A Shaky Truce: The Army And Native Hawaiians Both Want Oahu’s Makua Valley … As the Army looks to renew leases on Hawaii state lands, a debate rages about both its past and its future.
Charles Donaldson has been clearing bombs and other munitions from the Makua Valley Military Reservation on and off since 1991. Born and raised on Oahu, he followed his father, a Marine Corps veteran, into the business.
A few weekends a month, he also escorts an unusual tour group in the rugged Army training ground that also holds dozens of ancient cultural sites and is sacred to Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.
Malama Makua, a local nonprofit group that has long sought to eject the military from the land, gets access to those sites under an agreement with the Army.
The unexploded ordnance technician must walk ahead of the cultural practitioners to keep an eye out for unexploded ordnance after the military spent decades using the valley as a live fire range until a 1998 lawsuit on behalf of Malama Makua brought a stop to the practice. No bullet has been fired there since 2004.
