Change came with contact. After Captain Cook reached the islands in 1778, foreign visitors learned the worth of the pearls the Hawaiians had set aside, and Kamehameha — who drew the islands together into one kingdom by 1795 — claimed the oyster beds as his own. Dredging and silt from the 1840s onward smothered the beds, and by about 1901 the pearl oysters of Wai Momi were effectively gone. The harbor's modern course was set by treaty: the Kingdom granted the United States use of the inlet under the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, and exclusive use as a coaling and repair station in 1887, beginning the long naval era that would carry the place's name around the world.
That name carries one of the heaviest mornings in American memory. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and the United States entered the Second World War. Today the Pearl Harbor National Memorial keeps the day with quiet care: the USS Arizona Memorial rests above the sunken battleship, where more than eleven hundred sailors and Marines remain, and the more than two thousand four hundred service members and civilians lost that morning are honored together. Nearby, the Battleship Missouri — where the war ended in 1945 — closes the arc from the conflict's beginning to its end. It is a place of reflection and remembrance, and of the peace that former enemies have since chosen to keep.
