Conclusion: The Making of US Empire

This conclusion elaborates how World War II–era settler militarism in Hawai‘i and the Pacific Islands created the conditions of possibility for the ascension of the United States as a postwar global empire. As a “laboratory” for martial law, Hawai‘i was a site of experiment in settler military culture that could be reproduced, improvised, and expanded elsewhere. As a key military outpost, Hawai‘i formed a principal piece of a larger network of US military bases in the Pacific Islands and Asia that expanded dramatically during World War II, naturalized the power hierarchy between the United States and Japan’s former empire during the Cold War period, and still continues to expand today. The extended period of martial law in Hawai‘i created the conditions to refine, amplify, and elaborate biopolitical mechanisms to “‘make’ live and ‘let’ die” in the service of US settler militarism and capitalism.