ON JANUARY 6, 1866, J. N. Loe boarded the small sailing schoonerWarwick,bound for the north shore of the island of Molokai. With him were eight men, three women, and a small boy whom they hid in their midst.¹ Loe, Kahauliko, Liilii, Puha, Kini, Lono, Waipio, Kainana, Kaaumoana, Nahuina,² Lakapu, and Kepihe were the first of an estimated eight thousand people who, over the next century, would be deprived of their rights, their families, their communities, and the lands of their birth because they were said to have leprosy. The small boy was one of four or five family...

IN THE 1860S, when leprosy began to spread rapidly in Hawaii, other diseases had already devastated the Native Hawaiian population.¹ A series of epidemics during the last four months of 1848, including measles, whooping cough, and influenza, resulted in as many as ten thousand deaths, especially among infants.² The first Board of Health was established on December 13, 1850, “for the good of the inhabitants of Honolulu,” but especially to deal with cholera.³ In 1853, it was estimated that at least five thousand people died from smallpox.₄

Leprosy was different. It didn’t result in large numbers of quick deaths. For...

BY THE BEGINNING of June 1866, eighty-seven people had been sent to Kalawao, and it was becoming clear that there would be no return from this place. J. N. Loe died on July 20, 1866, the first of the original group of twelve people to die at Kalawao. He was preceded in death by nine men and one woman. The first was a man named Kaanaana, who apparently died on April 15, the date that in future years would be known as “Damien Day” after Father Damien died on April 15, 1889.¹ A man named Waiwaiole “died at sea” en...

THE QUESTION OF leadership at Kalawao was always one of the most difficult. There were the government-appointed administrators and there were the leaders of the people themselves. Sometimes they were the same person, but usually they were not. In the early years of Kalawao’s existence, the names Louis Lepart and Donald and Caroline Walsh represented the government’s choice of leadership. Amongst the people of Kalawao, it was the names J. D. Kahauliko, J. H. Hao, D. W. Puhaula (Kapuhaula), James Paiaina, and William Humphreys Uwelealea¹ that were associated with leadership. All were members of Siloama Church.²

In its report for...

WILLIAM HUMPHREYS UWELEALEA was one of the first people of Hawaiian-Caucasian ancestry to be suspected of having leprosy. Initially sent to Kalihi Hospital in 1866, he was not permanently admitted until two years later. At that time he sent the above letter outlining his concerns for his family to Dr. Hutchison through David Kalakaua, who would become king in 1874.¹ Upon admission to Kalihi, all that William Uwelealea had been, all that he had hoped for in life was taken away. He was no longer a person with a future, no longer a person who could take care of his...

CLOSE TO FIVE hundred families were separated in 1873 as a result of the government’s heightened efforts to enforce the isolation of people with leprosy.¹ William Charles Lunalilo ascended the throne in January 1873, following the death of King Kamehameha V and a new Board of Health was appointed. In March, Rudolph Meyer indicated that there was room for one hundred more people at Kalawao and an additional hundred if the lands of the kamaaina at Kalaupapa were purchased.² Within three months, more than three hundred people were sent to the settlement, and no mea kokua were allowed to accompany...

PETER KAEO ARRIVED at Kalaupapa on June 30, 1873, just two weeks after William Ragsdale. At least 122 letters were sent between Peter Kaeo, who signed his letters Kekuaokalani, and his cousin, Queen Emma. Published in the bookNews from Molokai,¹ these letters provide a detailed commentary on life at Kalaupapa during his three years there. Although at times the people hoped that Peter Kaeo would become their leader, he preferred not to take an active leadership role. Instead, through his letters, written in English with his own unique spelling and punctuation, he ensured that the truth about the situation...

FATHER DAMIEN DE VEUSTER arrived at Kalaupapa on May 10, 1873, less than two weeks after Jonathan Napela. Ordained at Our Lady of Peace Cathedral in Honolulu in 1864, he had been in Hawaii for nine years, working in the parishes of Puna, Kohala, and Hamakua on the Big Island of Hawaii. Ambrose Hutchison, who would become one of his closest friends at Kalaupapa, described how Father Damien felt it essential “to speak and talk the native language to succeed in his mission work” and this “spurred him to study hard to master it.”¹

In letters from the Big Island,...

AMBROSE HUTCHISON WAS the 2,001st person to be sent to Kalawao. He arrived on January 5, 1879, a young man of twenty, who soon demonstrated his “moral compass.” Highly respected as a steady, consistent, and influential leader, he would occupy the position of resident superintendent for a total of more than ten years, longer than any other individual who was also battling the physical and social effects of leprosy.

Through his memoirs, written in the years before his death in 1932 and an autobiographical statement given to Dr. Mouritz, Ambrose Hutchison told his own remarkable story of more than half...

WHEN PEOPLE WERE sent to Kalaupapa, they lost everything. Individuals who had worked and supported themselves and their families found themselves impoverished. Children who had parents living were labeled “orphans” when they arrived alone at Kalaupapa.

At Kalawao, people experienced tremendous difficulty, but they also managed to go on with life, encouraged and inspired by each other. With Father Damien’s arrival there was now someone with good health, boundless energy, and a host of new ideas who would provide a sense of continuity in an environment that had traditionally been characterized by change and uncertainty. There was also someone who...

THE KALIHI HOSPITAL had been abandoned in 1875 and replaced in function by a leprosy “detention station,” which was located next to the police station. At that time, no treatment was offered and people were simply locked up until the next boat was ready to leave. In discussing the establishment of a branch hospital at Kakaako, the Board of Health noted that there had been complaints about “rough treatment” and that “persons suspected to have the disease had been cruelly seized and removed to Kalawao.”¹ The board hoped that the establishment of the branch hospital in Honolulu would put an...

IN JULY 1884, Queen Kapiolani’s great desire to visit her people at Kalawao and Kalaupapa was realized. On July 19, the queen, together with Princess Liliuokalani and her husband Governor John Dominis, Dr. Eduard Arning, and others, visited the settlement. Ambrose Hutchison, the newly appointed resident superintendent of the settlement, recalled the occasion:

A man in a canoe went out to the steamer sent by the Superintendent who had seen the steamer coming to the anchorage, to find out its name and business. The man returned and reported to the Superintendent waiting at the Landing that the steamer was the...

AMBROSE HUTCHISON WAS the twenty-seven-year-old superintendent of the settlement at the time of the tragedy and ensuing trial of Momona and Lohiau, to which he was summoned as a witness. His account reveals not only the tragedy (his own brother-in-law and his brother-in-law’s uncle were the two men who were killed) but his able handling of the situation, the indignity he and others experienced when summoned as witnesses, and his subsequent demand that they be treated with dignity and respect. Clearly he felt that it was important that the whole incident be remembered, since he devoted fifty-five pages of his...

IN HIS DETAILED history of leprosy in Hawaii, Dr. Arthur A. Mouritz, resident physician at Kalawao from 1884 to 1887, wrote that “two events connected with the history of leprosy caused the eyes of the world to become focused on Hawaii, gave these islands prominent and unenviable notoriety, and caused them to be regarded as a focus of endemic leprosy.”¹ The first of these events was the inoculation of Keanu, referred to by Mouritz as “the Hawaiian murderer.” The second was Father Damien’s diagnosis with leprosy. Both events involved Dr. Eduard Arning and both were related to discussions prevalent in...

THE TRIP TO Lahaina to serve as a witness for the trial of Momona and Lohiau was Father Damien’s final unrestricted “visit to the outer world.”¹ By this time, it was well known by many members of the Catholic Church, Drs. Mouritz, Arning, and others, that he had leprosy. Ambrose Hutchison recalled the day that Father Damien returned from a visit to Honolulu when he was at the wharf to supervise the unloading of supplies:

In the first boat that came into the crevice of the rock was Father Damien who stepped ashore from the boat. He had his left...

JOSEPH DUTTON, AGE forty-three, arrived at Kalaupapa in the early afternoon of July 29, 1886. For the next forty-four years, he did not leave the peninsula, seeking to do penance for what he referred to as a “degenerate decade” in his life. A few days earlier, Bishop Koeckemann had written to Father Damien about Dutton, with whom he had been favorably impressed:

Here now a happy incident which seems to me marked by divine Providence. Mr. Dutton has given himself to us with the intention of devoting himself for the love of God to the service of the sick of...

THE EVOLUTION OF Kakaako into a real hospital by the mid-1880s, resulting from the combined efforts of the king and queen, Mother Marianne, the Sisters, and Walter Murray Gibson, reflected a kinder, gentler, and in many ways more rational approach to dealing with leprosy. In 1884, an act to amend the Penal Code was passed that authorized the Board of Health “to make arrangements for the establishment of hospitals on each island where leprous patients in the incipient stages may be treated in order to attempt a cure.”¹ The way was set for people to be treated on each island,...

KAPOLI KAMAKAU WAS a woman of great warmth, a loyal friend and companion whose presence graced the lives of those around her. She was also a gifted composer. “Ahe Lau Makani” (“There Is a Breath”), a beautiful waltz, was composed in 1868 by Princess Liliuokalani, her sister Princess Miriam Likelike, and Lizzie Kapoli, who would have been about sixteen at the time, a year younger than Princess Likelike.¹ Kapoli is credited with collaborating on “Liko Pua Lehua” (“Young Leaves of the Lehua Blossom”) with Princesses Liliuokalani and Likelike.² Sometimes referred to as Mrs. Kamakau, she is also named as collaborator,...

SHORTLY AFTER CHRISTMAS, Father Damien visited the Bishop Home for the last time. He commented on the girls in their pretty blue dresses with red ribbons and how they had never had anything so nice in the settlement prior to the Sisters’ coming.¹ He had finished his church and was at peace. On February 19, 1889, he wrote his last letter to his brother, Father Pamphile: “I am quite happy and contented, and though seriously ill, all I desire is the accomplishment of the holy will of God. . . . I am still able, but not without some difficulty,...

BY 1890, HAWAII’S isolation policy, which was supposed to have curtailed the spread of the disease within a short period of time, had been in effect for twenty-four years and the number of individuals with leprosy at Kalawao and Kalaupapa hit a peak of 1,213. In 1890, the Board of Health Report blamed politics and inconsistency for the leprosy situation.¹ The inconsistency in enforcement of the isolation laws made it hard to believe that leprosy was really contagious when the Board of Health itself wavered in its position. However, the real issue was that, after twenty-four years, the isolation policy...

ABOUT TWO WEEKS after Queen Liliuokalani ascended the throne in January 1891, she wrote to Rudolph Meyer asking that Mrs. Keohohiwa Miau be allowed to come to Honolulu. Mrs. Miau was a mea kokua for her husband, Judge Miau, who had been sent to Kalaupapa in 1889. The queen told Meyer that she wished to confer with Mrs. Miau about many important matters relating to her late brother the king and herself. Mrs. Miau, described by Meyer as an old woman, was granted permission to go to Honolulu, accompanied by her “servant.”¹

On April 27, 1891, Queen Liliuokalani traveled to...

ON JULY 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was established with Sanford B. Dole, a former advisor to Queen Liliuokalani, as its first president and William O. Smith as attorney general. Four months later, a notice was posted at Kalaupapa stating that all remaining kamaaina must leave within two months or face possible confiscation of their land. This notice, signed by W. O. Smith, who was also president of the Board of Health, prompted the kamaaina of Kalaupapa to write to the queen. They described themselves as “but a fraction of your citizens, being a people native to the soil...

ON THE EVENING of January 11, 1901, a meeting was held at Kalaupapa to discuss the “state of affairs,” which primarily concerned the lack of poi. Robert Kaaoao, Andrew Auld, James Harvest, W. K. Makakoa, and J. H. Kailimai were appointed as a committee to bring the problem to the attention of the Board of Health. Their concerns were outlined in a petition published in thePacific Commercial Advertiser:

You people, the founders of the Territory of Hawaii, it is in your power to make all things right, to rule and to feed all those sick with leprosy that are...

THREE WEEKS AFTER he became superintendent of Kalaupapa in April 1902, Jack McVeigh wrote that three baseball teams were practicing and a series of Kalaupapa League games had been scheduled with a $20 prize for the winning team. Six weeks after arriving at Kalaupapa, he commented to J. S. B. Pratt, president of the Board of Health, “Everything is quiet here. All Horse race crazy.”¹ Within nine weeks, he wrote to Pratt that he had taken the problem of “swipe drinking” in hand: “We have had so much swipe drinking lately with the usual fights thrown in that the decent...

ON JULY 1, 1907, Elizabeth Thielemann posed for the standard photograph at Kalihi Hospital, with her arms crossed over her chest to show the condition of her hands. Later that day she would board the interisland steamer that would take her to Kalaupapa. At 5 o’clock in the afternoon that same day, Jack and Charmian London boarded theNoeau,which then sailed to a separate wharf to pick up twelve-year-old Elizabeth and twentytwo other men, women, and children who were being sent to Kalaupapa. They included fifty-two-year-old Elemakule Pa and fifteen-year-old Emilio Brito, who would both play an important role...

THE U.S. CENSUS for 1910 indicates that Elemakule Pa was the “head” of the household of “patients” at the U.S. Leprosy Investigation Station, better known as the Federal Hospital, at Kalawao. His father, Haalipo Pa, had died at Kakaako Hospital, and he himself had worked for three years as an attendant for the people with leprosy that Dr. Milton Rice was permitted to treat privately in Hilo, on the Big Island.¹ Admitted to the Federal Hospital in 1909, he was one of only nine individuals to ever agree to be treated at this state-of-the-art facility. Seven of the other volunteers...

EIGHTY YEARS BEFORE Dame Cicely Saunders launched the modern hospice movement, Mother Marianne initiated the philosophy of hospice at Kalaupapa. No one was deemed “hopeless,” the inherent value of each individual was recognized, and people were given the opportunity to help each other no matter what their own difficulties might be. The Bishop Home was a community where each person was enabled to live and die with dignity. The girls and women designed and sewed their own clothes, made quilts, and crocheted lace. Flowers and trees were planted. Tables were set neatly at dinnertime. Music was a constant. Everyone’s talents...

SHORTLY AFTER ARRIVING at Kalaupapa, Mother Marianne wrote to Mother Bernardina Dorn in Syracuse: “The thought of the great distance between us makes my heart heavy and sad—Will I ever see those whom I love again? . . . My poor heart is all too sensitive and feels deeply and keenly the pain of separation from the loved ones and from the Community.”¹ In November 1903, she wrote that the Sisters had been at Kalaupapa for fifteen years and commented, “How the time slips away from us—How many more years, will it please God to permit us to...

DAVID ONO KUPELE was born in 1897, just three years after his mother Maria Keoo had been returned from Kalaupapa, reportedly cured by Dr. Goto’s bath treatment. At the age of six he knew that his father was in hiding since his mother told him never to tell anyone where he was: “I would ask, ‘When is he going to come home?’ ‘No, he cannot come home. Wait until he is pau [finished being] sick.’ We used to cook something and my mother would tell me to take that food and give it to my father.” David vividly remembered how...

ON JUNE 29, 1919, a skinny little thirteen-year-old girl arrived at Kalaupapa with a package of bread and hard-boiled eggs from her brother and a yellow umbrella from her mother under her arm. With an indomitable spirit, Alice Chang headed off to the Bishop Home and into history as the person who would likely live at Kalaupapa longer than any other—eighty-one years.

About one week before her twelfth birthday, Alice had been taken to Kalihi Hospital by Kikila, the agent of the Board of Health who was commonly known as the “bounty hunter.” For some time she had noticed...

TANDY MACKENZIE, the Hawaiian-Scottish tenor whom some called “the second Caruso,” was the first professional entertainer to visit Kalaupapa. He returned to Hawaii for a visit in 1922, his first in ten years. When the people of Kalaupapa heard of his return, they collected $180, which they sent to him with an invitation to come and give a concert. He sent back the money and said that he would sing for “aloha.”¹

On July 27, 1922, Tandy began the trip down the pali trail. According to his wife Jean, who described the visit in her book,Tandy,he expected to...

THE NAMES John Cambra and Kenso Seki are synonymous with the Baldwin Home. They were members of the last generation to live at Kalawao, to know Joseph Dutton personally, and to use Father Damien’s church on a daily basis. More than sixty years after his arrival at the Baldwin Home, John would walk through the graveyard alongside Father Damien’s church and point out his friends from the Baldwin Home who were buried there, including Emmeran Palakiko, one of the Palakiko brothers, and George Kualaku, who had come on the same ship with him.

John Cambra:“November 20, 1920 . ....

IN 1930, HEADLINES in theHonolulu Advertiser read,“Kalihi Patients Rush Guards to Delay Departures, Dash for Homes to Say Good-bye before Molokai Trip.”¹ Clearly, the hope that had been associated with chaulmoogra oil had faded, and once again people were routinely being sent to Kalaupapa.

Minerva Hussey was first admitted to Kalihi in September 1923 at the age of ten. She was reexamined and discharged the next year, with instructions to report each week for observation by the government physician in her district. In the late 1920s, intensified follow-up of those who had been discharged sent Cecil Kiilehua, the...

R. L. “DOC” COOKE was appointed superintendent of Kalaupapa in 1925, succeeding Mr. McVeigh, and would remain in this position until his untimely death in 1939. “Doc” Cooke was well liked. He had brought the radio to Kalaupapa in 1925, having successfully overcome some problems that had baffled everyone else. He also learned to speak Hawaiian.¹

Wilhelmina Cooke Carlson:“I’ll emphasize that he was a very understanding,justindividual. . . . When the electricity came in, Mr. Cooke would not use his stove until the patients were also able to have stoves. And, remember, that at that time the...

IN 1932, THE year of his death, Ambrose Hutchison had been at Kalaupapa for more than fifty-three years. Throughout his half century at Kalaupapa, Ambrose remained extremely close to his brother William and also to his sister Christina. William’s life was quite different from Ambrose’s. He had eleven children, the first of whom he named Ambrose Ferdinand—after his brother and his father. William struggled throughout much of his life financially, and Ambrose was always there to support him with advice and financial assistance.

On August 18, 1930, Ambrose wrote to William, “I note with regret that you have no...

DESPITE THE RECOMMENDATIONS of Governor Judd’s commission that people no longer be forcibly sent to Kalaupapa, the 1930s and 1940s saw many “shipments” of people whose relocation to Kalaupapa was not by choice.

William Malo:“The ‘bounty hunter’ at that time came to the house down at Laie and got my tutu-man, my step-grandfather, and reported him to the health department. She came to pick him up. My tutu-lady and I said goodbye to him and he walked away from the house and we watched him walk until he was down to the highway—he was taken away never to...

IN THE 1920S and 1930s, there was a conscious effort made to keep children at Kalihi Hospital so that they could receive an education. In 1941, promin was discovered as a cure for leprosy at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, Louisiana, and was producing dramatic results. Although promin would not be introduced to Hawaii until 1946, it would have likely prevented most, if not all, of the children and adults at Kalihi Hospital from being sent to Kalaupapa. But the whole situation changed on December 7, 1941. Kalihi Hospital was located close to Pearl Harbor and, consequently,...

IN 1946, PROMIN was introduced at Kalaupapa as a cure for leprosy, and changes were seen practically overnight.

Bernard K. Punikai‘a:“When the sulfones arrived, promin, diasone, promacetin . . . they changed our lives . . . and, you know, the interesting thing about how they brought the sulfones to Kalaupapa, to Hawaii, is because patients had threatened to go to court. In fact, as I understand it, a statement to the court was made that forced the Department of Health to change their minds. The sulfones were in use from the early forties . . . at Carville,...

FRANCIS MARKS WAS a young boy in 1968, when his father, thirty-seven-year-old Richard Marks, stood up and drew widespread attention to the fact that there was something wrong with Hawaii’s policies related to leprosy.¹ Although dramatic progress had been made in the medical treatment of the disease, the rules continued to separate families, and people were basically still being treated as if there was no cure. While Lawrence Judd had succeeded in removing some of the barriers at Kalaupapa, others would persist into the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. Attitudes and understanding, both on the part of the public and...

ON OCTOBER 30, 1997, Bernard Punikai‘a stood before three hundred people at the United Nations and reflected on the entrance photograph taken of him when he entered Kalihi Hospital at the age of six and a half:

Upon the face of this child, I see the pain he is enduring—“The loneliness is overwhelming, Mama.” In spirit I am able to reach out to him, to comfort him, to put my arms around him, and to reassure him that all is not lost. The pain will go away, I tell him. As I look at the photo of this six...

WHEN OLIVIA BREITHA died on September 28, 2006, at the age of ninety, articles about her life and death appeared in newspapers and Web sites in at least seventeen different states and in places as diverse as India, the United Kingdom, and Portugal. News of her efforts to ensure the rights of every individual appeared in the most well-known newspapers, including theNew York Times,theWashington Post,theLos Angeles Times,theChicago Tribune,theBoston Globe,and theMiami Herald.Olivia would probably have been most proud about the fact that her obituary appeared on the Web site...

EVERY TIME GREAT progress was made in Hawaii’s treatment of leprosy, there was talk of closing Kalaupapa down. This happened in the 1920s when there was great hope in chaulmoogra oil. It happened again in the late 1940s, after the introduction of the sulfones as a cure for leprosy and the removal of many barriers by Lawrence Judd. The official abolition of the isolation policies in 1969 once again set the stage for concerns that Kalaupapa would be closed.

Richard Marks:“My uncle Frank was a brilliant man, and we sat over there and talked about the future of Kalaupapa,...

YEAR AFTER YEAR, decade after decade, century after century, the lingering social effects of Hawaii’s public health policies related to leprosy have separated families and resulted in a legacy of deep personal and collective loss that has persisted into modern times, decades after the discovery of a cure and the abolition of the isolation laws.

Clarence Naia:“I was born in Kalaupapa in 1928 and sent out. I was told my grandmother came here and got me and took me to Maui. . . . My grandmother never told me anything about my parents. I came here and then I...