“Why are there no evacuation plans for us?”

A public forum will be held on Saturday, March 10, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Church of the Crossroads (1212 University Ave., Honolulu) to discuss options for preventing war with North Korea.

Speakers will include Ralph Cossa of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Jairus Grove, Professor of International Relations at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Manoa.

According to Grove, “there are clear signs that the Trump administration is gearing up for a war on North Korea.”

Since late-2017, the U.S. has set the stage for a war with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). It has deployed the bulk of its nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier fleet to the Western Pacific. These have been reinforced by stealth joint fighter teams (including F22s), B2 stealth bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and F35s loaded with the critical software needed to use them. All munitions needed to arm soldiers, air and naval support have been moved to U.S. bases in South Korea, Guam and Okinawa. At the same time, the Trump administration is sabotaging efforts at diplomacy and building an international case to strengthen its case for an attack on North Korea.

Kim Jong-un has publicly pledged that he will use all means necessary to ensure the regime’s survival. With its vastly inferior nuclear weapons, air force and conventional fighting force, North Korea has only one option: raise the cost of further invasion such that the U.S. would willingly pull out. Grove says that makes Hawaiʻi a likely target. The full capabilities of North Korea’s nuclear program are unknown.

Yet, while the U.S. issued a “Non-combatant Evacuation Operations” memo on Feb. 25, 2018 with plans to evacuate U.S. citizens in South Korea, there are no plans to evacuate residents of Hawaiʻi.

“My friends, family and I are living in fear of a nuclear holocaust,” said Nandita Sharma, Associate Professor of Sociology at UH Manoa. “In fact, the ‘red line’ drawn by the Trump Administration does not include North Korea strikes on Hawaiʻi, but only on the continental USA. And, despite claims that interception missiles will save Hawaiʻi, the current U.S. success rate to intercept North Korean missiles is, at best, 30 percent. And, the most recent test in Hawaiʻi failed.”

Hawaiʻi has no approved public bomb shelters. Instead, we are told to “shelter in place,” even though most Honolulu homes are made of wood and do not have basements. People in Hawaiʻi have nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Having recently received a taste of what it is like to wait for unstoppable death with those we love most, residents have decided to hold a forum to demand immediate and emergency actions to stop the impending war with North Korea that could lead to the nuclear destruction of Hawaiʻi.