That sovereignty was taken. On January 17, 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani — the last reigning monarch, and the composer of "Aloha ʻOe" — was deposed in Honolulu by a group backed by American business interests, and the Hawaiian Kingdom came to an end; annexation followed. It is a history Oʻahu carries with care and remembers honestly, named here as fact rather than ornament.
And on a Sunday morning the world changed here. On December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor took the lives of 2,403 Americans — more than a thousand of them aboard the USS Arizona — and brought the United States into the Second World War. The USS Arizona Memorial rests above the sunken ship today, a place of quiet remembrance that Oʻahu keeps with reverence, never for sale.
Why People Visit Oʻahu
Oʻahu offers the whole of Hawaiʻi in one place: deep history and living culture, world-famous surf, a great multicultural city, and beaches for every mood. It is where most visitors begin — and, for the million people who live here, simply home, the island where Hawaiʻi gathers.
