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
I was sent to Kalaupapa on May 15, 1942. May 15, 1979 will be my thirty-seventh anniversary there. Thirty-seven years ago I was banished from society and family. My mother couldn’t visit me each Sunday anymore. We were sent away from Honolulu Harbor on the ship “Hawaii”. There were forty-two of us on the ship, almost all children. It was a dreaded day, and I remember it with so many mixed thoughts. One thing, I remember the Kalihi medical staff speculating I wouldn’t last six months at Kalaupapa. Because of my advancing illness, they expected me to die there. I was in such poor health. I was weak, had high fevers and chills, ulcers appeared first on my ears then spread over my body. There was no medicine to stop the illness. The ulcers festered. My whole body hurt. I was miserable.
Blessings, pono and much pule!
Fr. Brian, ss.cc.
Priest
Topside Molokai