Hawaii Foreign Relations Japan

The reasons are as compelling as the paycheck drawn on a Tokyo bank, as obvious as the miso soup breakfast special at the hotel coffee shop, as dramatic as the U.S. senator with the name Inouye: Commemorating Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor is a complicated affair for Hawaii. Here, 50 years later, in what became the 50th state, oil from the great fight still seeps from the sunken battleship Arizona. Yet bonds with Japan are stronger and more vital here than anywhere else in America.

The reasons are as compelling as the paycheck drawn on a Tokyo bank, as obvious as the miso soup breakfast special at the hotel coffee shop, as dramatic as the U.S. senator with the name Inouye: Commemorating Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor is a complicated affair for Hawaii. Here, 50 years later, in what became the 50th state, oil from the great fight still seeps from the sunken battleship Arizona. Yet bonds with Japan are stronger and more vital here than anywhere else in America.