This is not our first quarantine
During a conversation in 1920, plantation owner and statesman George N. Wilcox recalled the quarantine of Kaua‘i.
“And during the plague (1900) we established a guard at every port to keep passengers from landing,” he told Ethel Damon. “Old Mr. Knudsen was sent back, I remember, and Pastor Isenberg spent several weeks on some Inter Island Steamer quarantined in Honolulu harbor. Those Honolulu fellows were in the habit of unloading all their old, unsaleable produce on us — would send us rotten potatoes instead of the kegs of nails, etc. we had ordered. But with plenty of beef, rice and taro on the island we had enough to live on and refused to take any of their old stuff. Later, toward the end of the epidemic, a shipload of flour was actually sent, but we had gotten on well without it.”
We are again dealing with plague — COVID 19 — and again find it necessary to observe a quarantine. Much mahalo to everyone who continues to work, and an equal mahalo to those who must not. Hopefully we’ll find history repeating itself and the people of Kaua‘i will, eventually, “get on well.”
Teri Albert, Koloa
Source: The Garden Island