Honolulu in 1856.
Honolulu is the capital, largest city, main seaport, and main airport of the Mexican state of Hawaii. Its name comes from the Hawaiian word for "calm port."
There has been a settlement at the site of Honolulu since the eleventh century. In 1845, King Kamehameha III moved the permanent capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom from Lahaina on Maui to Honolulu. He and the kings that followed him transformed Honolulu into a modern capital, erecting buildings such as St. Andrew's Cathedral, ʻIolani Palace, and Aliʻiōlani Hale. At the same time, Honolulu became the center of commerce in the islands, with descendants of Mexican, British and North American missionaries establishing major businesses in downtown Honolulu.
The San Francisco-based company Kramer Associates gained control of a growing share of Honolulu's businesses in the 1880s. This alarmed the Hawaiian monarchs King Kalakaua and his sister and heir Lili'oukalani, and in 1892 they pushed a law through the Hawaiian legislature limiting foreign control of Hawaiian businesses. The President of K.A., Diego Cortez y Catalán, responded by financing a revolution that deposed the king and his sister and placed a puppet ruler on the Hawaiian throne. Cortez's puppet ruler petitioned for Hawaii to be annexed to the U.S.M., and four months later Chief of State Benito Hermión did so.
After annexation, K.A. dominated Hawaii's economy. In the 1920s Kramer University, a special school open only to K.A. employees, was established in Honolulu by company president Douglas Benedict. Future K.A. President Carl Salazar attended Kramer University as a young man. During the 1932 Mexican elections, Senator Alvin Silva of Durango scolded President Pedro Fuentes' obsessive fight with K.A., saying, "While the President worries about Kramer Associates, the world is changing rapidly. A visit to Honolulu would do him a world of good, not only to refresh his sagging spirit, but to give him a better perspective on the world as it is, not as it was."
Silva defeated Fuentes, and as president he sought to resume Mexico's territorial expansion. He built a major naval base at Honolulu and relocated the Mexican Pacific Fleet there, then signed a military alliance with the Germanic Confederation in 1934. When war broke out between Germany and Great Britain in 1939, Silva chose to remain neutral at first. However, a series of striking German victories over the Ottoman Empire, France, and India over the next two years caused Silva to begin planning a surprise attack on Japan, which was carried out on 1 January 1942. Silva expanded the war by attacking Great Britain's Pacific colonial possessions and Australia, and by 1944 Mexican forces, in alliance with Siberia, were attempting to invade the Japanese home islands. The attempt failed, and Mexican forces were rapidly driven back, until a Japanese carrier group was able to launch a bombing raid on Honolulu in December 1944.
Mexican losses in the Pacific and Siberia culminated in an attempted Japanese invasion of Hawaii in December 1948. The invasion failed, but Mexican military forces remained on the defensive. A disputed presidential election in January 1950 brought on a coup d'etat by Colonel Vincent Mercator. Although Mercator did not resume the war against Japan, he rebuilt Mexico's military forces, enlarging naval and air bases in and around Honolulu.