The Stars and Stripes is nowhere to be seen. Among the neat bungalows beneath the steep green mountains of Ko'olau only the flags of the Hawaiian state are on display. They are all upside down.

"It is the international maritime signal of distress," said Bumpy Kanahele, who has devoted much of his life to a seemingly quixotic quest for independence from the United States. "It's saying, 'We're in trouble.' "

A Royal Navy officer working with the Hawaiian king is said to have come up with the design in 1816, placing the Union flag in a prominent position and arguing that the stripes were an acknowledgment of America's role in the islands.

Mr Kanahele, wearing a T-shirt reading "Hawaiian by birth" on the front and "American by force" on the back, is the inspiration behind the beautifully situated village. Mauka is a patch of 45 acres where Hawaii's original inhabitants hold sway and Washington's writ has little force.

Here, among banana and coconut trees and blood red hibiscus, 100 people live a life in contemptuous rejection of the American dream.

"This is not America," Mr Kanahele said. "That is 3,000 miles away."

He has some grounds for complaint. In 1893, Queen Lydia Liliuokalani was deposed in a coup organised by Stanford [sic] Dole, an American [sic] pineapple magnate, and supported by US marines. Five years later the islands were annexed.

On the coup's anniversary in 1993, America formally apologised "for the overthrow of the kingdom of Hawaii … and the deprivation of the rights of native Hawaiians to self-determination".

Mr Kanahele said that was an admission that the US was illegally occupying Hawaii.