Nov. 4, 2025
Kalaupapa, Hawai'i: The Saint of Exiles and Hansen's Disease Colony
Between 1866 and 1969, the Kingdom and later State of Hawai'i sent over eight thousand people diagnosed with Hansen's disease—then known as leprosy—to permanent exile on the Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Moloka'i. This breathtaking but isolated landscape, surrounded by the tallest sea cliffs on Earth, became both a prison and, unexpectedly, a community. The vast majority of those exiled were Native Hawaiian, torn from their families by a policy known as ma'i ho'oka'awale 'ohana—the family-separating disease. Yet from this tragedy emerged extraordinary stories of resilience, dignity, and hope. When a Belgian priest named Father Damien arrived in 1873, he chose radical solidarity over safety, sharing meals, pipes, and daily life with the exiled residents. His courage drew global attention and brought vital support, including Mother Marianne Cope and the Franciscan Sisters, who created sanctuaries of care for women and children. Brother Joseph Dutton, a Civil War veteran seeking redemption, spent over thirty years running the Baldwin Home for Boys. These outsiders joined the residents in building a vibrant society complete with baseball teams, musical bands, political protests, and fierce cultural preservation—a community that insisted on being seen as whole human beings, not just cases of disease.
Timeline of Events
- 1830s: Hansen's disease bacterium arrives in Hawaiian Islands, likely through foreign trade
- January 3, 1865: King Kamehameha V signs "Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy," authorizing forced exile
- January 6, 1866: First twelve patients exiled to Kalaupapa peninsula on Moloka'i
- May 10, 1873: Father Damien De Veuster arrives at Kalaupapa settlement
- 1883: Mother Marianne Cope and Franciscan Sisters arrive in Hawaii from Syracuse, New York
- 1888: Mother Marianne Cope arrives at Kalaupapa settlement to establish Bishop Home
- 1886: Brother Joseph Dutton arrives as Damien's assistant
- December 1884: Father Damien discovers he has contracted Hansen's disease
- 1889: Father Damien dies; becomes international icon of sacrifice
- 1893: Hawaiian Kingdom overthrown; isolation laws enforced more strictly
- 1897: Over 700 Kalaupapa residents sign Kū'ē Petitions protesting U.S. annexation
- 1946: Revolutionary sulfone drugs cure Hansen's disease for the first time
- April 11, 1969: State of Hawai'i officially abolishes quarantine law
- December 22, 1980: Kalaupapa National Historical Park established by U.S. Congress
- 2009: Father Damien canonized as Catholic saint
- 2012: Mother Marianne Cope canonized as Catholic saint
The medical breakthrough of the 1940s rendered a century of forced isolation obsolete, yet many residents chose to remain in the only community where they felt truly understood and accepted.
Historical Significance
Kalaupapa's story illuminates the intersection of colonial medicine, Indigenous sovereignty, and human rights. The Hawaiian Kingdom's segregation policy, heavily influenced by Western advisors responding to devastating population decline from foreign diseases, tore apart the fundamental Hawaiian value of 'ohana (family). Yet the residents transformed their exile into an act of cultural preservation. Their 1897 protest against U.S. annexation demonstrated extraordinary political consciousness from people the law had declared legally dead. The settlement became a center for preserving Hawaiian language, chant, and music when these were being suppressed elsewhere. Today, as the World Health Organization works toward eliminating Hansen's disease globally, Kalaupapa remains a powerful reminder that the fight isn't just against bacteria—it's against centuries of stigma and discrimination. The story resonates with other historical isolation sites worldwide and offers crucial lessons for modern responses to infectious disease, from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
Sources & Further Reading
- Ka 'Ohana O Kalaupapa: https://kalaupapaohana.org - Organization of Kalaupapa descendants preserving history and culture
- Kalaupapa National Historical Park: https://www.nps.gov/kala - National Park Service official site
- Olivia Robello Breitha Oral Histories: Damien & Marianne of Moloka'i Education Center archives
- "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai" by John Tayman
- World Health Organization Hansen's Disease Program: https://www.who.int/health-topics/leprosy
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WEBVTT
00:05.667 --> 00:10.853
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a place of breathtaking beauty, that is also a prison.
00:12.775 --> 00:24.228
[SPEAKER_00]: Picture what are among the tallest sea cliffs on Earth, a sheer wall of green and black stone, plunging nearly 4,000 feet into the churning Pacific.
00:25.930 --> 00:32.417
[SPEAKER_00]: This fortress of rock seals off a flat leaf shaped peninsula, from the world behind it.
00:33.815 --> 00:34.636
[SPEAKER_00]: centuries.
00:35.577 --> 00:39.021
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a vibrant sacred part of Hawaii.
00:40.723 --> 00:45.248
[SPEAKER_00]: But in 1866, its profound isolation was weaponized.
00:46.770 --> 00:58.704
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of Hawaii chose the stunning landscape as a place of permanent exile, a beautiful prison for those with a feared and misunderstood disease.
00:59.885 --> 01:01.527
[SPEAKER_00]: This is their story.
01:06.097 --> 01:18.775
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello friend, or come back to hometown history, the podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past, to uncover how local stories shaped the world.
01:19.836 --> 01:20.738
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters.
01:22.300 --> 01:34.517
[SPEAKER_00]: The sounds you just heard are the sounds of Kalapapa, a place where for over a century between eight and nine thousand people were sent to live and die.
01:35.915 --> 01:47.148
[SPEAKER_00]: Over 90% of them were native Hawaiian, exiled because they had been diagnosed with Hanson's disease, then known as leprosy.
01:48.810 --> 02:00.623
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a story about fear, loss, and the deep trauma of a policy, known as the Mahi-Hohokavale-ohana, the family separating disease,
02:01.700 --> 02:13.397
[SPEAKER_00]: but to truly understand the community that was forged there, we have to go back to a time before the separation, to a kingdom fighting for its very survival.
02:16.111 --> 02:26.164
[SPEAKER_00]: For at least 900 years before it became a place of exile, the Calapapa peninsula was home to a thriving and populous Hawaiian society.
02:27.365 --> 02:33.273
[SPEAKER_00]: The valleys were green with irrigated terraces for growing calo or taro.
02:34.494 --> 02:37.478
[SPEAKER_00]: And the plains were rich with sweet potato farms.
02:38.960 --> 02:46.418
[SPEAKER_00]: The people had a deep spiritual connection to this land, a connection that was about to be violently severed.
02:48.223 --> 02:56.142
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1830s, a new bacterium arrived in the islands, likely with foreign trade and labor.
02:57.573 --> 03:10.620
[SPEAKER_00]: It caused Hanson's disease, a slow-moving illness that can lead to nerve damage, loss of sensation, and, if left untreated, severe disfigurement.
03:12.136 --> 03:15.360
[SPEAKER_00]: this happened in a climate of absolute catastrophe.
03:16.542 --> 03:31.442
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hawaiian people, with no natural immunity to foreign illnesses, had already been ravaged by waves of smallpox, measles, and influenza that had killed a staggering portion of the population.
03:32.844 --> 03:40.675
[SPEAKER_00]: This demographic collapse created a climate of
03:41.937 --> 03:59.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Within this atmosphere of desperation, the Hawaiian Kingdom's government heavily influenced by Western advisors began to see medical segregation, not merely as a health policy, but as a necessary tool for national survival.
04:01.297 --> 04:09.666
[SPEAKER_00]: On January 3, 1865, King Kami Hami Ha, signed the act to prevent the spread of
04:11.013 --> 04:21.426
[SPEAKER_00]: The law gave the board of health sweeping powers to arrest, examine, and permanently isolate anyone even suspected of having the disease.
04:22.828 --> 04:29.837
[SPEAKER_00]: It effectively turned patients into prisoners, stripping them of their rights and declaring them legally dead.
04:31.779 --> 04:37.206
[SPEAKER_00]: This policy was a profound violation of the most sacred of Hawaiian values,
04:38.283 --> 04:43.189
[SPEAKER_00]: Ohana, the extended family unit that forms the bedrock of the culture.
04:44.690 --> 04:47.694
[SPEAKER_00]: The law was designed to tear family's apart.
04:49.155 --> 05:07.176
[SPEAKER_00]: In a desperate act of love, many hid their afflicted relatives from the authorities, but the round-ups continued, and ship after ship brought more exiles into this isolated
05:10.109 --> 05:12.692
[SPEAKER_00]: The early years of the settlement were grim.
05:13.734 --> 05:22.205
[SPEAKER_00]: The government's hope that sick and demoralized people would create a self-sufficient farming community with a tragic fantasy.
05:23.366 --> 05:32.438
[SPEAKER_00]: With an adequate food, shelter, or medicine, the settlement earned the name, Moja, Alla, Leia, a place of abandonment.
05:34.004 --> 05:41.317
[SPEAKER_00]: The legend was that Calapapa was a lawless place of vise and despair before outside help arrived.
05:42.920 --> 05:56.485
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact, while the first years were marked by extreme hardship and government neglect, patient leaders were already working to establish order and advocate for themselves from the very beginning.
05:58.490 --> 06:09.547
[SPEAKER_00]: On January 6th, 1866, the first group of 12 people, 9 men and 3 women, were brought by ship.
06:09.567 --> 06:22.607
[SPEAKER_00]: They were left at the mouth of the desolate Waikulu Valley, and told to make their own way to the ruins of an abandoned village.
06:24.022 --> 06:31.875
[SPEAKER_00]: patient leaders like the high chief Peter Ayo, a cousin of Queen Emma, worked to establish order.
06:33.377 --> 06:47.700
[SPEAKER_00]: Though his rank afforded him some comforts, his remarkable letters home paint a devastating picture of the early suffering, describing people starving their bodies too damaged to find food.
06:49.385 --> 06:57.575
[SPEAKER_00]: and then help began to arrive from the outside world, people who chose to enter this place of exile.
06:59.497 --> 07:04.823
[SPEAKER_00]: The most famous of these were the 33-year-old Belgian priest and father Damien.
07:06.305 --> 07:08.647
[SPEAKER_00]: He arrived on May 10, 1873.
07:08.728 --> 07:16.877
[SPEAKER_00]: The legend was that father Damien was alone, saintly hero, who worked in total isolation
07:18.140 --> 07:22.247
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact is, that Damian was a pivotal and courageous figure.
07:23.248 --> 07:27.115
[SPEAKER_00]: But he joined a network of care that included patient leaders.
07:28.777 --> 07:33.024
[SPEAKER_00]: His own letters show him repeatedly begging his superiors for more help.
07:34.667 --> 07:40.496
[SPEAKER_00]: Damian's immense contribution was not just building chapels and houses and coffins.
07:41.678 --> 07:43.962
[SPEAKER_00]: It was his radical act of solidarity.
07:45.089 --> 07:51.217
[SPEAKER_00]: In an era when fear of the disease was absolute, Damian refused to stand aside.
07:52.619 --> 07:54.962
[SPEAKER_00]: He ate from the same bowl of poing.
07:56.283 --> 07:57.465
[SPEAKER_00]: He shared his pipe.
07:58.586 --> 08:01.610
[SPEAKER_00]: He bandaged weeping sores with his bare hands.
08:02.932 --> 08:14.286
[SPEAKER_00]: He chose to become one of them, and in doing so, he restored a sense of dignity and shared humanity that the law had tried to erase.
08:14.587 --> 08:19.146
[SPEAKER_00]: his work brought global attention and more help followed.
08:20.645 --> 08:32.639
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1883, mother Mary Ann Cope, a brilliant hospital administrator, from Syracuse, New York, arrived with six other Franciscan sisters.
08:33.861 --> 08:38.326
[SPEAKER_00]: She brought hygiene, order, and a profound sense of compassion.
08:39.788 --> 08:48.238
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1888, she established the Bishop home for women and girls, creating a sanctuary of care and beauty.
08:49.973 --> 08:56.028
[SPEAKER_00]: Three years after she arrived in 1886, another key figure arrived.
08:57.050 --> 09:03.325
[SPEAKER_00]: Brother Joseph Dutton, a civil war veteran seeking pinnets for a difficult past.
09:04.705 --> 09:18.702
[SPEAKER_00]: He became Damien's tireless assistant, and after the priest's death, he ran the bald when home for boys for over 30 years, bringing stability to the lives of hundreds of exiled children.
09:20.324 --> 09:24.509
[SPEAKER_00]: In December of 1884, father Damien made a discovery.
09:25.551 --> 09:31.438
[SPEAKER_00]: He accidentally put his foot into a pot of scolding water, and felt nothing.
09:32.819 --> 09:37.284
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a tragic but textbook symptom of Hansen's disease.
09:38.406 --> 09:40.148
[SPEAKER_00]: The nerve damage was complete.
09:41.690 --> 09:44.093
[SPEAKER_00]: He had contracted the illness himself.
09:45.374 --> 10:02.455
[SPEAKER_00]: He continued his work until his death in 1889, an event that turned him into an international icon.
10:04.105 --> 10:10.319
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1893, the Hawaiian kingdom was overthrown by American-backed business interests.
10:11.481 --> 10:16.092
[SPEAKER_00]: The new government enforced the isolation laws even more strictly.
10:16.112 --> 10:21.203
[SPEAKER_00]: This crackdown sparked acts of profound resistance.
10:22.769 --> 10:39.269
[SPEAKER_00]: The most famous was the Lepre War of Kauai, where a patient named Kalua E. Kaualau refused to be taken from his wife and child, fighting a stand-off against the militia that stretched into 1894.
10:40.671 --> 10:46.077
[SPEAKER_00]: His story became a powerful symbol of the deep opposition to the separation policy.
10:47.744 --> 10:58.859
[SPEAKER_00]: After the United States officially annexed Hawaii in 1898, the administration of Calapapa became more institutionalized.
11:00.361 --> 11:07.390
[SPEAKER_00]: More money flooded in, leading to better housing, paved roads, in a new social hall.
11:07.370 --> 11:18.289
[SPEAKER_00]: Pascal Hall built a 1916, became the heart of the community, a place for movies, dances, and lively debate clubs.
11:19.972 --> 11:24.901
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite their exile, the residents built a remarkably vibrant society.
11:26.644 --> 11:31.352
[SPEAKER_00]: They formed competing baseball teams and celebrated musical groups,
11:32.750 --> 11:40.162
[SPEAKER_00]: They were prolific composers writing songs that chroniced their lives, their loves, and their sorrows.
11:41.745 --> 11:45.851
[SPEAKER_00]: This music was a powerful tool for healing and preserving their culture.
11:47.614 --> 11:54.285
[SPEAKER_00]: The legend was that Hanson's disease is highly contagious and causes body parts to fall off.
11:55.582 --> 12:02.472
[SPEAKER_00]: but the fact was that the disease is caused by a slow growing bacterium, it is not easily transmitted.
12:03.694 --> 12:17.775
[SPEAKER_00]: The illness attacks peripheral nerves, causing loss of sensation, repeated unnoticed injuries to numb areas like burns and cuts, can then lead to infection and disfigurement.
12:19.291 --> 12:21.975
[SPEAKER_00]: and the residents remained fiercely political.
12:23.257 --> 12:24.700
[SPEAKER_00]: They were never just patients.
12:25.421 --> 12:28.766
[SPEAKER_00]: They were citizens of a nation that felt it was being stolen.
12:30.449 --> 12:44.151
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1897, from their isolated peninsula, over 700 residents signed the Kui petitions, protesting the annexation of Hawaii by the United States,
12:45.363 --> 12:59.507
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an extraordinary act of political defiance from a people who had been legally erased, a powerful declaration that they were still and would always be part of the Hawaiian nation.
13:01.073 --> 13:03.737
[SPEAKER_00]: This resistance was also cultural.
13:04.759 --> 13:09.967
[SPEAKER_00]: They continued to celebrate avion holidays that had been banned by the new government.
13:11.188 --> 13:15.876
[SPEAKER_00]: They kept their language and traditions alive through chant and song.
13:17.518 --> 13:29.376
[SPEAKER_00]: By building a rich society and demanding their political rights, the people of Kalapapa mounted a powerful defense against the system that tried to dehumanize them.
13:30.807 --> 13:37.816
[SPEAKER_00]: they insisted on being seen, not as cases of a disease, but as complete human beings.
13:41.080 --> 13:44.384
[SPEAKER_00]: For most of the settlement's history, there was no cure.
13:45.345 --> 13:54.477
[SPEAKER_00]: The primary treatment was Kamu Kraoile, pressed from the seeds of an Asian tree, and administered through painful injections.
13:55.718 --> 13:59.363
[SPEAKER_00]: It offered some relief, but it could not stop the disease
14:00.743 --> 14:08.835
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, in the 1940s, a miracle arrived, not a religious miracle, but a scientific one.
14:10.077 --> 14:18.309
[SPEAKER_00]: Researchers at the U.S. National Lepersarium, in Carville, Louisiana, developed a new class of sulfon drugs.
14:19.792 --> 14:25.300
[SPEAKER_00]: When these drugs were introduced in 1946, they were revolutionary.
14:26.410 --> 14:30.639
[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time, Hanson's disease was a curable condition.
14:32.102 --> 14:38.816
[SPEAKER_00]: This medical breakthrough rendered the century long policy of forced isolation obsolete.
14:40.519 --> 14:44.908
[SPEAKER_00]: It took another 23 years for the law to catch up with the science.
14:46.373 --> 14:55.163
[SPEAKER_00]: finally, on April 11, 1969, the state of Hawaii officially abolished the quarantine.
14:56.105 --> 14:59.909
[SPEAKER_00]: The gates of the prison were, at last, unlocked.
15:01.371 --> 15:05.916
[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time in their lives, the residents were free to leave.
15:07.398 --> 15:11.723
[SPEAKER_00]: Some did, but the outside world was not always welcoming.
15:13.272 --> 15:22.346
[SPEAKER_00]: Olivia Rebella Brita, who was sent to Calapapa in 1934, became a powerful voice for the patient experience.
15:23.889 --> 15:34.926
[SPEAKER_00]: In her memoir, she drew a direct line between the historical prejudice against people with Hanson's disease and the emerging stigma surrounding the AIDS epidemic.
15:36.475 --> 15:42.042
[SPEAKER_00]: Even after the cure, she explained, the social disease of fear remained.
15:43.104 --> 15:46.448
[SPEAKER_00]: Former patients were often denied jobs in housing.
15:47.689 --> 15:50.433
[SPEAKER_00]: The word, Leper, was still whispered.
15:51.695 --> 15:56.701
[SPEAKER_00]: For many, the freedom that they have been granted felt like a new kind of exile.
15:57.923 --> 16:01.888
[SPEAKER_00]: And so many, if not most, made a surprising choice.
16:03.310 --> 16:04.491
[SPEAKER_00]: They chose to stay.
16:06.091 --> 16:06.411
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
16:06.431 --> 16:11.418
[SPEAKER_00]: For many, KELOPOPA was the only home they had ever known.
16:11.478 --> 16:19.267
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a place where they had built deep friendships, fallen in love, and created a community that understood them.
16:20.929 --> 16:21.650
[SPEAKER_00]: They were family.
16:22.511 --> 16:32.183
[SPEAKER_00]: They feared the stigma that awaited them on the outside, a world that still saw them through the lens of a disease, not as the people they were.
16:33.935 --> 16:39.382
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, that choice echoes in the quiet paths of the Papaloa Cemetery.
16:40.844 --> 16:46.111
[SPEAKER_00]: For a modern descendant visiting the park, the experience is profound.
16:47.273 --> 16:59.689
[SPEAKER_00]: You walk among the simple markers, and realize that for every person who left, there was another who chose this beautiful, isolated land as their final resting place.
17:01.137 --> 17:08.364
[SPEAKER_00]: They chose to remain with the community, they had built, the Ohana, they had forged and lost.
17:10.226 --> 17:30.807
[SPEAKER_00]: The government had sent them to this peninsula to die, but in a profound twist of fate, they had inadvertently given them a sanctuary, a place of stunning beauty where they had forged a society on their own terms, and for many leaving that behind was a price to
17:33.824 --> 17:40.733
[SPEAKER_00]: as the 20th century drew to a close, the residents of Calapapa began to think about their legacy.
17:42.095 --> 17:47.602
[SPEAKER_00]: They did not want their story, their resilience, and their community to be forgotten.
17:49.304 --> 17:58.836
[SPEAKER_00]: At their request, the United States Congress established Calapapa National Historic Park on December 22nd, 1980.
18:00.014 --> 18:18.715
[SPEAKER_00]: The park has a unique dual mission to preserve the history and the sacred sites of the peninsula, and crucially, to guarantee the remaining residents the right to live there for the rest of their lives, in a community maintained for them.
18:20.281 --> 18:31.772
[SPEAKER_00]: The global significance of Calapopi's story was affirmed by the Catholic Church in 2009 Father Damien was canonized as a saint.
18:33.373 --> 18:37.437
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2012, Mother Mary and Cope was as well.
18:38.979 --> 18:47.807
[SPEAKER_00]: And the cause for singehood has now been opened for the quiet, steadfast civil war veteran,
18:49.441 --> 18:54.808
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, the number of surviving patient residents has dwindled to just a handful.
18:56.390 --> 19:06.283
[SPEAKER_00]: The state of Hawaii and the National Park Service are planning for a future without them, a transition that raises profound questions.
19:07.604 --> 19:16.596
[SPEAKER_00]: Who will be the stewards of this sacred land and how can its story be told with the
19:17.909 --> 19:27.045
[SPEAKER_00]: Organizations like Kalawana, Kalapapa, made up of descendants of the residents are powerful advocates in this conversation.
19:28.327 --> 19:41.470
[SPEAKER_00]: They work to preserve the memory of their ancestors and to ensure that the future of Kalapapa is guided by the Hawaiian value of Kuliana, a deep sense of responsibility.
19:43.255 --> 19:47.221
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Calapapa is not just Hawaiian history.
19:48.302 --> 19:50.205
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a universal human story.
19:51.567 --> 20:03.864
[SPEAKER_00]: It resonates with the history of other isolated sites from Robin Island in South Africa to Spino longer in Greece and holds powerful lessons for today.
20:05.406 --> 20:13.077
[SPEAKER_00]: While the disease is now rare in the Western world,
20:14.626 --> 20:26.139
[SPEAKER_00]: Today the World Health Organization is working toward a 2030 target of zero new indigenous cases and zero disease related discrimination.
20:27.540 --> 20:39.233
[SPEAKER_00]: But significant challenges remain, particularly in countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia, where hundreds of thousands of people are still affected.
20:40.445 --> 20:56.147
[SPEAKER_00]: Though medically curable, with a multi-drug therapy that is provided for free, the disease still carries a profound social stigma that leads to discrimination, job loss, and human rights violations.
20:58.030 --> 21:05.440
[SPEAKER_00]: The fight is no longer just against a bacterium, but against centuries of fear and misinformation,
21:08.778 --> 21:23.092
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Kalapapa's residents, particularly their fight for dignity and their insistence on being seen as whole people, remains a powerful and relevant lesson for that global struggle.
21:24.713 --> 21:38.667
[SPEAKER_00]: In a world still grappling with fear and stigma surrounding disease, from AIDS to COVID-19,
21:39.743 --> 21:45.576
[SPEAKER_00]: and an enduring testament to the power of community, dignity, and hope.
21:47.200 --> 21:57.583
[SPEAKER_00]: To learn more about the incredible community of Kanapapa, and the work being done to preserve its legacy, please visit the website, linked in the show notes.
21:58.880 --> 22:02.529
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story.
22:03.651 --> 22:13.033
[SPEAKER_00]: This one written on a sacred peninsula teaches us that even in exile, the human spirit can build a home.
22:14.477 --> 22:14.998
[SPEAKER_00]: Good night.
00:05.667 --> 00:10.853
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a place of breathtaking beauty, that is also a prison.
00:12.775 --> 00:24.228
[SPEAKER_00]: Picture what are among the tallest sea cliffs on Earth, a sheer wall of green and black stone, plunging nearly 4,000 feet into the churning Pacific.
00:25.930 --> 00:32.417
[SPEAKER_00]: This fortress of rock seals off a flat leaf shaped peninsula, from the world behind it.
00:33.815 --> 00:34.636
[SPEAKER_00]: centuries.
00:35.577 --> 00:39.021
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a vibrant sacred part of Hawaii.
00:40.723 --> 00:45.248
[SPEAKER_00]: But in 1866, its profound isolation was weaponized.
00:46.770 --> 00:58.704
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of Hawaii chose the stunning landscape as a place of permanent exile, a beautiful prison for those with a feared and misunderstood disease.
00:59.885 --> 01:01.527
[SPEAKER_00]: This is their story.
01:06.097 --> 01:18.775
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello friend, or come back to hometown history, the podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past, to uncover how local stories shaped the world.
01:19.836 --> 01:20.738
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters.
01:22.300 --> 01:34.517
[SPEAKER_00]: The sounds you just heard are the sounds of Kalapapa, a place where for over a century between eight and nine thousand people were sent to live and die.
01:35.915 --> 01:47.148
[SPEAKER_00]: Over 90% of them were native Hawaiian, exiled because they had been diagnosed with Hanson's disease, then known as leprosy.
01:48.810 --> 02:00.623
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a story about fear, loss, and the deep trauma of a policy, known as the Mahi-Hohokavale-ohana, the family separating disease,
02:01.700 --> 02:13.397
[SPEAKER_00]: but to truly understand the community that was forged there, we have to go back to a time before the separation, to a kingdom fighting for its very survival.
02:16.111 --> 02:26.164
[SPEAKER_00]: For at least 900 years before it became a place of exile, the Calapapa peninsula was home to a thriving and populous Hawaiian society.
02:27.365 --> 02:33.273
[SPEAKER_00]: The valleys were green with irrigated terraces for growing calo or taro.
02:34.494 --> 02:37.478
[SPEAKER_00]: And the plains were rich with sweet potato farms.
02:38.960 --> 02:46.418
[SPEAKER_00]: The people had a deep spiritual connection to this land, a connection that was about to be violently severed.
02:48.223 --> 02:56.142
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1830s, a new bacterium arrived in the islands, likely with foreign trade and labor.
02:57.573 --> 03:10.620
[SPEAKER_00]: It caused Hanson's disease, a slow-moving illness that can lead to nerve damage, loss of sensation, and, if left untreated, severe disfigurement.
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[SPEAKER_00]: this happened in a climate of absolute catastrophe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The Hawaiian people, with no natural immunity to foreign illnesses, had already been ravaged by waves of smallpox, measles, and influenza that had killed a staggering portion of the population.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This demographic collapse created a climate of
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[SPEAKER_00]: Within this atmosphere of desperation, the Hawaiian Kingdom's government heavily influenced by Western advisors began to see medical segregation, not merely as a health policy, but as a necessary tool for national survival.
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[SPEAKER_00]: On January 3, 1865, King Kami Hami Ha, signed the act to prevent the spread of
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[SPEAKER_00]: The law gave the board of health sweeping powers to arrest, examine, and permanently isolate anyone even suspected of having the disease.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It effectively turned patients into prisoners, stripping them of their rights and declaring them legally dead.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This policy was a profound violation of the most sacred of Hawaiian values,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Ohana, the extended family unit that forms the bedrock of the culture.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The law was designed to tear family's apart.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In a desperate act of love, many hid their afflicted relatives from the authorities, but the round-ups continued, and ship after ship brought more exiles into this isolated
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[SPEAKER_00]: The early years of the settlement were grim.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The government's hope that sick and demoralized people would create a self-sufficient farming community with a tragic fantasy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: With an adequate food, shelter, or medicine, the settlement earned the name, Moja, Alla, Leia, a place of abandonment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The legend was that Calapapa was a lawless place of vise and despair before outside help arrived.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact, while the first years were marked by extreme hardship and government neglect, patient leaders were already working to establish order and advocate for themselves from the very beginning.
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[SPEAKER_00]: On January 6th, 1866, the first group of 12 people, 9 men and 3 women, were brought by ship.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were left at the mouth of the desolate Waikulu Valley, and told to make their own way to the ruins of an abandoned village.
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[SPEAKER_00]: patient leaders like the high chief Peter Ayo, a cousin of Queen Emma, worked to establish order.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Though his rank afforded him some comforts, his remarkable letters home paint a devastating picture of the early suffering, describing people starving their bodies too damaged to find food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and then help began to arrive from the outside world, people who chose to enter this place of exile.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The most famous of these were the 33-year-old Belgian priest and father Damien.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He arrived on May 10, 1873.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The legend was that father Damien was alone, saintly hero, who worked in total isolation
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact is, that Damian was a pivotal and courageous figure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But he joined a network of care that included patient leaders.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His own letters show him repeatedly begging his superiors for more help.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Damian's immense contribution was not just building chapels and houses and coffins.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was his radical act of solidarity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In an era when fear of the disease was absolute, Damian refused to stand aside.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He ate from the same bowl of poing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He shared his pipe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He bandaged weeping sores with his bare hands.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He chose to become one of them, and in doing so, he restored a sense of dignity and shared humanity that the law had tried to erase.
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[SPEAKER_00]: his work brought global attention and more help followed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In 1883, mother Mary Ann Cope, a brilliant hospital administrator, from Syracuse, New York, arrived with six other Franciscan sisters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She brought hygiene, order, and a profound sense of compassion.
08:39.788 --> 08:48.238
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1888, she established the Bishop home for women and girls, creating a sanctuary of care and beauty.
08:49.973 --> 08:56.028
[SPEAKER_00]: Three years after she arrived in 1886, another key figure arrived.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Brother Joseph Dutton, a civil war veteran seeking pinnets for a difficult past.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He became Damien's tireless assistant, and after the priest's death, he ran the bald when home for boys for over 30 years, bringing stability to the lives of hundreds of exiled children.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In December of 1884, father Damien made a discovery.
09:25.551 --> 09:31.438
[SPEAKER_00]: He accidentally put his foot into a pot of scolding water, and felt nothing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a tragic but textbook symptom of Hansen's disease.
09:38.406 --> 09:40.148
[SPEAKER_00]: The nerve damage was complete.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He had contracted the illness himself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He continued his work until his death in 1889, an event that turned him into an international icon.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In 1893, the Hawaiian kingdom was overthrown by American-backed business interests.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The new government enforced the isolation laws even more strictly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This crackdown sparked acts of profound resistance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The most famous was the Lepre War of Kauai, where a patient named Kalua E. Kaualau refused to be taken from his wife and child, fighting a stand-off against the militia that stretched into 1894.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His story became a powerful symbol of the deep opposition to the separation policy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After the United States officially annexed Hawaii in 1898, the administration of Calapapa became more institutionalized.
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[SPEAKER_00]: More money flooded in, leading to better housing, paved roads, in a new social hall.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Pascal Hall built a 1916, became the heart of the community, a place for movies, dances, and lively debate clubs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Despite their exile, the residents built a remarkably vibrant society.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They formed competing baseball teams and celebrated musical groups,
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were prolific composers writing songs that chroniced their lives, their loves, and their sorrows.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This music was a powerful tool for healing and preserving their culture.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The legend was that Hanson's disease is highly contagious and causes body parts to fall off.
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[SPEAKER_00]: but the fact was that the disease is caused by a slow growing bacterium, it is not easily transmitted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The illness attacks peripheral nerves, causing loss of sensation, repeated unnoticed injuries to numb areas like burns and cuts, can then lead to infection and disfigurement.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and the residents remained fiercely political.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were never just patients.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were citizens of a nation that felt it was being stolen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In 1897, from their isolated peninsula, over 700 residents signed the Kui petitions, protesting the annexation of Hawaii by the United States,
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was an extraordinary act of political defiance from a people who had been legally erased, a powerful declaration that they were still and would always be part of the Hawaiian nation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This resistance was also cultural.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They continued to celebrate avion holidays that had been banned by the new government.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They kept their language and traditions alive through chant and song.
13:17.518 --> 13:29.376
[SPEAKER_00]: By building a rich society and demanding their political rights, the people of Kalapapa mounted a powerful defense against the system that tried to dehumanize them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: they insisted on being seen, not as cases of a disease, but as complete human beings.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For most of the settlement's history, there was no cure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The primary treatment was Kamu Kraoile, pressed from the seeds of an Asian tree, and administered through painful injections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It offered some relief, but it could not stop the disease
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then, in the 1940s, a miracle arrived, not a religious miracle, but a scientific one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Researchers at the U.S. National Lepersarium, in Carville, Louisiana, developed a new class of sulfon drugs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When these drugs were introduced in 1946, they were revolutionary.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time, Hanson's disease was a curable condition.
14:32.102 --> 14:38.816
[SPEAKER_00]: This medical breakthrough rendered the century long policy of forced isolation obsolete.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It took another 23 years for the law to catch up with the science.
14:46.373 --> 14:55.163
[SPEAKER_00]: finally, on April 11, 1969, the state of Hawaii officially abolished the quarantine.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The gates of the prison were, at last, unlocked.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time in their lives, the residents were free to leave.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some did, but the outside world was not always welcoming.
15:13.272 --> 15:22.346
[SPEAKER_00]: Olivia Rebella Brita, who was sent to Calapapa in 1934, became a powerful voice for the patient experience.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In her memoir, she drew a direct line between the historical prejudice against people with Hanson's disease and the emerging stigma surrounding the AIDS epidemic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even after the cure, she explained, the social disease of fear remained.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Former patients were often denied jobs in housing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The word, Leper, was still whispered.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For many, the freedom that they have been granted felt like a new kind of exile.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so many, if not most, made a surprising choice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They chose to stay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
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[SPEAKER_00]: For many, KELOPOPA was the only home they had ever known.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a place where they had built deep friendships, fallen in love, and created a community that understood them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were family.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They feared the stigma that awaited them on the outside, a world that still saw them through the lens of a disease, not as the people they were.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Today, that choice echoes in the quiet paths of the Papaloa Cemetery.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For a modern descendant visiting the park, the experience is profound.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You walk among the simple markers, and realize that for every person who left, there was another who chose this beautiful, isolated land as their final resting place.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They chose to remain with the community, they had built, the Ohana, they had forged and lost.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The government had sent them to this peninsula to die, but in a profound twist of fate, they had inadvertently given them a sanctuary, a place of stunning beauty where they had forged a society on their own terms, and for many leaving that behind was a price to
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[SPEAKER_00]: as the 20th century drew to a close, the residents of Calapapa began to think about their legacy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They did not want their story, their resilience, and their community to be forgotten.
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[SPEAKER_00]: At their request, the United States Congress established Calapapa National Historic Park on December 22nd, 1980.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The park has a unique dual mission to preserve the history and the sacred sites of the peninsula, and crucially, to guarantee the remaining residents the right to live there for the rest of their lives, in a community maintained for them.
18:20.281 --> 18:31.772
[SPEAKER_00]: The global significance of Calapopi's story was affirmed by the Catholic Church in 2009 Father Damien was canonized as a saint.
18:33.373 --> 18:37.437
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2012, Mother Mary and Cope was as well.
18:38.979 --> 18:47.807
[SPEAKER_00]: And the cause for singehood has now been opened for the quiet, steadfast civil war veteran,
18:49.441 --> 18:54.808
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, the number of surviving patient residents has dwindled to just a handful.
18:56.390 --> 19:06.283
[SPEAKER_00]: The state of Hawaii and the National Park Service are planning for a future without them, a transition that raises profound questions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Who will be the stewards of this sacred land and how can its story be told with the
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[SPEAKER_00]: Organizations like Kalawana, Kalapapa, made up of descendants of the residents are powerful advocates in this conversation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They work to preserve the memory of their ancestors and to ensure that the future of Kalapapa is guided by the Hawaiian value of Kuliana, a deep sense of responsibility.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Calapapa is not just Hawaiian history.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is a universal human story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It resonates with the history of other isolated sites from Robin Island in South Africa to Spino longer in Greece and holds powerful lessons for today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: While the disease is now rare in the Western world,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Today the World Health Organization is working toward a 2030 target of zero new indigenous cases and zero disease related discrimination.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But significant challenges remain, particularly in countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia, where hundreds of thousands of people are still affected.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Though medically curable, with a multi-drug therapy that is provided for free, the disease still carries a profound social stigma that leads to discrimination, job loss, and human rights violations.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The fight is no longer just against a bacterium, but against centuries of fear and misinformation,
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[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Kalapapa's residents, particularly their fight for dignity and their insistence on being seen as whole people, remains a powerful and relevant lesson for that global struggle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In a world still grappling with fear and stigma surrounding disease, from AIDS to COVID-19,
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[SPEAKER_00]: and an enduring testament to the power of community, dignity, and hope.
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[SPEAKER_00]: To learn more about the incredible community of Kanapapa, and the work being done to preserve its legacy, please visit the website, linked in the show notes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This one written on a sacred peninsula teaches us that even in exile, the human spirit can build a home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Good night.
