Remember my name

An effort is underway to build a monument for the 8,000 Hansen’s disease patients sent to Kalaupapa

By Patrick Downes

The hundreds of leaning, weathered gravestones that strike a visitor’s gaze all over Kalaupapa are the only public markers left to identify the people who lived and died in that isolated place. But those graves, numbering perhaps 1,300, represent only a fraction of the more than 8,000 people exiled there over the peninsula’s century-long history as the compulsory destination for Hawaii’s Hansen’s disease patients. The rest of the sites have been lost to the ravages of time and nature.

One of the first proposals of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, a group of Kalaupapa patients, family members and friends formed three years ago, was to create a monument that would display the names of all 8,000-plus patients who were sent there from 1866 to 1969.

Last year, U.S. representative Ed Case introduced a bill in Congress that would do just that. The legislation — H.R. 4529, the Kalaupapa Memorial Act — is co-sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie.

Piolani Motta, a member of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, went to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 28 to testify before the U.S. House Resources subcommittee on National Parks in favor of the bill.

Her testimony essentially retold the story of her grandmother Becky Perry of Kohala who was banished to Kalaupapa in 1898 at age 14. Buried there in 1917, her grave cannot be located.

Becky Perry’s life in Kalaupapa had been a closely guarded family secret, so great was the shame associated with leprosy at the time. Motta only learned of her grandmother’s identity and association with Kalaupapa when she discovered that her mother, Rose Alana Huleia Perry, was born there.

Motta’s mother, who had been raised in a Catholic orphanage on Oahu, knew of her origins but told no one, not even her children.

The revelation moved Motta to connect with others in similar circumstances, with similar connections. The bonds created helped cement the founding of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa.

According to Valerie Monson, a former Maui News reporter and Ohana member, the idea of a monument had been circulating for at least 10 years. But it was the forming of the Ohana in 2003 that gave the idea a functioning group eager to pursue it. Sixty patients and staff members initially signed a petition supporting the idea.

Overwhelming consensus

The more than 8,000 patients came to Kalaupapa in two waves. The first 5,000 arrived between the years 1866 and 1896. Most of these lived in Kalawao, on the peninsula’s east side. The rest, approximately 3,000, came between 1896 and 1969 and resided on the west-facing Kalaupapa side. At least 90 percent of all the residents were native Hawaiian.

Monson said the first 5,000 names are “pretty easy to access” from Department of Health records. “After 1900, it gets a little trickier,” she said, with the population becoming a little more transient and because of modern privacy concerns.

The proposal would require the Department of the Interior to authorize Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa to establish a memorial in Kalawao or Kalaupapa, or both, within the boundaries of the Kalaupapa National Historical Park.

Monson disputes rumors that many residents do not want a monument. She was in Kalaupapa two weeks ago collecting signatures from patients for a petition supporting the monument. She said a consensus clearly favors the project.

“I asked 17 patients and got 17 signatures,” she said. Twenty-nine of the 33 remaining patients have given their support to the effort in one way or another, she said. Some patients signed the petition on behalf of family members who have died and are buried there.

She said that many of the family testimonies were “powerful and heartbreaking.”

Also backing the measure, according to Monson, are Governor Linda Lingle, the first superintendent of Kalaupapa National Historical Park Henry Law, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the United Church of Christ and The Friends of Haleakala National Park.

A written statement of support by Kalaupapa resident of 69 years, Olivia Breitha, who died at age 90 just hours before the Sept. 28 House subcommittee hearing, led the testimony of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa at the hearing.

“People at Kalaupapa, like the rest of us, want to be remembered,” she said. “They want the world to know that they were here.”

However, if people did not want their names listed, their request would be honored, Monson said.

Sister of St. Francis Alicia Damien Lau, a board member of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, collected favorable statements from a number of patient-residents for the Sept. 28 Washington, D.C., hearing. Following are excerpts from their testimony:

-- Winifred Harada, a patient of Kalaupapa since 1943, said the monument “will make the world aware of what Kalaupapa is all about.”

-- Winifred’s husband, Paul Harada, there since 1941, said, “The State of Hawaii should thank all those people that were sent to Kalaupapa for giving up all that they had … their families, their belongings, etc. to be isolated and to keep the disease from spreading. … The people (of Kalaupapa) died for them (the people of Hawaii).”

-- Peter Keola Jr., 82, a Kalaupapa resident since 1940 whose mother was also a patient, compared the proposed monument to war memorials. “It is just like those who went to war and had died,” he said, “there are monuments with their names on it.”

-- Shoichi Hamai, who was sent to Kalaupapa in 1941 at age 15, said, “I am in favor of a monument because it is good to remember those who have suffered and have died in Kalaupapa.”

-- Bernard Punikaia, patient for almost 70 years, said, “It is just an honorable thing to do. It is what the patients want.”

-- Henry Nalaielua, a Kalaupapa patient since the 1930’s feels the further deterioration of the gravesites makes the monument essential. “The memorial will set forth the names and dates and times of each individual,” he said, preserving the memory for relatives and friends of the departed.

-- Kuulei Bell, a Hansen’s disease patient since age 6, had many relatives at Kalaupapa including her father, grandfather and aunt. “I never knew my dad until I became a patient and found out about him. I feel that the memorial monument will let our family know, especially my children and my great grandchildren, about me and about their family … who were there.”

Bishop Silva’s support

Bishop Larry Silva, who has two relatives buried in Kalaupapa, has expressed his support for the memorial.

“I would like to add my voice to those who are endorsing the project,” the bishop wrote Oct. 11 to Steve Pearce, chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on national parks.

“There are Holocaust museums in Washington and elsewhere to keep alive the memory of that horrible human tragedy, and there are AIDS memorials in various cities to commemorate those who succumbed to that devastating disease,” he wrote. “How fitting it would be for the people of our nation to know that a long drama of human tragedy was played out on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokai.”

The monument would be “particularly desirable by me and many others like me who had a family member exiled to Kalaupapa,” the bishop said.

“In 1918, my great-grandfather Joao Santos was sent there and died there in 1921. His daughter, Minnie Santos Aruda, was also exiled there in 1935 and died there in 1943,” he wrote. “I looked up their medical records at the administrative office of the Kalaupapa settlement, but I was told their graves could not be located, since storms over the years blew away the simple markers over their graves.”

“There are many such deceased loved ones whose remains cannot be found,” Bishop Silva wrote. “A memorial to all those who died there would be a great tribute to these people who were forgotten in life and may be forgotten in death.”