How did life change in Hawaii and at Pearl Harbor after the attack?

The day after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered . Hawaii was at that time
a U.S. territory, rather than a state. The day after the attack, Hawaiis Territorial Governor,
Joseph B. Poindexter, declared martial law, which suspended some civil liberties and imposed a
curfew on the island to maintain security. National Guard troops were mobilized on the island to
maintain order.

About one third of Hawaii's population at the time was made
up of people of Japanese descent, who had been coming to the island to work on the plantations
since the 1800s. In fact, there were more people of Japanese descent in Hawaii than in the
mainland U.S. While Japanese and Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps on the
mainlanda process that clearly violated the Constitutionvery few people of Japanese descent
(about 2,000 out of 157,000) were placed in internment centers in Hawaii. They were too
essential to running all sectors of the economy and there were too many of them to be interned
on the island.

Large numbers of military personnel came to the island and
were stationed at Pearl Harbor. Commercial shipping was paused during the war, as all shipping
operations were related to the military. Before the war, Hawaii's economy was mainly
agricultural, and its main exports were pineapples and sugar. However, the Great Depression had
hit the island hard, and the economy was in the doldrums. World War II caused a huge growth in
the island's economy, as new businesses developed to meet the needs of the arriving military
personnel. In addition, the construction industry boomed. 

Labor union
activity was not allowed during the beginning of the war, and, under martial law, wages remained
frozen. In 1943, restrictions on labor were ended, and many of the workers at the Hawaiian sugar
plantations began to unionize. In fact, workers were unionized at all but one of the island's 35
plantations. However, the plantations faced a decline in the midst of an ongoing construction
boom and the growth of other industries, and they never recovered after the war. Following the
war, tourism became one of Hawaii's main industries, and it became a state in
1959.