OFFSHORE

In 1881 — less than a week after King David Kalakaua left Hawaii for a yearlong tour around the world — a ship arrived in Honolulu carrying laborers sick with smallpox. The decisions that Hawaii’s future queen made to keep people safe – and the pushback she received from angry citizens and frustrated business owners […]

How do you practice Hawaiian culture when you’re thousands of miles from Hawaii? And what happens when Hawaiians abroad finally get a chance to go home?

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. And while many have cited Hawaii’s high cost of living as the main reason for leaving, it’s really just a piece of a much larger story.

After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, hundreds of disenfranchised Hawaiian musicians would journey to the continental U.S. in search of fame, fortune, or just a chance to make a decent living. Some would die in poverty and obscurity. Others would change American music forever.

Two decades after Hawaiians helped build a fort for John Sutter in California, another group of Hawaiians would find themselves stranded in Massachusetts. And take up arms in America’s bloodiest war.

This is the story of a group of Hawaiians who ended up in California more than 160 years ago — back when Hawaii was an independent nation. And how their descendents are still connected to the islands in unexpected ways.

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. It’s a staggering number that raises questions about what Hawaii will be like in coming years, and how Native Hawaiians will carry their islands with them to far flung places.

This season, Offshore is taking a deep dive into the Hawaiian diaspora. Join journalist Kuʻu Kauanoe, as she digs into what is driving Hawaiians from the islands today. And tells some amazing stories about Hawaiians who left long ago.

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is one of the most remote places on Earth. Now, it’s threatened by climate change, pollution and politics.

When we started reporting this season, we expected it to be a story about troubling adoptions that happened in the 1990s. But it quickly became clear that issues with Marshallese adoptions were never fully resolved, they simply moved. To new counties. States. Adoption agencies. So we’ve continued chasing leads while producing this season. In this […]

There’s an entire generation of Marshallese adoptees like London Lewis asking questions about who they are and where they come from. And there are plenty of parents searching for the children they gave up, too. These reunions aren’t always easy. Many families have been separated for years by not only distance, but also language and […]

London Lewis had to get back to work in Florida, so we’re continuing the search on his behalf — journeying to the Marshall Islands to where his story began, to try and find his birth father and his siblings. And get a sense of why women are still being recruited to leave the Marshall Islands […]

We started reporting for this season of Offshore last June, but we’re still chasing down leads and new developments. It’s been a busy few weeks for us. Which means we’re going to be publishing Episode 6 on Monday, May 18. In the meantime, we wanted to share a poem with you by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner. She’s […]

London Lewis’ biggest worry when he arrived in Springdale was how he would be received. Would other Marshallese people recognize him? Accept him? It didn’t take long for him to form instant connections with people who want him to know that he not only belongs in the Marshallese community but he is needed in the […]

In Springdale, London Lewis begins to experience Marshallese culture for the first time. He’s going to meet people he’s only read about in World War II textbooks. Hear a language he’s never heard except for on YouTube. Get a little closer to finding his birth family. But we’re not just in Springdale for London. We’re […]

The biggest population of Marshallese in the U.S. isn’t in Hawaii. Or even a coastal state. It’s in Springdale, Arkansas - a small, unassuming midwest town that 12,000 Marshallese now call home. London Lewis doesn’t have the time or the means to go to the Marshall Islands right now. So if he’s going to have a chance of finding someone who knows his family, he has to start here.

Susette Lewis was excited when she arrived in Honolulu in 1992. And like most new moms, nervous. Uncertain of what to expect. She didn’t know that picking up her adopted son would be an alarming experience.

International adoptions were a rarity in the Marshall Islands until the mid-'90s. Then came an adoption boom of such intensity that the remote island nation suddenly had one of the highest per-capita adoption rates in the world. In just a few years, hundreds of children were adopted from the far-flung atolls -- so many that it seemed like an entire generation was disappearing. Now, two decades later, some of these children are beginning to search for answers about who they are and where they come from. Some, like 25-year-old London Lewis, have never known a single person from their native country. Adopted as an infant from the Marshall Islands, London’s journey home would begin with a Facebook post.

A young man on a quest to find his birth family. An adoption market that rocked an island nation. A culture in danger of disappearing — and the desperate fight to save it. Join Offshore for an unforgettable eight-episode season this spring. www.offshorepodcast.org

Hawaii’s false nuclear alarm scare sends Offshore reporters on a trip back in time to 1962, when Hawaii had a very different kind of brush with nuclear weapons. Just a few months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hawaii witnessed a nuclear explosion so massive that darkness briefly turned to daylight. Instead of inspiring fear, the […]

Sex abuse within the Catholic church is a well-known issue on the mainland, but this is the first time Guam has had to come to grips with it. And it’s a huge deal. Not just because of the abuse, but because the outpouring of accusations that directly confront the church is a sign of huge […]

Tiki bars became wildly popular in the United States after World War II, and were at the height of their popularity when Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959. Even though Tiki bars bars draw inspiration from many Pacific cultures, when most people think of Tiki bars they think of Hawaii. But the tiki bar […]

In the final episode of Season Two, Offshore goes back to the beginning to search for answers to the conflict on Mauna Kea. Not the beginning of astronomy in Hawaii, but beginning of the Kumulipo. The Hawaiian chant of creation.

The story of Mauna Kea starts on an island in the Pacific — but it doesn’t end there. There are other sacred mountains. Sacred plains. Sacred forests. Today, the fights over all these places are becoming linked in ways that no one could have anticipated.

Is there an inherent conflict between Western science and indigenous culture? A difference in world views that makes communication between the two sides in this conflict impossible? Or is there something else at play here?

Why do astronomers feel a giant new telescope on top of Mauna Kea is so important? What will Hawaii — and the scientific community — stand to lose if the telescope isn’t built?

What is it about Mauna Kea that makes it so sacred to Hawaiians? So precious that people have pledged their lives, their liberty, to blocking further development on its summit?

Atop one of the world’s most sacred mountains, a battle over science, culture — and the future of Hawaii.

The story of Mauna Kea is a story about science and culture, yes. But it’s also about land and power. About who gets to say what’s sacred and what’s not. About the way Hawaiians, scientists, and humans in general, search for meaning. It’s also about our changing understanding of the universe. And competing visions for […]

The Offshore team heads to the Big Island to gather material for Season Two, and author Lois-Ann Yamanaka gives us a humorous glimpse at working class life in Hawaii.

Is there something that Hawaii can teach the mainland? Something people of all races have learned from living together in such an isolated place? In the last episode of Season One, people from Hawaii tell personal stories about race relations and how to treat each other with aloha.

Five years, two trials, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees have failed to resolve Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s case. That hasn’t stopped supporters of the man he killed from pushing on. Will there ever be a resolution?

In even the most high profile criminal cases, there comes a point where the world moves on. But for the families of both the victims and the shooters, nothing is ever really normal again. Not even decades later.

After jurors deadlock in Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s first trial, the family of Kollin Elderts calls for a new prosecutor to be put on the case. And Deedy gets a new team of lawyers to start working on a different strategy. But there are larger issues at play. Why is it so hard to convict […]

Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s first murder trial begins in 2013. The stakes in the case were high. For Deedy but also for local prosecutors, who take an all-or-nothing approach to the case — placing all their chips on the table in a bid to lock Deedy up for life.

After a hung jury in the rape trial of five local Hawaiians, the family of the alleged victim looked for vengeance. They got it — by committing one of the most explosive crimes in Hawaiian history.

A privileged socialite. A Native Hawaiian wrongfully accused of rape. A ruling elite that favors whites. So begins the Massie Case. A story from 1932 that still impacts how some Hawaiians view the federal government. And Christopher Deedy.

Hawaii is the only state where whites have always been in the minority. There is this idea that people in Hawaii are racist against white people, that they hate the federal government. So, with a huge diplomatic summit taking place in Honolulu, tensions were high the week that Christopher Deedy shot and killed Kollin Elderts. […]

Christopher Deedy and Kollin Elderts had never met before Nov. 5, 2011, when a 3-minute brawl ended with Elderts dead and Deedy in handcuffs. How did a Native Hawaiian born in the islands and a white federal agent who’d just arrived end up on opposite sides of a gun?