I can primarily focus on why the statehood vote was so lopsided despite Hawaii’s past as an independent nation. To put it simply, the unique and separate identity of Hawaii was gradually exterminated from Hawaii after annexation by the United States as the number of Native Hawaiians decreased and mass immigration of laborers from Asia and the pacific islands was encouraged. The demographics of the island were dramatically transformed after annexation to the point where by 1920 over half of the population was neither a Native Hawaiian or from the United States, leading to a population that had few if any ties to the former independent Kingdom of Hawaii. Even contemporary newspapers commented on how this demographic transformation informed the strong support for statehood in Hawaii, as opposed to the nationalism that was present in the Philippines and Puerto Rico where the previous natives of the territories still were a vast majority of the population. Given that by 1946 only around 10,000 Native Hawaiians lives on the island, out of a population of half a million, the roughly 6,000 votes against independence can be seen in a new light as the small legacy of Hawaiians independent past.

Source for contemporary article on support for Hawaii statehood: Chapman, Abraham. “Hawaii Seeks Statehood.” Far Eastern Survey, vol. 15, no. 14, 1946, pp. 209–13. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3023059. Accessed 10 Jun. 2022.