Following a territorial referendum in which Hawaiian voters overwhelmingly approved statehood, President Eisenhower signed the official proclamation making Hawaii the 50th state of the Union. It came just seven months after Alaska's admission, closing a chapter of continental and Pacific expansion that had begun over a century earlier. The move reflected Hawaii's growing strategic and economic importance following World War II.
Hawaii's path to statehood was long and fraught, tangled up with the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and decades of territorial status under American control. Sugar and pineapple plantation owners had lobbied for annexation since the 1890s, but Congress resisted for generations, partly due to racist anxieties about admitting a state with a majority non-white, non-continental population.
World War II changed the calculus. Pearl Harbor had demonstrated Hawaii's indispensable strategic value, and the territory's mixed population of Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Native Hawaiian, and white residents had served the U.S. war effort with distinction, including the celebrated 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regiment.
When the statehood plebiscite finally came in June 1959, Hawaiian voters approved it by a margin of roughly 17 to 1. Eisenhower's signature on the proclamation made Hawaii the first and only U.S. state composed entirely of islands, and the only one with a former native monarchy. It remains, to date, the last state added to the Union.
Key people: Dwight D. Eisenhower