By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive To Rense
8-15-23

Part 2: This second essay focuses on the few choices left by the disastrous fire-storm across the western peninsula of Maui island in the state of Hawaii. Here, also, the visual evidence for an electromagnetic “strike” that wiped out the historic town of Lahaina and its environs is considered. The firestorm left the historic Lahaina of a whaling port, agricultural paradise and then the self-proclaimed capital of cannabis production as an incinerated pile of ashes. The prohibitive cost of rebuilding cannot be justified, given the improbability of ever recovering state and private investment in an area that abandoned its agricultural base in favor of the easy sleazy life of Maui Wowee weed sales and crooked time-share scams by a long-ago washed-away artificial beach. Fishing for mahi-mahi burgers is not going to make up for the wrecked economy of the now destitute region.

Here, I present the argument for establishing a Joint Services military intelligence base with a training campus, and regional exchange program to address the alarming trends in the strategic balance across Asia and the Pacific Rim due to the modernization of the Russian and Chinese armed forces, along with the nuclear belligerence of North Korea, which are distancing of many Asian nations from their former trust in American power. Many readers might be surprised by this hawkish opinion from one who has been an advocate of peaceful dialogue, even with hardened foes, but this realist posture is based on my youthful critique of how Washington stumbled blindly into the Vietnam debacle and earlier the no-win Korean War situation. Buried in the public memory and congressional archives, the humiliating American pull-out from Saigon occurred on March 29, 1973, which on this year’s recent 50th anniversary passed unrecognized in total silence.

Since that grim day when the last helicopter took off from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, we Americans have been too ashamed and so traumatized as to still be psychologically repelled by the prospect of another great war in the Pacific, even in situations where we might be on the side of the angels and the implacable foe wreaks crazed revenge. That horrific disaster for my generation was largely to a dismal failure of military/strategic intelligence based on the absence of linguistic skills, zero familiarity of local history and the haughty assumption that America’s postwar mantle over Asia would last for eternity.

Well, the clock of eternity has ticked all the way down to zero. Strategic weapons all around mean the next world war will be years shorter than any previous conflict between the great powers. The problem was, until last week, was the lack of open space on the populous islands for an MI campus, which has been resolved even if for terrible reasons (which perhaps is appropriately somber for a project of this sort.). Never again should we go to war without clear moral grounds, political justification and the unflinching support of the local population and our allies. (Whoops, we’re doing it again in Ukraine), another avoidable debacle guided by not an iota of intelligence.

A Slippery Moby Dick

It was the late Hawaii-born professor at UC Berkeley Ronald Takaki who introduced me, then a grad student of journalism, to Melville’s masterwork “Moby Dick”, a forthright retelling of Lahaina as a hub for pitiless butchery of the great whales, brutal labor exploitation of men beyond the pale of sensible work standards, loneliness leading to crass homosexual profligacy, and imperialistic competition in relentless pursuit of profit, aka the seamy underside of the China trade and western colonialist commercial exploitation of Japan and the Philippines.

In light of that shameful history, the fact that the physical remnant of that colorful yet grim “heritage” site, now reduced to ashes and relegated to dusty history tomes, is perhaps not as much a tragedy as the loss of life of Maui’s more recent inhabitants. As for the tropical paradise myth, the island’s main “green” claim to fame was illegal production of powerful cannabis that turned capable individuals into incomprehensible stoners and social trash begging for handouts, hardly an endorsement for tropical environmentalism or uplifting traditional spirituality in hula skirts. The glory days are over, if indeed they ever existed on that seedy volcanic rock.

With America now veering into crippling mass dependency on federal handouts, an unsentimental decision must be made about the vast amount of reinvestment required for a water-scarce, infertile and resource-poor island with a chronic inability for self-sufficiency that is Maui. Since the American contest with the British Royal Navy over control of the Hawaiian kingdom, far-flung Hawaii has had one basic outstanding role, national security based on that archipelago’s vital military logistical position along with its multilingual cross-cultural reach, which has protected the mainland USA time and again from invasion, destruction and defeat.

That proven fact of modern history lead us to a cold, hard look at the most urgent priorities in the Pacific region for a USA on the cusp of yet another era of military confrontation, this time with the increasingly hostile alliance of China, Russia and North Korea and their minor Asian allies amid a nuclear-tipped revival of militarism (with eager support from dubious dictators in Latin America). Hawaii is a fortress at the midpoint of the vast Pacific, the shield and spear of American power in Asia.

Talk of democracy, friendship and peace comprises wonderful dreaming and small-talk in academia and elite circles such as the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, but in hard reality at the ground level America has no viable choice other than to project power to discourage or quell imperialistic aggression from dictatorial regimes in an over-populated Asia. Does that make us into imperialists? You’re damned right it does, and we must like the British and Romans before us serve as enlightened world leaders, moral examples and fearless warriors with respect for law, education and benevolent human progress. For those civilized values to thrive to aid the average person on the street or by a farm, peace must be maintained and extended through power projection, but done in the most intelligent and indeed courteous manner without attracting undue notice. Frankly speaking, peacekeeping by readiness for war is not the happiest task as compared with a life of indolence on a tropical island, but that is the solemn duty assigned to this generation of Americans by our fathers, our ancestors and our geopolitical position in an otherwise all-too greedy, hateful, destructive and foolhardy world.

Intelligence Operations amid Geopolitical Realities

Given the population growth and economic activities surrounding a hemmed-in Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base, the present-and-future geostrategic role of Hawaii demands serious review. Located along the same latitude as Cabo San Lucas, on the southern tip of Baja California (about 800 miles, 1,500 km south of the U.S. border), the Hawaiian archipelago, located close to midway across the Pacific, anchors the southern theater of America’s homeland defense. The other pole for repulsing enemies on the Pacific front is 2,500 miles (4,500 km) to the north, slightly west of Hawaii’s longitude, at Anchorage, Alaska. These are the goal posts for any rival power to clear in order to ram their warships, bombers and submarines through to landing on the shores of California and Washington State to forever put an end to a proud and indeed vain America, the glorious Troy of these times.

A now-vulnerable Hawaii is rapidly being outpaced by an increasingly active and technologically modernizing coalition of aggressive rival powers in East Asia and Siberia, as seen in the joint naval exercises of the PLA Navy and Voyenno-morskoi flot aka the Russian naval force, while a jolly tough-spirited Kim Jong Un tosses missile after missile toward the massive but now vulnerable U.S. Seventh Fleet Naval Base at Yokosuka, near Yokohama, Japan. The rising confidence of would-be adversaries demands not belligerence or counter-threats from our side but instead calm methodological moves based on strategy, tactics, psychological operations and surprise maneuvers, the ancient art of war aka military intelligence, to put potential challengers on their back feet or seated at their desks.

However terrible the firestorm for residents across western Maui, the massive devastation has cleared the sole available physical space for establishing a future-war Joint-services military and intelligence base focused on early detection of aggressive hostile maneuvers and penetration attempts. The skills and tools for electromagnetic warfare and computer-coordinated strategy include airborne and submarine communications, satellite surveillance, sonar and undersea sonic detection, foreign language translation, signals intercepts and code deciphering. Pearl Harbor is a military port but inadequate to the task of surveillance, strategy and survival throughout the vast Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Equally important is proximity to Asia’s military commands as Maui is located between Pearl and Hickham, respectively on Oahu and the Big Island. As for our Asian allies, their intelligence officers, can easily take an airline to Hawaii in civilian garb to lecture at seminars and also receive briefings and advanced training from instructors with America’s four services and coast guard. Also, officers from would-be foes of ours should be invited for dialogue to assess their capabilities and to create back-channels in times of crisis. If existing or potential adversaries gain a comprehension of the impossible risks of warfare with the United States, then both sides can win the struggle for sovereignty, respect and terms of peace. The perception of American troops as being ethically lax, self-serving losers should be corrected to prevent stereotypes from considering an aggressive attack against weaklings. Preparedness with advanced skills and methodologies applied to special operations and preventative action are what can make the difference between victory and defeat, relegating the surprise at Pearl Harbor to a distant past of intelligence incompetence.

Athens, Sparta, Rome and Constantinople, those eternal cities exhausted and divided fell to their enemies, and now our turn for humiliating defeat has arrived in spades, unless we act decisively with determination and calm foresight. The alternative to indolence is vigilance and active deterrence of aggression to preserve the peace of the Pacific. A new military intelligence base on that tragically vacated site in the westernmost fortress of the United States will bring honor and security especially to Hawaii and the West Coast states, and especially for the patriotic former residents of Lanaika.

Vanguard in the Defense of Democracy

Reinvestment in a now-devastated depopulated Lahaina will only revive the dope culture and coddle crooked time-share rentals, both nonessential and morally harmful to the state of Hawaii and the majority of its residents, especially the youth. Relocation of the reduced population affected by the fires to eastern Maui, to the environs of the town of Hana in eastern Maui, is the more sensible social investment and the best use of federal and state funds rather than rebuilding atop a funeral pyre. Hawaiians of every cultural background are American citizens with a history of adaptability and social movement, while the strategic interest of the Republic must come before one’s own personal or parochial concerns whatever one’s social status or income level may be. When it comes to duty to nation, we are equals.

A Legacy of Heroism

The inner strength to summon the courage to face impossible odds was exemplified by the vanguard Hawaiian 100th Battalion in World War II. My father, a California-born Nisei, served as a senior trainer for the Hawaiian 100th, whose members admired his friendship, comradely encouragement, code of honor and most of all his patriotism to the land of their birth, and that was in spite of their disdain for their arrogant California-raised peers derisively called “katonks” (coconut heads, as in empty inside). The Hawaiian Nisei unit’s slogan was the memorable gambling term “Go For Broke”, which broke the back of Mussolini’s thugs and Hitler’s SS corps. That spirit of sacrifice for the greater good and fearlessness in the face of lethal threats, without creepy excuses by less than patriotic self-absorbed minorities, must now be revived while our would-be foes on the outer rim of the Pacific Basin advance ever closer to hem us in with wild dreams of gaining control over a prosperous America with the aid of local traitors in high office. If the nation is about to suffer a humiliating defeat, one’s little home cannot serve as any haven. Face it, victory is the only acceptable alternative, no matter the cost in lives or property.

The terrible tragedy for western Maui is, strangely, an opportunity for Hawaiians to again serve the greater good, as did the legendary Nisei 100th Battalion in the ruthless slaughter at Anzio Beach, along with the experience on the Pacific-Asia front of the cadre of Hawaiian intelligence translators with Merrill’s Marauders in the Burma jungle and the top-secret Dixie Mission to Mao’s guerrillas at Yenan (an preempt a Soviet takeover) in the desperate fight to turn back an invincible Imperial Japanese Army. Taking a cue from that courageous generation, we as Americans, every neighborhood and each home, must hold the line even at the terrible price of personal loss. Families can restart their lives in other neighborhoods and with new professions, but if we fail at national defense then everyone loses everything. Patriotism matters and honor is all that really counts during one’s short tenure on Earth.

With that appeal to common sense and patriotic duty, this essay continues with a brief look at the anomalies that surfaced during the fire disaster across the Lahaina region.

Ghost Rider in the Sky

On the early evening of Monday, March 7, I happened to take notice of an extraordinarily intense red glow during sunset over New Mexico. A vast crimson rainbow surrounded by red mist was glowing eerily as if cast as if by a gigantic movie projector onto the eastern sky. Then, within the span of a minute, the ominous cloud faded, retreating into the gloom of a blazing-hot evening. Over the radio later that night I heard the horrifying news about Lahaina in flames, a disaster strangely presaged by that weird hellish crimson luminescence in southern New Mexico. Was this brief visitation some sort of sign of divine wrath or perhaps diabolical thrill? It’s tempting to write off eerie premonitions to otherworldly forces.

After midnight I opened an atlas for recall the sense of distance between Maui and this Southwest desert region. The map showed a 4 hour time difference, meaning the fires that broke out in the early minutes of Tuesday, August 8, precisely matched my sighting in New Mexico four hours earlier. The glow in the sky was the primal cause for the fires on the ground. Some geography helps to explain the ominous outburst above the jet-stream at an as-yet indeterminate distance from ground level.

The Hawaiian islands are located along the same latitude as Cabo San Lucas on the tip of Baja California, far south of the U.S. border. Along that tilted angle, luminous rays in the lower stratosphere can pass over and across the low hills of western Mexico to hover high above the arid Chihuahua Desert at a distance of about 1,700 miles away from Lanaika. Seasonal moisture from the Gulf of Mexico accounts for the thin “fog” surrounding the ominous rainbow.

The source of that beam of red light had to be from the earliest phase of the fire from the primal cause that several hours later ignited the Maui catastrophe. In my reckoning, the red ball of light over New Mexico was one of several test blasts, possibly starting against offshore coral reefs or unhabited hills around Maui to ramp up the power of the military satellite. After several hours of test-firing, Lahaina was targeted at midnight, followed by firing at several points and then shifting to the Big Island. Was the red rainbow floating in the sky produced by a solar pulse, an exploding asteroid, or a powerful orbital weapon? Why did the mysterious rainbow lack the normal range of the spectrum, without bands of green, blue and yellow? It was not a natural rainbow. The strange sight appeared to be an ominous omen in a Satanic hue out of the depths of Hell. Soon, thereafter, radio news reports indicated Lanaika, Maui, was burning like hell on Earth.

Latter I received a comment from a journalistic colleague that one of the Maui locals had seen a glowing red beam triggering one of the fire centers, a report lost in the fog of panic. New Mexico is much too far from Maui to have shared the sight of the red luminance, but a powerful burst of light in the upper atmosphere over that island could be reflected along the stratosphere to partially bounce down to New Mexico. The tentative judgment, then, is that the Lahaina fires, along with a half-dozen other blazes across the islands, was ignited by a satellite-born laser cannon. Motive is the most difficult aspect of any crime to determine, so let’s leave that till later, and keep the focus on methodology behind the arson attack.

Whodunit?

While instinctively the blame goes to a foreign power, there’s the nagging possibility that the Maui strike involved person(s) from the USA and possibly Canada or even Europe. October 28, 1943, will mark the 40th anniversary of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment, when the destroyer USS Eldridge was hit by a beam that reassemble the ship’s metal plate, somehow locking in sailors’ arms and legs like prisoners in an old-style stock. Then the good ship Philly disappeared in the fog.

Was the laser strike against Maui some sort of warm-up celebration-by-reenactment of the Philadelphia Experiment? The date of Eldridge’s disappearance into the ether is significance, coming as it did at the height of the Nazi regime’s development and testing of “super-weapons” including V2 rockets, the atomic bomb (which Hitler refused to deploy), jet engines, helicopters and telepathic communications, supposedly with a distant advanced alien civilization. Was the red beam that destroyed Lahaina from that same advanced arsenal of mass destruction? Or was this show of bizarre force some sort of joke from the scientists working in America whose living disciples adored the ilk of Von Braun? Be aware of October 28, two months from now, or be an unwitting victim of something like 911. Avoid metal.

South Africa, Patagonia in Chile and Argentina (the latter being the homeland of the Pope), Japan and that cavern beneath Antarctica’s ice-cap are all on the list of bizarre rumored havens for mad scientists. The proliferation of underground laboratories, working on federal contracts, across the USA is closer to home. There is a much wider suspect list of mega-arsonists not being monitored by Interpol, which includes Hunter and Joseph Biden, who are well-paid agents of China and it’s Doctor No aka the Guan overseas spy service. BTW, there is no record of a test nuclear blast in Siberia, North Korea or China on Maui’s D-Day.

Could the blast have anything to do with the White House? Perhaps nothing and maybe everything. The horrific destruction of Lanaika puts Hawaiians under further debt to the Democrats for aid, housing, new jobs and relocation costs as a captive electorate. If mass destruction works as a political instrument in that outlying state, then coercion by catastrophe will certainly be a tactic for the reelection of a criminal cabal. Indeed, take a look at the destitution and dependency caused by a summer of heat, tornadoes and floods, as the PC groupies scream about a nonexistent “global warming” as bogeyman. The cycle of destruction and dependency well serve the Chinese leaders and their allies, the Rothschild dynasty that ran the Opium War to control China, and in ways still does. The Rothschilds are seated at the head of global warming racket, which is powered by super-hot venting from their armada of nuclear-power plants. Yup, the destruction of Lahaina is now being attributed by Roth mouthpieces like NPR as having been caused by their golem (bogeyman) of Global Warming, a disinfo campaign.

Contrary to the Hollywood A-listers who own luxury property in expensive neighborhoods in Maui, not a single one of which, suspiciously, did not burn down, Warren Buffett does not own a personal home on that fabled island since his Berkshire Hathaway has real-estate holdings with hundreds of luxury houses for sale to offshore billionaires and various mafia capos. Warren and his biz partner Bill (Gates), however, shall remain on my suspect list of arsonists, related to their micro-nuclear sodium-cooled fast-breeder reactor biz called Terra-Power and Terra Corps (pronounced “terror corpse”) with an $80 million grant from the DOE, as if they need the start-up cash. Did an unauthorized test of a Terra-Power nuke send a warning signal up to the sky and a dust storm over Lahaina? The search for the culprits is just like the where’s Waldo game, somewhere under a palm tree.

Stay tuned, I’ll be right back after a commercial break to clear the dusty throat with a Mahalo Aleworks dark beer and a cup of Kona coffee laced with Paniolo whiskey. As put by the Simpsons creator: “Welcome to Life in Hell”.