In the post 9/11 world, it’s risky to comment on human tragedies that produce martyrs in places which then come to be regarded as “sacred.” Innocent people who die deserve tremendous respect. The place of their passing comes to have great emotional power for those left behind. So it was quite surreal to find myself visiting Pearl Harbor for the first time with two Native Hawaiian activists on December 7.

The narrative I heard from them involved the history of the U.S. military in Hawaii and the impact this has had on land and culture. As I’ve been researching a possible film on the Navy’s use of Kaho`olawe Island as a bombing range, and the successful native campaign to return the island to sovereign Hawaiian control, I came first to Oahu — the seat of local political power. I visited the palace where the Marines staged the 1893 coup that led to the future American annexation of Hawaii, the university where intellectual battles over native rights have been fought, the beach where tourists bag the prized vacation visit as hole-in-the-wall bakeries pay $20,000 a month in rent, and the museum where thousands of human remains are still stored in the basement.

From an overlook high above the water, Pearl Harbor’s ecological and spiritual significance are obvious. All that fresh rainwater captured by a ring of green mountains flowing toward the sea, merging in a giant bay with an island at its heart — I could see what a great source of food for native people this had been. Fish, turtles, crustaceans, oysters, pearls in paradise. But all that is lost: 748 contaminated areas have been consolidated into one Superfund site. The water is as gray as the destroyers.

Terri Kekoolani (DMZ Hawaii) and Kyle Kajihiro (American Friends Service Committee) described the cultural significance of the island in the center, now Ford Island, once surrounded by fish ponds and used as a retreat for royalty, a place of re-creation and pro-creation. The beautiful bay surrounding it was originally called Ke Awa Lau O Puuloa — the many harbors of Puuloa — or Wai Momo — harbor of pearl — and the calm, shallow inlet was home of the benevolent shark goddess Ka’ahupahau and her brother Kahi’uka. Terri and I walked through the visitor center and memorial and she couldn’t help but note the irony of the huge selection of souvenirs being sold at the National Park Service bookstore: “It’s a cash machine,” she said. Pain upon pain.

“I see Pearl Harbor not as a source of food and the unraveling of sovereignty — it is a womb and vagina, fed by streams,” said Terri, as we walked among Japanese tourists and looked across the water to the mountains. “Now it represents the constant memorialization of war and fear.”

As we drove away we encountered an ocean of flags, one for each American killed in the shocking aerial assault back in 1941. A sacred native place taken for another purpose, bombed by surprise in a high stakes geopolitical power struggle, used as justification for permanent war, now marked as a modern kind of sacred site.