Molokai History:
(continued from yesterday)
(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
Part-Hawaiian
Partly Disfigured
48 years of age
37 years in Kalaupapa
It was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which was responsible for us children being shipped to Kalaupapa. Honolulu was declared a war zone, and for us kids, I guess the Board of Health considered Honolulu to be a hazard to our health. Of course, they considered us to be a hazard to society too. But for our protection, and maybe the protection of the citizens of Honolulu, we were told we would be sent directly to Kalaupapa. The decision was made quickly. Some children pleaded with the nurses. At that time, Kalaupapa had a dreaded reputation. It was a place where people were sent to die. It was a place without hope, a final solution, a final place of isolation from which there was no return. Children were normally not sent there, unless they had relatives confined within Kalaupapa. Only the advanced adult cases were sent there. But it was the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor which changed the Board of Health policy and thus resulted in my final banishment to that place we all feared. We feared it because we had friends who were sent there. Only a few returned, maybe for sterilization operations at Kalihi Hospital. But when they returned for the operation, they desperately wished to get back to Honolulu if only for a few days. They had changed so much. Physically they came back disfigured, in the advanced stages of leprosy. All those things we knew and we feared what we thought was to be our final banishment. So that’s how it happened.
Blessings, pono and much, much pule!
Fr. Brian, ss.cc.
Priest
Topside Molokai