New Hawaii Postage Stamp to be issued on Sept. 2

Stamp to be Unveiled by Attorney General Mark Bennett & Postal Officials

HONOLULU — Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett will join the U.S. Postal Service to officially dedicate the new Hawaii Flags of Our Nation stamp at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 2 in the courtyard of the Airport Post Office in Honolulu.

The dedication ceremonies will be emceed by Honolulu Postmaster Frank Santos and will include remarks by the Attorney General, who is standing in for Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle. The dedicating official will be the Postal Service’s Honolulu District Manager Daryl Ishizaki. While the program is open to the public, seating will be extremely limited.

Flags of our Nation is a three-year, multi-stamp series, featuring the Stars and Stripes, the 50 state flags, five territorial flags, and the District of Columbia flag. The first set of ten stamps in the series was issued on June 14, Flag Day. The second set, to be issued nationwide on Sept. 2, features the flags of the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and, of course, Guam. In addition to the flag art, each stamp design includes artwork that provides a “snapshot view” of the state or other area represented by a particular flag.

These stamps are arranged alphabetically in strips of 10 and sold in coils of 50. Four more sets of flag stamps will be issued in 2009 and 2010. The flag of the Northern Mariana Islands will be part of a set issued in 2010.

Collectors will be able to purchase the Flags of Our Nation stamps and have them hand cancelled for free with a special commemorative first day of sale postmark by postal personnel from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Airport Post Office courtyard.

The second set of Flags of Our Nation stamps will be available for purchase in Post Offices throughout Hawaii and across the U.S. on Sept. 2.

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Please Note: A high-resolution JPEG image of the Hawaii Flags of Our Nation stamp is available upon request. Please submit your request to duke.gonzales@usps.gov

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation — 146 million homes and businesses. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.