Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 18, Number 10, 1 October 2001 — Silent majority [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Silent majority

As a member of the "silent majority," I wish to respond to the Sept. 9 Honolulu Advertiser article on Mākua. Those of us who have lived in and loved Hawai'i for many years know that military presence is necessary. We benefit from its protection, and from the millions of dollars it spends here. If we deny the military the use of the last possible training ground it has, we will be forcing it out of Hawai'i. This may be what some antagonists would like to see, but it would be disastrous. I do not want to be abandoned by our military forces. It distresses me to see groups with short-sighted agendas like Mālama Mākua trying to block the military that has bent over backwards trying to accommodate these locals. Not only have the loeal, uninformed or uncaring, backwards-looking activist groups driven them out of Kaho'olawe, residents of Mililani Mauka have driven them out of Schofield's mauka training range, as well. I'm sure it will not end there. Loeal people need to change their attitude and sometimes criminal actions toward those who are only here to protect Hawai'i as one of the U.S.A. Betty Woodward Via the lnternet

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