28 Time November 30/December 7, 2020
aT ala moana Beach Park, near downTown honolulu,
lifeguard Mo Freitas is ready for the water to get a bit more
crowded. When Hawaii Governor David Ige in March
instituted a mandatory two-week self- quarantine for anyone
coming to the state, the move effectively stopped tourists
from visiting. Now—even as the U.S. hit 11 million COVID-
cases as of Nov. 15—Hawaii, like Freitas, is welcoming
them back.
“It was a nice break for lifeguards when they weren’t here,”Freitas says, “but it’s a good thing that they’re returning, for
our businesses and for many people on the island.”
Tourism, the single largest source of private capital for thestate’s economy, brought Hawaii $17.75 billion last year, so it’s
not surprising that the state is among those hit hardest by the
pandemic. More than 1 in 6 jobs here were gone by August,
and although other tourism- dependent states, like Nevada,
have recovered most leisure and hospitality jobs lost from
February to April, Hawaii still lags. Business owners hope
looser restrictions— mainland U.S. tourists with negative
COVID-19 tests have been able to skip self- quarantine since
Oct. 15, and the program expanded to visitors from Japan on
No v. 4—will help them start to make up the difference. But
the return of tourists also exposes a long- simmering tension
over the role of tourism in Hawaiian life.
Just a few yards from the sand over which Freitas keepsguard, Rudy Perucho, putting his surfboard back in his car,
expresses deep concerns about the return of tourists. “Some
people come, and they don’t respect the rules or have much
Hawaii’s reopening
kindles old tensions
By Anna Purna Kambhampaty/Honolulu
regard for the land,” he says, “and they
don’t recognize the fact that this land
isn’t theirs to begin with.”the feeling Perucho describes is a
friction that has been pres ent in Hawaii
for centuries. When British explorer
James Cook became the first Euro-
pean to set foot on the islands, in 1778,
the Native Hawaiian population was
about 300,000. By halfway through the
19th century, in part because of the in-
troduction of diseases like smallpox, it
had diminished by more than 75%, to
70,000.
This past is on Perucho’s mind today,
he says, as visitors once again come to
the islands at a fragile moment. He holds
no hostility toward tourists—“I still wel-
come everyone,” he says, in the aloha
spirit—but some officials worry other re-
actions may be less tempered. In the early
days of the pandemic, there were public
altercations between locals and visitors
who took advantage of cheap airfare to
the islands. Not all officials agree with the
new testing protocol, either. Three island
mayors have said they want tourists to
show a second negative test after arrival.
“In the worst-case scenario, our tour-
ists that we invite here, perhaps some of
them will be COVID- positive, and that
unfortunately leads to a spike in infec-
tions,” says Hawaii state senator Glenn
Wakai, chair of the senate’s committee
on economic development, tourism and
technology. “I’m really afraid that the
local folks here are going to have a very
anti tourism sentiment if that in fact
plays out.”
On a recent day at Menehune Mac
Candies, the oldest existing manufac-
turer of macadamia- nut candies in Ha-
waii, none of that wariness could be
found. But having lost about 95% of
sales since the start of the pandemic,
company president Neal Arakaki says
he still doesn’t know what’s next for the
family-owned business. This year has
shown how hard it is to make predic-
tions about anything from public health
to the economy, and now Arakaki is re-
luctant even to guess whether the busi-
ness will survive at all. “It’s a day-to-day
thing,” he says. The return of tourism
is likewise unpredictable—but with or
without local buy-in, Hawaii is about to
find out how it goes. □TheBrief Postcard
15%
Average percentage
of people in Hawaii
on any given day
in 2019 who were
visitors1 in 6
Fraction of
Hawaiian jobs lost
from the beginning
of the pandemic
to AugustMICHELLE MISHINA-KUNZ—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
In July, there
was plenty
of room at
Waikiki Beach
in Honolulu