As of 2005, Hawaii has an estimated population of 1,275,194, which is an increase of 13,070, or 1.0%, from the prior year and an increase of 63,657, or 5.3%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 48,111 people (that is 96,028 births minus 47,917 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 16,956 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 30,068 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 13,112 people.

Hawai?i has a de facto population of over 1.3 million due to military presence and tourists. O?ahu is the most populous island, with a resident population of just under one million.

Ethnically, Hawai?i is the only state that has a majority group that is non-white (and one of only four in which non-Hispanic whites do not form a majority) and has the largest percentage of Asian Americans.

Hawaii was the first majority-minority state in the United States since the 20th century. According to the 2000 Census, 6.6% of Hawai?i’s population identified themselves as Native Hawaiian, 24.3% were White or Caucasian, including Portuguese and 41.6% were Asian, including 0.1% Asian Indian, 4.7% Chinese, 14.1% Filipino, 16.7% Japanese, 1.9% Korean and 0.6% Vietnamese. 1.3% were other Pacific Islander, which includes Samoan, Tongan, Tahitian, Maori and Micronesian, and 21.4% described themselves as mixed (two or more races/ethnic groups). 1.8% were Black or African American and 0.3% were Native American and Alaska Native.

The second group of foreigners to arrive upon Hawai?i’s shores, after the Europeans, were the Chinese. Chinese employees serving on Western trading ships disembarked and settled starting in 1789. In 1820 the first American missionaries arrived in Hawai?i to preach Christianity and teach the Hawaiians what the missionaries considered “civilized” ways. A large proportion of Hawai?i’s population has become a people of Asian ancestry (especially Chinese, Japanese and Filipino), many of whom are descendants from those waves of early foreign immigrants brought to the islands in the nineteenth century, beginning in the 1850’s, to work on the sugar plantations. The first 153 Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawai?i on June 19, 1868.

They were not “legally” approved by the Japanese government established after the Meiji Restoration because the contract was between a broker and the by then terminated Tokugawa shogunate. The first Japanese government-approved immigrants arrived in Hawai?i on February 9, 1885 after Kalakaua’s petition to Emperor Meiji when Kalakaua visited Japan in 1881)

As of 2000, 73.4% of Hawai?i residents age 5 and older speak English at home and 7.9% speak Pacific Island languages. Tagalog is the third most spoken language at 5.4%, followed by Japanese at 5.0% and Chinese at 2.6%. The official languages are Hawaiian and Hawaiian English. Hawaiian Pidgin is an unofficial language.
Religion
Christian = 68%
Protestant = 42%
Congregational/United Church of Christ= 3%
Baptist = 2%
Methodist = 2%
Catholic = 24%
LDS = 2%
Agnostic/non-religious = 18%
Buddhist = 9%
Other (e.g. Shinto, Tao, pagan) = 5%