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 is ironic, but the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor was responsible for sending me to Kalaupapa. By December, 1941, I was quite ill. By then, leprosy had really took hold of me. But that Sunday morning, I was in the hospital yard, and we saw the airplanes come down. They were flying low over Kalihi. Some dove down from the sky and dropped bombs a few miles away on Pearl Harbor. We could see the black smoke and hear the explosions. Everyone crowded into the church for protection. The children were told to pray. But not me. With a few friends, I remained outside to watch the action. I climbed up into a large hau tree to get a better view. I almost got shot by a Japanese plane strafing the neighborhood. The plane was very low, just above tree top. I could see the pilot’s face looking down at us, smiling. His bullets made a double line, starting about 150 feet from my tree, thumping and kicking up dirt on to the fish pond beyond. At that point, we all realized this was for real, it was war. Everyone else rushed for the chapel, but not I. It was in no way the safest place to be. I remained in my hau tree, high in its branches, hidden in the leaves. I remember so vividly the planes passing directly overhead. I have so many memories of that place where I was first confined. Even the memories of such a historic event.
Blessings, pono and much pule!
Fr. Brian, ss.cc.
Priest
Topside Molokai