The most isolated capital city in the world — where native Hawaiian sovereignty, Japanese internment, and America's entry into World War II all converged at Pearl Harbour, the Pacific's only royal palace still stands, and the wave that Diamond Head overlooks has been surfed for a thousand years
Honolulu (350,000; metro 1.0 million) is the capital and largest city of Hawaii, the 50th US state — situated on the island of Oahu, 2,400 miles from the nearest US mainland city (San Francisco), making it the world's most geographically isolated state capital. Waikiki Beach, the 1.5-mile crescent of engineered beach in Honolulu's tourist district, receives around 5 million visitors per year and is the most commercially developed beach in the world. Pearl Harbor (USS Arizona Memorial, Battleship Missouri, Pacific Aviation Museum) is the most visited military heritage site in the US and the me…
Hawaii was settled by Polynesian voyagers from the Marquesas Islands around 400 CE and from Tahiti around 1000 CE, who navigated across 2,400 miles of open ocean using stars, swells, and birds. Captain James Cook became the first European to document the islands in 1778 (naming them the Sandwich Islands) and was killed at Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island in 1779. King Kamehameha I unified the Hawaiian Islands by 1810 and established the Kingdom of Hawaii, which maintained diplomatic relations with the US, Britain, and France. The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom (17 January 1893), led by a C…