her trip:

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Nicola Toki.

NT:  Thank you, Ambassador. The program was extremely valuable to me, and I enjoyed the opportunity to see so much of the U.S. in the process.

Our first week was spent in Washington, DC, which included a tour of the monuments and historic places on the Sunday before our meetings started. I found this to be really useful in terms of gaining a foundation of the basis for the U.S. political system.

A highlight was visiting the lobby of the Willard Hotel – thought to be the place where the word ‘lobbying’ was coined, after President Ulysess Grant’s penchant for visiting there for a cigar and a brandy, and those who wished to press their views and opinions joining him there to do so. As someone who now partakes in lobbying as part of my job, I found this very interesting. Staying in a hotel with the White House at the end of the street was pretty cool as well.

The meetings in Washington covered a wide range of topics, starting with an introduction to the U.S. political and legal systems, which paved the way for our meetings with representatives from the State Department, Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to name a few. We also enjoyed the opportunity to meet with representatives from organizations such as Winrock International and Defenders of Wildlife to learn about advocacy and lobbying by conservation organizations in the U.S.

Visiting the Lincoln Monument.

While we were in Washington, we tried to spend as much of our spare time as possible visiting the huge variety of Smithsonian Museums. I found them to be simply amazing, and I particularly loved the Museum of Natural History (of course!) and the Native American Museum.

After sampling some of the museums and being given a very comprehensive introduction to the politics, policies, relevant departments, and organizations in Washington, we headed to Portland, Maine, to see state government in action. 

During our time in Maine, we met with the Lobstermen’s Association and learned about how the industry works to try to protect their extremely valuable fishery (and I can certainly attest to the flavour of a lobster roll).

We also met with a local group who have spent most of the last two decades fighting to protect their river, which has been a real David and Goliath battle, but one in which they have made many gains. 

During our time in Maine we were invited to have dinner with local people from Portland, and we had a lovely evening chatting and sharing stories of our often similar environmental challenges with very hospitable folk. We also got to attend the local Clam Festival, which was a culinary delight.

Measuring a lobster in Maine.

Bozeman, Montana was our next port of call. While we were there we met with more state officials and spent time with local people in “big sky” country determined to protect nature in their part of the world. 

The real highlight for me (and all of us) was a trip to Yellowstone National Park. For a girl who had the privilege of living in Aoraki Mt Cook National Park for part of her childhood, a trip to Yellowstone was a lifelong dream. During our trip we saw a wolf, thousands of bison, and even a grizzly bear (off in the distance alongside a river, but a grizzly nonetheless).

I was definitely impressed with the foresight of the American people in protecting two million acres of land in 1872 for Yellowstone. The United States National Parks system that started with that effort paved the way for the rest of the world, and in New Zealand, our own national park system was based on that in the U.S. 

At the Lower Falls in Yellowstone National Park.

It was interesting talking to the rangers from the National Park Service about the challenges they face in managing visitors, and to traverse the issue of the grey wolf, which was reintroduced to the park in 1995, after being hunted to local extinction in 1926. Recently, the grey wolf from has been removed from the endangered species list, which has been controversial, and with the total population of wolves in the area only numbering around 300, I found it difficult to comprehend. It seems that pressure from ranchers has heavily influenced the decision, and it has created a large amount of concern.

Our final destination (much to the envy of my colleagues back home) was Hawai’i, where we learned about ecotourism, marine protection, and of particular interest to me, invasive species. Hawai’i, like New Zealand, is a land of birds, with no native mammals (NZ has just two species of tiny native bats, and no other terrestrial mammals).

The mongoose, which was introduced into Hawai’i to control rats, has instead eaten the native birds and eggs, in a story that mirrors ours in New Zealand of the introduction of stoats to control rabbits that instead wreaked havoc on our native birds, sending many hurtling toward extinction.

Enjoying the beauty of the Limahula Gardens, Kauai.

A particular highlight (and highly recommended visit to anyone going to Hawai’i) was the Limahula Gardens on the island of Kauai, which is a representation of the way the indigenous people of Hawai’i lived alongside their environment. The terraced gardens still remain, and help to tell the story of Hawai’i’s first people and their connection to their local environment.

I had an amazing time learning about the environmental challenges that the United States faces, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting passionate and knowledgeable people who are working on these challenges. Since I have returned to New Zealand, I have kept in mind many of my experiences from the U.S., and have stayed in touch with some of the people we met.

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Big thanks to Nicola for taking the time to write about her travels. I’m delighted that she found the experience to be worthwhile. I’m sorry to say that I’ve not yet been to Yellowstone myself, but it’s on my very short remaining bucket list. I have been to the Limahula Gardens, though, and I strongly second Nicole’s recommendation about that glorious piece of paradise.

If you have any questions for Nicola about her work or her time in the United States, please let me know. I’ll pass them on, and perhaps we’ll do a follow up interview. Also, as I mentioned previously, we send quite a few Kiwis to the U.S. on IVLPs each year, so stay tuned for further reports from recent returnees and other alumni.