The 12th of August.

Today makes a full year, which you, O Lāhui will not forget; it is the day the beautiful colors of the beloved Hawaiian Flag were lost; the flag which you cherished with great affection, of which you will always say, May it wave forever upon the fringes of the winds of this, your beloved land.

At 12 noon on this day, your Beloved Flag descended once more from its place on your shores, O Hawaiians. At the same time the starred flag of the United States of America was raised above Hawaiʻi, bringing the life of your people under its care.

What we greatly desire is to see the beautiful stripes of the Hawaiian Flag flutter once again above the rooftops of Hawaiʻi. Perhaps you also feel the same, O Lāhui.

Our hope is that this will become a day, O Lāhui, that you remember without forgetting, that this is the day which you were betrayed by the people who you extended your warm aloha, O Open-hearted Hawaiians, before the strangers who visited at the doors of your home. This day will become a day for you to look to the other side of the green mountain ranges of yours, O Hawaiians.

[F]or as the sun shines on the evil and the good, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust, I have not felt called upon to limit the enjoyment of my beach and shade-trees to any party in politics; and my observation convinces me that those who are most opposed to my system of government have not the least diffidence about passing happy hours on domains which are certainly my private property. To watch the families of the Royalist and the Provisionalist mingling together, sharing each the other’s lunch-baskets, and spending the day in social pleasures at the “Queen’s Retreat,” one would never suspect that racial or political jealousy had any place in the breasts of the participants. While in exile it has ever been a pleasant thought to me that my people, in spite of differences of opinion, are enjoying together the free use of my seashore home.

—Queen Liliʻuokalani, in “Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen.”