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, Part-Hawaiian
Blind, Disabled, Married
70 years of Age
57 years at Kalaupapa and Hale Mohalu

(continued from yesterday)

The State Has Provided: I Am Grateful To Our Benefactors (At Leahi)

After being declared a leper at thirteen, I lived at the Kalihi Receiving Station for four years. I began to adjust to my new life. My family would come and visit me, but the Board of Health was very strict. You could not touch your parents or other non-patients. So that is how it was. We could talk to one another only by a separation of space, ten to twelve feet of space was always between us. On my side of the space, in the visiting room, was a small table and a chair. On my parent’s side, a small bench to sit on. We were separated further by a strong wire mesh, stretching from floor to ceiling. It was on the visitor’s side. In this way, there could be no touching between relatives and confined patients. There would be no passing of objects to one another. So you see, the disease was considered very contagious in those days, and they took great care to separate us. We were thought to be threat to society. One day, after my parents’ visit, when they arrived home they found a bright yellow sign on their gate in the front yard. It was put there by the Board of Health. It read “Quarantine Notice. This house has a communicable Disease — Leprosy, and is subject to Fumigation.” That was the Law. From then on, all those who passed our home knew there was leprosy in the family.

When I arrived in Honolulu, my mother and sisters were there to greet me. Of course we could not touch. Then I learned my father had died. Only my mother and sisters were left. Yet it was one of the happiest moments in my life, to get back to Honolulu. My mother couldn’t stop crying, nor my sisters. I cried too, but this time I knew why I cried. I finally knew the meaning of being a leprosy person. Like I said, outside you could be anything, belong to anything, be a person of prestige. But once you were declared a leper, you became a leper. Everything else didn’t matter, you could be sent to Kalaupapa for any little thing, not only leprosy.

Blessings, pule & pono!

Fr. Brian, ss.cc.
Priest
Molokai Topside