Molokai History:
(from “The Separating Sickness: Ma’i Ho’oka’awale: Interviews with Exiled Leprosy Patients at Kalaupapa, Hawaii” by Ted Gugelyk and Milton Bloombaum, Ma’i Ho’oka’awale Foundation, Honolulu, HI, 1979)
Male, Japanese
Blind
Age: 62
34 years at Kalaupapa
No More Family Ties
Orientals have the most fear of this disease. Like I said, I was cut out of my family. It’s like I’m a dead duck. When members of my family died, I was never mentioned as a surviving relative in the obituary section of the daily newspaper. It was like I never existed in my family. My family never visited me here. Never. Nobody. So I am a free man. I will go on until that day comes, then pau, finished, I will die. Only my brother is left. So I have no contact whatsoever with family. But I am not angry. I guess I understand. In the beginning everyone was scared of this leprosy. You can’t expect them to come here all the time; but for me, they never came, ever. But I can’t blame anybody. How can I blame anyone? I don’t know how I got it. No other people in my family got it. No friends got it. Me, I’m just a hard-luck man, I guess.
When I die, I don’t want my family to come here. Don’t notify anybody. Just forget it. I just want to be buried and be done with it. That’s all.
Blessings, Pule & Pono!
Fr. Brian, ss.cc.
Priest
Topside Molokai