There is a recent grave at Kalaupapa, and the few living patients on the state Department of Health’s Hansen’s disease registry range in age from 84 to 101.
Time is running out to experience Kalaupapa through a living history perspective. Since 1886, the remote settlement in Kalawao County on the northern coast of Molokai has housed patients with Hansen’s disease, formerly known as leprosy.
The natural configuration of the peninsula — cut off from the rest of the island by towering cliffs — helped to keep patients isolated as entry and escape was extremely difficult. More than 8,000 patients, mostly Native Hawaiian, have died at Kalaupapa and thousands are buried in marked and unmarked graves.
Deer sightings are now more common on Kalaupapa, which has grown increasingly feral, than the appearance of humans. Only six patients are still alive, with three currently living on Kalaupapa and the others on Oahu.
Hawaii’s isolation policy for Hansen’s disease, now easily cured, was officially abolished in 1969. However, DOH implemented COVID-19-related restrictions for Kalawao County in 2020 to protect elderly patients, including halting public tours, limiting visitors and requiring masks and testing.
The restrictions were lifted gradually for patient safety, with masking and visitor limits in place until 2023.
Organized tours will resume Wednesday after the National Park Service certified a new tour concessionaire, Kalaupapa Saints Tour, headed by Meli Watanuki, who is working in conjunction with Randy P. King, founder and CEO of Seawind Tours & Travel Inc. & DMC International Inc.
Watanuki was diagnosed with Hansen’s disease at 18 and successfully treated. She has lived in the settlement since the 1960s and said she selected Seawind Tours as the official tour company because of its history working with patient-residents, including coordinating pilgrimages to Rome for the canonizations of Father Damien de Veuster in 2009 and Mother Marianne Cope in 2012, key figures in Kalaupapa’s history.
Watanuki said in a statement marking the tour’s upcoming start that she “wanted to create something that not only shares the history, but also honors the people who lived it.”
“This is my home, my story and my gift to future generations,” she said.
Limited access
Nancy Holman, superintendent of Kalaupapa National Historical Park, which was established in 1980, said Kalaupapa is a “complex place” and that NPS consulted with DOH, its primary partner in visitor services, as well as all of the various property owners to get the tours back up and running.
“For example, I was in communication with the ecclesiastical organizations to confirm what church facilities visitors are allowed to enter and when, as well as give them time to prepare for visitors again. Tours were part of the discussions with (the state Department of Transportation) as they worked toward their current terminal project,” Holman said.
“These are small details in the myriad we were working through over the last four years and something that is part of everyday management of Kalaupapa.”
Holman said NPS has limited Kalaupapa Saints Tour to 30 visitors a day who will count toward the daily cap of 100 permitted visitors set by DOH.
General visitor access currently is only allowed through Kalaupapa Airport. The new tour, which departs from Honolulu on Mokulele Airlines, is open to visitors who are at least 16 years old and are willing to follow strict rules designed to preserve the privacy of patient-residents and to ensure they have adequate resources.
The full-day tour costs $575 per person, according to the company’s website.
King said tour demand is robust and the initial tours immediately sold out. However, he and Watanuki have chosen to start slow with only 10 tours slated this year, each taking only eight visitors.
“We won’t be coming every day. Right now we are two to three times a month, maybe four times a month. We want to be very respectful to the community,” said King, adding that the tour schedule takes into account the limited air access to Kalaupapa as well as the community’s limited resources, including medical needs.
Religious fervor
A tree has grown up around a historic grave at Papaloa Cemetery, the peninsula’s main burial ground. It’s a reminder that Kalaupapa is a place where the past intermingles with the future and incredible loss coexists with sacred miracles.
Saints Damien and Marianne once walked Kalaupapa, and stories of their dedication to patient care supported their canonizations. Damien, a Catholic priest from Belgium, died of the disease in 1889 after spending more than a decade providing spiritual support to the patients in exile. He also built houses and hospitals, made coffins and dug graves.
Marianne, a German-born nun and part of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, moved in 1888 to Kalaupapa, where she cared for patients before she died of natural causes in 1918. She advocated for and managed what was then known as the Charles R. Bishop Home for Unprotected Leper Girls and Women.
King said many religious pilgrims sought to visit Kalaupapa in the wake the canonizations, and more are expected if the cause for canonization advances for Joseph Dutton, a religious layman from Vermont who arrived on Molokai in 1886 and continued the saints’ work until his death in 1931.
Dutton ran what was once known as the Henry P. Baldwin Home for Boys and Helpless Men in Kalawao along with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.
The historic churches, cemeteries and community landmarks that the saints and other members of the community once frequented have been preserved to reflect the stories of resilience that still continue today.
Sister Barbara Jean Wajda and Sister Alicia Damien Lau of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities live on Kalaupapa and want to see its religious history preserved. They said they are committed to staying until the last patients leave or they themselves die.
The nuns deeply admire Saint Marianne, who dedicated her life to advocating for the most vulnerable. They also have been inspired by the patient-residents and even visitors, who they say are vital to sharing the sacred stories of Kalaupapa.
“The real driving force is the people who want to come and see Saint Marianne, Saint Damien and Joseph Dutton,” Wajda said. “A number of people that I have met over the years have attributed their own physical cures to these three people.”
The two nuns shared some of these stories when they gathered information for Gov. Josh Green when, during his visit to the Vatican earlier this month, he invited Pope Leo XIV to come to Kalaupapa.
“Alicia and I wrote (Pope Leo XIV) a letter and we invited him too,” Wajda said.
Inevitable change
Kalaupapa’s future is still unfolding, especially when it comes to what will happen when the last patients are no longer there.
DOH assumed responsibility for patient care at statehood, but once all patients are gone its jurisdiction within the national historical park transitions fully to NPS.
Patient numbers are in rapid decline. The first 12 patients arrived in the county of Kalawao in 1866 and, according to DOH, rose to a peak population of about 1,200 residents in the late 19th to early 20th century.
By the mid-1970s, the settlement’s population had fallen to about 179 to 188, according to statistics from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. That was just prior to the passage of a 1977 state law that guaranteed any patient-resident desiring to live at Kalaupapa could stay as long as they chose.
DOH said there were about a dozen patients on its registry in 2020, when tours were halted to protect patients during the pandemic.
“Thousands died at Kalaupapa during the era of forced isolation, with most early deaths due to Hansen’s disease and related complications,” DOH said. “In modern times, as patients were cured, deaths have been primarily from age-related causes.”
DOH said its Hansen’s Disease Branch provides direct care and services to registry patients, maintains records, supports patient welfare and coordinates with NPS on settlement operations. The branch also oversees the statewide Hansen’s Disease Community Program, which offers education, surveillance and outreach to identify new cases in Hawaii and provides testing and treatment.
The branch, whose fiscal year 2024 budget was $4.3 million, has 33 positions at Kalaupapa, including 12 dedicated to direct patient care and 21 responsible for administration, maintenance, food services and housekeeping.
While DOH provides the primary care and support to Kalaupapa’s patient-residents, NPS manages park infrastructure. Long-term stewardship of the national historical park is outlined in the agency’s General Management Plan and Environmental Assessment signed in 2021.
“The future of Kalaupapa will also be informed by the state, as the landowner, with community input,” the Health Department said. “DOH supports preservation of the historical, cultural, and environmental importance of the county of Kalawao and education about its history and significance.”
Tourism concerns
During a media preview of the Kalaupapa Saints Tour Thursday, Holman said NPS’s General Management Plan took a decade to complete. She said the loss of patients is hard for many people to talk about, and that some already are grieving transitions related to population changes.
The “preferred alternative” in the plan emphasizes stewardship of Kalaupapa National Historical Park lands in collaboration with the park’s many partners. It also states that public visitation “would be supported and integrated into park management and would change, including by allowing children to visit Kalaupapa with adult supervision and removing the 100 persons per day visitor cap, while continuing to limit the number of visitors in order to protect the resources within the park and the purpose of the park.”
Holman said stakeholder opinions regarding Kalaupapa’s future range broadly, and that even after the isolation of COVID-19, not all patients and their families support tourism.
She said NPS will not make abrupt changes but noted “you may see us experimenting over the next decade with different types of visitor use to see what works.”
Although Watanuki wants to share the story of Kalaupapa through limited tours, she said she does not support broad access.
“Just leave ’em alone — this place,” she said.
There are no easy answers when it comes to sorting out Kalaupapa’s future. But John Meadows, the driver/tour guide for Thursday’s media preview, likes to remind visitors to put the focus on aloha, which he defines as “living in harmony with land, people and all that surround us.”
“When you step into Kalaupapa, you enter into a place where aloha was not just spoken, it was lived daily,” he explained. “In the face of hardship and segregation, patients had embraced each other as family, or ohana, and supported one another with dignity and created joy in the most difficult times.
“As you walk through this sacred place, may aloha remind you to listen with compassion, to walk with respect, and to carry forward the legacy of those who lived here so their stories can be continued and inspire generations to come.”
For more information on Kalaupapa Saints Tours, Visit Seawind Tours & Travel Inc. at seawindtours.com/kalaupapa/saintstour/ or call 808-949-4144.
Source: The Garden Island
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