Bernice Akamine
2002
In January of 1895, a nationalist rebellion broke out against the Republic of Hawaii. The rebellion was crushed in two days by Republican forces who outgunned the nationalist forces. The Queen was arrested and brought before a military tribunal. The Republic found her guilty of “misprision of treason” (branding her a traitor) and fined her $5,000 and five years of hard labor (Liliuokalani 1990 [1898]:289). Instead of hard labor though, they decided to imprison her in a corner room of Iolani Palace for eight months. The Queen later said, “My crime was that I knew my people were conspiring...to throw off the yoke of the stranger and oppressor” (278). Not being able to correspond with the outside world, the musically gifted Queen Liliuokalani sought solace during her imprisonment through music. She composed “The Queen's Prayer,” one of her most famous hymns, and dedicated it to her niece, Princess Kaiulani. In it, she asked God to forgive those who imprisoned her and let her nation be pure. But Princess Kaiulani would not get to see this hymn until after Liliu was released.
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