Hawaii Public Television

In 1998, a locally-made film exposed what Native Hawaiians had written, talked and sung about for a century: the true story of how and why Hawai‘i became part of the United States.

This short documentary chronicles a four-month period between 1979 and 1980 when residents of Hawaii's Sand Island "squatter" community attempted to resist eviction from the Honolulu shoreline - resulting in displacement, arrests, and the destruction of a community.

More than half a million native Hawaiians were living in the islands at the time of European contact in 1778. Within 50 years, that population was cut in half as Western diseases claimed thousands of lives. A litany of events followed: American missionaries preached unfamiliar ideas and customs; sugarcane and pineapple plantations absorbed individual farmlands; waves of immigrant workers arrived, making Hawaiians a minority in their own land; and WWII brought a lasting military presence. University of Hawai'i sociologists estimate that the extinction of full-blooded Hawaiians could come within the next 45 years. This compelling story of a race displaced and now on the verge of extinction is brilliantly told in this award-winning documentary created by the great-granddaughter of Hawaiian high chiefs and English seafarers.

Terence Knapp plays Father Damien in this TV adaptation of the stage play. Damien goes to Hawaii in the late 1800s to care for lepers. Now deceased from leprosy, Father Damien appears as a spirit recounting his life as his funeral procession is carried out.