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Hawaii has a de facto population of over 1.4 million, due in part to a large number of military personnel and tourist residents. O'ahu is the most populous island; it has the highest population density with a resident population of just under one million in 597 square miles (1,546 km 2 ), approximately 1,650 people per square mile.
Hawaii had not yet become a U.S. state in 1947, and as such was part of the original UN definition of Oceania. The island states of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, all located within the bounds of the Pacific or associated marginal seas, are excluded from the UN definition.
The islands are about 1,860 miles (3,000 km) from the nearest continent and are part of the Polynesia subregion of Oceania. The U.S. state of Hawaii occupies the archipelago almost in its entirety (including the mostly uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands), with the sole exception of Midway Atoll (a United States Minor Outlying Island).
The umbrella term Pacific Islands has taken on several meanings. [1] Sometimes it is used to refer only to the islands defined as lying within Oceania. [2] [3] [4] At other times, it is used to refer to the islands of the Pacific Ocean that were previously colonized by the British, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, or Japanese, or by the United States.
Biogeographically and geologically, Papua and West Papua provinces are parts of Oceania. Likewise, there is also no clearly defined boundary between Latin America and Oceania; the mostly uninhabited oceanic Pacific islands near Latin America have been considered by some as part of Oceania, both historically and in present-day times.
Polynesia is one of three major cultural areas of the Pacific Ocean islands, along with Melanesia and Micronesia. Subregions (Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Australasia), as well as sovereign and dependent islands of Oceania Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the Polynesian Triangle.
The Polynesian Triangle is a geographical region of the Pacific Ocean with Hawaii (Hawaiʻi) (1), New Zealand (Aotearoa) (2) and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) (3) at its corners, but excluding Fiji on its western side. At the center is Tahiti (5), with Samoa (4) to the west.
Spanning 1,500 miles (2,400 km), the state is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. Hawaii's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth-longest in the U.S., at about 750 miles (1,210 km).