Catastrophic Mortality in Hawaii
Year: 1969
Type: article
Abstract: Catastrophic mortality has taken more than 5,500 lives in Hawaii during the past 190 years.This total includes estimated losses from all accidents and natural disasters resulting in five or more deaths per event.Almost half of the cumulative total occurred as a result of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed about 2,500.Between 1,100 and 1,200 Islanders died in the twenty-three tsunamis, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, explosions, fires, riots, and mass murders in the "catastrophic" category.Four motor vehicle accidents and 84 air and sea disasters, many of which occurred to Hawaiian ships or aircraft far from the Islands, accounted for more than 1,900 deaths between 1778 and 1968.The definition of catastrophic mortality used in this chronology is necessarily somewhat arbitrary.It generally follows the definition adopted by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which includes all accidents (transportation, fire and explosion, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, mines and quarries, and others) in which five or more persons are killed.1 It includes the Pearl Harbor attack but excludes the Battle of Midway and the bloody conflicts of the late 18th the early 19th centuries.*Deaths from famine and epidemics are likewise omitted.Air and sea disasters are included if they occurred in Hawaiian waters, or between Hawaii and the craft's next (or last) port of call, or if Hawaii was the first land reached by survivors.This restricted definition of catastrophic mortality was chosen because of classification problems and a severe lack of accurate data.Discussing Kamehameha, Bingham wrote: "It is supposed that some six thousand of the followers of this chieftain, and twice that number of his opposers, fell in battle during his career, and by famine and distress occasioned by his wars and devastations from 1780 to 1796. . . .However the greatest loss of life according to early writers was not from the battles, but from the starvation of the Robert C. Schmitt is Hawaii state statistician.* The Battle of Midway, fought near the tiny island at the northwestern end of the Hawaiian chain on June 4,1942, resulted in the deaths 0/307 Americans and approximately 3,5°° Japanese; see Henry H. Adams, 1942: The Year That Doomed the Axis (New York:
Source: eVols (University of Hawaii)
Author: Robert C. Schmitt
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2114402612