I Ilun i Gamson
![Image](http://web.archive.org./web/20210128152402im_/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cGl-ej3a1YA/UIFaca26zZI/AAAAAAAAHWM/9sY-vrpeHm4/s400/Giant_octopus_attacks_ship.jpg)
Hawaii: Head of the Tentacled Beast By Jon Letman, October 18, 2012 Foreign Policy in Focus Fresh from hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Honolulu last autumn, U.S. President Barack Obama recently told members of the Australian Parliament that America’s defense posture across the Asia-Pacific would be “more broadly distributed…more flexible—with new capabilities to ensure that our forces can operate freely.” The announcement of America’s “ Asia-Pacific pivot ” by its first Hawaiia-born president was highly fitting, since the Hawaiian Islands are at the piko (“navel” in Hawaiian) of this vast region. A less flattering metaphor for Hawaii’s role in the Pacific is what Maui educator and native Hawaiian activist Kaleikoa Kaeo has called a giant octopus whose tentacles reach across the ocean clutching Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Jeju island, Guam—and, at times, the Philippines, American Samoa, Wake Island, Bikini Atoll, and Kwajalein At