Hawaii Territorial Guard
During the war, it was the sole military force available to the Governor of Hawaii as its captain general to use in defense of the state.[3] In January 1942, due to suspicions of their loyalty, all ethnic Japanese members were dismissed from the Hawaii Territorial Guard.[4] Hawaii Territorial Guardsmen who had been discharged petitioned General Delos Carleton Emmons, the Military Governor of Hawaii, to be allowed contribute to the war effort in another way, and in February they were assigned to a regiment of engineers as a 160-man auxiliary unit called the Varsity Victory Volunteers.[5] After the temporary shutdown of the unit, the Hawaii Territorial Guard was immediately reactivated without its ethnic Japanese members and began recruiting replacements.[11] Therefore, the existing legal framework makes it possible for the Governor of Hawaii or the state legislative to order the reactivation of a Hawaii state defense force in the future, inheriting the lineage and traditions of not just the old HTG but of the volunteer Hawaiian-American militia organizations of the Second World War.