Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
Americans perceived the colonization of Hawai‘i as relatively peaceful.32
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
Those who sought a more indelible Hawaiian souvenir could have a hula girl tattooed on their bodies.30
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
women are objects that can be “tattooed” on a body
The tourists, however, were now soldiers.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
prostitution was another necessary wartime service requiring gendered labor in Hawai‘i, but it was unofficially sanctioned by the U.S. military.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
confine the spread of venereal disease
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
volunteer services.3
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
soldiers and “hula girls” was valuable precisely because it was imagined: it involved no sexual intimacy.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
In the developing American empire, the relationship between visuality, racialization, and domination is most arguably realized with American Indian subjects.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
aloha is a commodified product and service—the hospitality and love of Hawaiian people packaged and sold by a multinational, state-sponsored tourist industry—it is nevertheless insistently referred to as something elusive and noncorporeal: a “spirit,” a “warmth,” an “unseen force.”40