Measures seek to honor and aid service members

Hawaii lawmakers are pitching more than a dozen measures focused on the military, including proposals to protect service members in child custody battles and to require a flag for prisoners of war to be flown.

The package of 14 bills and one resolution was presented Wednesday by lawmakers on the House Committee on Economic Revitalization, Business and Military Affairs.

One bill would prevent courts from using a parent's absence due to military service when it awards child custody or visitation rights. Another would require a POW/MIA flag be flown with the U.S. and Hawaii flags.

NEIGHBOR ISLANDS

Kauai flattens dwellings on park land

LIHUE » Kauai County used bulldozers yesterday to knock down dwellings determined to be illegally erected on county park land along Wainiha Bay and the Wainiha River.

Many of those whose houses, shacks and tents were destroyed contend the county does not own the land.

They say it had been given to native Hawaiian families who had been tending the land and living there in a system known as “;kuleana lands”; tenancy.

Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.'s executive assistant, Beth Tokioka, said officials began receiving complaints last year about people living in alleged illegal structures at Wainiha County Park.

Tokioka said notices of violation were posted last month, but the owners refused to remove their structures.