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August 6, 2022 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hui Kawaihau

When Kalākaua ascended to the throne in 1874, he named his youngest brother, William P Leleiōhoku, the heir apparent.

Leleiōhoku was educated at Saint Alban’s College (forerunner to ʻIolani School.) An accomplished musician, he founded several choral societies. One of them was called Hui Kawaihau.

The Hui Kawaihau name was based on a nickname for an American missionary woman in town who preferred iced water (‘Kawaihau’) over some of the alcoholic libations the others were enjoying.

Leleiōhoku composed several songs, including, Adios Ke Aloha, Aloha No Wau I Ko Maka, Nani Wali Līhuʻe, Moani Ke Ala, Ke Kaʻupu, He Inoa No Kaʻiulani (a different song from the one with the same name by Liliʻuokalani), Nani Waipiʻo, Hole Waimea (this one was co-written with his singing club.)

He also wrote Kaua I Ka Huahuaʻi (Johnny Noble adapted most of the melody and kept most of the same lyrics of this one, and changed the spelling of the title, for his 1926 song Hawaiian War Chant (Taua I Ta Huahuaʻi.))

The Hui Kawaihau choral group had about fifteen members; it was more social than business. When Leleiōhoku died in 1877, King Kalākaua reorganized the Hui into a business group.

Among the twelve hui charter organizers were some well-known names, including King Kalākaua; Governor Dominis, the King’s brother-in-law; Colonel George W. Macfarlane; Captain James Makee; Col. Curtis P. ʻIaukea; Governor John M. Kapena of the Island of Oahu; J. S. Walker and C. H. Judd; and Koakanu, a high chief of Kōloa, on Kauaʻi.

Their first order of business was to sign on more members and contract for the cultivation of sugar cane on land in Kapaʻa, on Kauaʻi.

The twelve organizers signed up thirty-two resident members. About the first of August, 1877, the members of the Hui – over twenty men, with about the same number of women and children – set out from Honolulu, on the steamer “Kilauea,” on the voyage to their new home on Kauaʻi.

At the time, the districts of Hanalei and Līhuʻe shared a common boundary. Kawaihau was set apart by the King, who gave that name to the property lying between the Wailua River and Moloaʻa Valley. A bill was introduced into the legislature and the eastern end of Hanalei District was cut out and Kawaihau became the fifth district on the island of Kauaʻi.

About the time the Hui was started, Captain James Makee obtained a concession from the King to build a sugar mill at Kapaʻa and establish a plantation there. He was the first manager of the Plantation, and had agreed with Kalākaua to grind in his mill all the cane grown by the Hui.

The contract with the Makee Sugar Company (under which each members of the Hui who came to Kauaʻi had signed separately with the plantation) required each of them to plant two hundred and forty acres of cane the first year, and they were to receive, in payment for their cane, two-fifths of the returns from the sale of the sugar obtained from it.

Each planter was required to plow his own portion of the tract and to buy his own seed-cane for planting. A portion of the seed cane came from the neighboring Līhuʻe Plantation, ten miles to the south, and the balance they brought from Lāhainā.

Upon Makee’s death in 1878, his son-in-law, Col. ZS Spalding took over management of the new sugar venture. Spalding also started the neighboring Keālia Sugar Plantation. In the 1880s, Spalding built the “Valley House,” a Victorian-style wooden mansion, one of the finest on the island.

From 1877 to 1881, Hui Kawaihau was one of the leading entities on the eastern side of the Island of Kauaʻi, growing sugar at Kapahi, on the plateau lands above Kapaʻa.

As part of the infrastructure of the new plantation, the Makee Landing was built in Kapaʻa during the early years of the Makee Sugar Plantation. Today, in place of the old Makee Landing, a breakwater is located on the north side of Mōʻīkeha Canal.

The Hui members all worked their share of the plantation – cultivating, irrigating and weeding the sugar cane under their supervision. But they were all new to the business of growing cane – being mostly city men from Honolulu – all clerks and office men, etc.

The first crop was quite successful, netting the Hui over $17,000, from which was deducted the expense paid by the King for the Hui’s transportation to Kauaʻi, and the preliminary operations there – about $5000, which left enough to pay the members nearly $500 apiece, after paying the expenses.

In spite of the successful opening of the enterprise, it soon encountered dark days. For nearly four years, troubles were increasing.

Colonel Spalding advised them to sell out to the Plantation, and thus end all their troubles; but they would not agree.

By 1881, four years after the favorable opening of the Hui’s plantation efforts, the members, disheartened and discouraged, had all drifted away, their property and leasehold rights, etc., passing into the hands of Colonel Spalding, the successor of Captain Makee as the head and principal owner of the Makee Sugar Company.

The Hui Kawaihau of Kauaʻi had passed into history.

In 1933, the Līhuʻe Plantation Co. purchased all of the outstanding Makee Sugar Co. stock and in the next year the mill was dismantled and combined with the Līhuʻe factory. (Lots of information here from “The Hui Kawaihau” by Charles S Dole and The Friend, April, 1920.)

August 5, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Placial vs Spatial

In modern land description, the context is ‘spatial’ – we tend to reference things by their location, area and use – 123 Main Street, 10,000-square feet, residential.

Look at any map, GPS orientation or recall how you describe a place, etc, it’s all about space and location; you learn where you are and the physical context of it.

In old Hawaiʻi, it was the nature of ‘place’ that shaped the practical, cultural and spiritual view of the Hawaiian people.

In Hawaiian culture, natural and cultural resources are one and the same. Traditions describe the formation (literally the birth) of the Hawaiian Islands and the presence of life on, and around them, in the context of genealogical accounts.

All forms of the natural environment, from the skies and mountain peaks, to the watered valleys and lava plains, and to the shore line and ocean depths are believed to be embodiments of Hawaiian gods and deities. (Maly)

“The ancients gave names to the natural features of the land according to their ideas of fitness. … There were many names used by the ancients to designate appropriately the varieties of rain peculiar to each part of the island coast; the people of each region naming the varieties of rain as they deemed fitting. … The ancients also had names for the different winds.” (Malo)

Hawaiians named taro patches, rocks, trees, canoe landings, resting places in the forests and the tiniest spots where miraculous events are believed to have taken place. (hawaii-edu) There were names for everything, and multiple names for many.

Place names are often descriptive of: (1) the terrain, (2) an event in history, (3) the kind of resources a particular place was noted for or (4) the kind of land use which occurred in the area so named. Sometimes an earlier resident of a given land area was also commemorated by place names. (Maly)

“Cultural Attachment” embodies the tangible and intangible values of a culture – how a people identify with, and personify the environment around them.

It is the intimate relationship (developed over generations of experiences) that people of a particular culture feel for the sites, features, phenomena and natural resources etc, that surround them – their sense of place. This attachment is deeply rooted in the beliefs, practices, cultural evolution and identity of a people. (Kent)

In ancient Hawai‘i, most of the common people were farmers, a few were fishermen. Access to resources was tied to residency and earned as a result of taking responsibility to steward the environment and supply the needs of aliʻi. Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes.

In this subsistence society, the family farming scale was far different from commercial-purpose agriculture. In ancient time, when families farmed for themselves, they adapted; products were produced based on need. The families were disbursed around the Islands. An orderly delineation became needed.

Māʻilikūkahi is noted for clearly marking and reorganizing land division palena (boundaries) on O‘ahu. Defined palena brought greater productivity to the lands; lessened conflict and was a means of settling disputes of future aliʻi who would be in control of the bounded lands; protected the commoners from the chiefs; and brought (for the most part) peace and prosperity. (Beamer, Duarte)

Fornander writes, “He caused the island to be thoroughly surveyed, and boundaries between differing divisions and lands be definitely and permanently marked out, thus obviating future disputes between neighboring chiefs and landholders.”

Kamakau tells a similar story, “When the kingdom passed to Māʻilikūkahi, the land divisions were in a state of confusion; the ahupuaʻa, the ku, the ʻili ʻāina, the moʻo ʻāina, the pauku ʻāina, and the kihāpai were not clearly defined.”

“Therefore, Māʻilikūkahi ordered the chiefs, aliʻi, the lesser chiefs, kaukau aliʻi, the warrior chiefs, puʻali aliʻi, and the overseers (luna) to divide all of Oʻahu into moku, ahupuaʻa, ʻili kupono, ʻili ʻaina, and moʻo ʻāina.”

What is commonly referred to as the “ahupuaʻa system” is a result of the firm establishment of palena (boundaries.) This system of land divisions and boundaries enabled a konohiki (land/resource manager) to know the limits and productivity of the resources that he managed.

Ahupuaʻa served as a means of managing people and taking care of the people who support them, as well as an easy form of collection of tributes by the chiefs. Ultimately, this helped in preserving resources.

A typical ahupuaʻa (what we generally refer to as watersheds, today) was a long strip of land, narrow at its mountain summit top and becoming wider as it ran down a valley into the sea to the outer edge of the reef. If there was no reef then the sea boundary would be about one and a half miles from the shore.

When the Hawaiians lived on the land as farmers and gatherers they became intimately acquainted with and named countless features and places.

Hawaiian customs and practices demonstrate the belief that all portions of the land and environment are related; the place names given to them tell us that areas are of cultural importance. (Maly)

This Placial versus Spatial context reflects the relationship of the people to the land.

“Sense of place is about the feeling that emanates from a place as a combination of the physical environment and the social construct of people activity (or absence of) that produces the feeling of a place. … People seek out Hawaiʻi because of the expectation of what its sense of place will be when they get there.” (Apo)

“Sense of place helps to define the relationships we have as hosts and guests, as well as how we treat one another and our surroundings.” (Taum)

“In the Hawaiian mind, a sense-of-place was inseparably linked with self-identity and self-esteem. To have roots in a place meant to have roots in the soil of permanence and continuity.”

“Almost every significant activity of his life was fixed to a place.”

“No genealogical chant was possible without the mention of personal geography; no myth could be conceived without reference to a place of some kind; no family could have any standing in the community unless it had a place; no place of significance, even the smallest, went without a name; and no history could have been made or preserved without reference, directly or indirectly, to a place.”

“So, place had enormous meaning for Hawaiians of old.” (Kanahele)

August 4, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Last Survivor

The message: “Air Raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill” came at 0755 on December 7, as Japanese planes swept overhead in an attempt to cripple the Pacific Fleet. Taney, moored alongside Pier 6, Honolulu Harbor, stood to her antiaircraft guns when word of the surprise attack reached her.

The US Coast Guard Cutter Taney (originally launched as the Roger B Taney) was named for Roger Brooke Taney, who was born on March 17, 1777 in Calvert County, Maryland. Roger Taney was a lawyer and later served in President Andrew Jackson’s administration as Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury – he was later appointed as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

Roger B Taney, Coast Guard Builders No. 68, was laid down on May 1, 1935 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was launched on June 3, 1936. The Roger B Taney departed Philadelphia on December 19, transited the Panama Canal from the 27th to the 29th, and arrived at her home port, Honolulu, Territory of Hawaiʻi, on January 18, 1937.

The Taney had arrived in the Pacific at a time when the US, and Pan-American Airways in particular, was expanding its commercial air travel capabilities. The “Clipper” flights across the Pacific to the Far East made islands like Hawaiʻi, Midway, Guam and Wake important way-stations.

In the 1930s, the US Bureau of Air Commerce (later known as Department of Commerce) was looking for islands along the air route between Australia and California to support trans-Pacific flight operations (non-stop, trans-Pacific flying was not yet possible, so islands were looked to as potential sites for the construction of intermediate landing areas.)

To affirm a claim on remote Pacific islands, international law required non-military occupation of all neutral islands for at least one year. An American colony was established at Canton (Kanton) and aney transported and supplied colonists on the island (1938-1940.) (Canton was picked by Pan-Am for its trans-Pacific flight flying boat operations.)

The 327-foot Secretary class cutter Taney was designed and initially missioned to interdict opium smugglers and carry out search and rescue duties from the Hawaiian Islands through the central Pacific Ocean. In 1940 and 1941, Taney received successive armament upgrades in anticipation of war, with 3- and 5-inch guns capable of shooting at both surface and airborne targets, additional .50 caliber machine guns, depth charge racks and throwers, and sonar for locating submarines.

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Taney was officially assigned to the US Navy’s Destroyer Division 80, though she retained her Coast Guard crew. When Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor and other American military installations in Hawaiʻi on December 7, 1941, she was tied up at Pier 6, Honolulu Harbor, where she was able to repeatedly engage Japanese planes which flew over the city.

When the attack subsided, Taney immediately commenced anti-submarine patrol duties off Pearl Harbor and was at sea for 80 of the first 90 days of the war.

After service in the Pacific and a major retrofit, Taney was sent into the Atlantic serving as the Flagship of Task Force 66, US Atlantic Fleet and command vessel for six convoys of troop and supply ships between the US and North Africa. Returning to the Pacific after a dramatic reconfiguration as an Amphibious Command Ship in 1945, Taney participated in the Okinawa Campaign and the occupation of Japan.

Immediately after the end of the Pacific war in September 1945, Taney steamed into Japanese home waters where she assisted with the evacuation of Allied prisoners of war.

Following World War II, Taney was reconfigured for peacetime duties and from 1946 until 1972 she was home ported in Alameda, California. Known as “The Queen of the Pacific,” Taney carried out virtually every peacetime Coast Guard duty including decades of Ocean Weather Patrol throughout the Pacific, fisheries patrols in the Bearing Sea and countless search and rescue missions.

During the Korean War, Taney received additional anti-submarine weapons and frequently carried out plane-guard duties off Midway Island and Adak, Alaska.

The mid-1970s were a period of transition for the Coast Guard with the passage of the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act and the nation’s shift towards increased interdiction of narcotics smugglers. These operations called for off-shore patrols of up to three weeks.

Stationed in Virginia, Taney completed the last Coast Guard ocean weather patrol in 1977, and from 1977 to 1986 carried out search and rescue duties, training cruises for the Coast Guard Academy and drug interdiction in the Caribbean.

She was formally decommissioned on December 7, 1986 (after more than 50-years of continuous service) and turned over to the city of Baltimore, Maryland for use as a museum ship in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Over her distinguished career, Taney received three battle stars for World War II service and numerous theatre ribbons for service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Since the 1960s, Taney is the last ship still afloat that fought in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Consequently, from that time on she was often referred to as “The Last Survivor of Pearl Harbor.” A plaque memorializing her participation in the attacks is at Pier 6, Honolulu Harbor. (Lots of information here from USCG.)

August 3, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sometaro Shiba

With annexation having formalized Hawai‘i’s position as an American outpost and cementing the oligarchy’s control, it would seem that labor-management conflicts in the new Territory inevitably would be decided in favor of all-powerful management. (Chapin)

Establishment papers prior to 1909 downplayed or ignored labor disputes. No paper recorded the first plantation strike at Kòloa onKauai in 1841 when Hawaiian workers disputed how they were paid – twelve-and-a-half cents per day in scrip redeemable only at the company store. The strike was quickly settled in favor of management. (Chapin)

After 1900, “labor actions” increased dramatically – a total of thirty-nine on plantations and another twenty-five allied strikes in longshore and urban organizations between June 1900 and the end of1905. (Chapin)

A powerful establishment press was in place on the four major islands to present only one side of the events to the public: the Hilo Tribune Herald, the Maui News, and the Garden Island on Kauai, plus a host on O‘ahu. (Chapin)

In 1902, Sometaro Shiba began The Garden Island newspaper in 2 separate editions, English and Japanese. In 1904, these became separate papers, the Japanese titled Kauai Shinpo (Shinpo implied progress or progressive; it could also mean new report.) (Nakamura)

Shiba was born on the island of Shikoku, Japan in 1870 and was educated at Aoyama Gakuin, an American Methodist college in Tokyo, where he excelled in English language.

He came to Hawai‘i in 1891 and turned his bilingual talent to profit as a sales clerk at the Lihue Plantation Store. After 10-years with the plantation, he became an interpreter and translator at the Lihue Courthouse. (Soboleski) Then, he started his papers.

In 1903, prominent Kauai citizens Mason Fay Prosser, Edward DeLacy, Johan Ludvig V. Hjorth, and Frank Crawford formed a corporation to purchase the Garden Island. Shiba sold his newspapers, but continued as publisher and editor. (UH Manoa Library)

The Garden Island was published weekly from 1902 to 1964, then switched to twice a week from 1964 to 1976, when it was published three times a week. Presently it appears daily.

In 1907, he left Kauai and bought the Hawaii Shinpo, a daily Japanese language paper. (Soboleski) It became one of the major Japanese-language newspapers in Hawai‘i. (Nakamura)

Shiba’s paper was among the few Japanese language papers to support management during labor strife in 1909, the 1920s, and 1930s. (Nakamura)

In 1909, Japanese workers initiated a strike on the island of O‘ahu which “in every respect … was the most important labor conflict that had ever occurred in Hawaii up to that date.”

It marked a fundamental shift from previous labor movements in its character and impact, as it extended far beyond the plantations to involve the planter elite, high-ranking government authorities, and influential leaders within the Japanese community.

Unlike previous strikes, this particular work stoppage was the result of nearly eight months of deliberations, meetings, and discussions by Japanese plantation workers on the issue of their salaries and their need to increase them.

The Nippu Jiji, with a circulation of 1,000, along with the Maui Shimbun (Wailuku, Maui), the Shokumin Shinbun (Hilo, Hawai‘i), the Kona Echo (Hōlualoa, Hawai‘i), and the Oahu Jiho (Waipahu, O‘ahu), advocated for higher wages.

They were considered “radicals” for their support of decisive and immediate action and for maintaining that the grievances of the Japanese plantation laborers – which included low wages, poor housing, unsanitary conditions, and other discriminatory treatment – could only be remedied by means of collective bargaining.

In contrast, the “conservatives,” which included the Hawaii Shinpo (Honolulu, Hawai‘i), Hawaiian-Japanese Daily Chronicle (Honolulu, Hawai‘i), Kauai Shinpo, Hilo Shinpo, Kainan Shinpo (Hilo, Hawai‘i), and Maui Hochi, supported a more judicious and cautious approach when dealing with the planters. (Nakamura)

Ultimately, the planters broke the strike but made a number of concessions to laborers, including higher wages, better housing facilities, and improved sanitation conditions.

The Nippu Jiji asserted that editor Shiba of the Hawaii Shinpo and his faction “care nothing for the laborers in general” and should be “prepared to die an honorable death.” (Nakamura)

It led to an attempted murder of Shiba, who was branded as a “traitor” for his close relationship with the powerful sugar planters and collusion with planter interests during this labor conflict.

On August 3, 1909, Tomekichi Mori, a member of the Higher Wage Association, brutally attacked and stabbed editor Shiba in the neck with a pocketknife.

Mori allegedly stated, “I punished Sheba because he is a traitor to the Japanese people … I’m glad I did it … and I’m only sorry I didn’t do a better job of it. I have punished Sheba, and now I’m ready to pay for it.”

The attack made front-page headlines in most of the major newspapers in Honolulu, and the Pacific Commercial Advertiser portrayed the attack as an example of “what the Nippu Jiji has been preaching for months – that Sheba is a traitor to, and an enemy of, his own race and should be punished, exterminated, put out of the way.” (Nakamura)

Thereafter, Shiba became increasingly concerned about the threat of violence to himself. He not only requested police protection but also applied for a $10,000 life insurance policy, which the planters funded.

Eventually, Shiba returned to Japan in 1917. He died at the age of eighty at his country home in Ibara prefecture. (Sometaro Shiba’s name is spelled a number of different ways within various accounts. His name is properly spelled “Shiba.”) (Nakamura)

August 2, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Brother Joseph

Ira Barnes Dutton was born April 27, 1843 on a family farm in Stowe, Vermont, son of Methodist parents Ezra Dutton and Abigail Barnes. His family moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, four years later.

In 1861, he enlisted with the 13th Wisconsin Infantry and served in the Union Army during the Civil War as a quartermaster, as well as nursing the wounded and burying the dead. He was discharged in 1866 as a Captain, but stayed in the South tracing missing soldiers, collecting their remains and settling survivors’ claims.

This and a failed marriage led him into alcoholism, and by his own account he spent the next decade in a drunken stupor (“I never injured anyone but myself.”) When he emerged from the gutter in 1876, wanting to do penance for his “wild years” and “sinful capers,” he began to study religion and in 1883 joined the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky.

It was only after reading about Father Damien that he found his “real vocation;” he sought to help Damien on Molokai. His motive was not to hide from the world, but “to do some good for my neighbor and at the same time make it my penitentiary in doing penance for my sins and errors.” From San Francisco, he sailed for Molokai. (McNamara)

When he arrived on July 29, 1886, although he never took religious vows, he became known as “Brother Joseph” and “Brother Dutton,” “brother to everybody.” (McNamara)

His days were spent as a janitor, cleaning the primitive shelters, scrubbing floors, while also building latrines and outbuildings and bandaging sores, as well as helping Mother Marianne Cope in keeping records and organizing arriving patients. Like Mother Marianne and unlike Father Damien, he never contracted Hansen’s Disease. (Rutler)

Every day he marveled more and more at what he saw around him, bravery, he often said, greater than in the war he had been through. He enjoyed the playing of the church organist; one day he saw that one of the man’s hands was so diseased that all that was left was a stump which the organist had fastened to a stick and with which he struck the bass notes. (Burton)

Damien knew how different they were in temperament “but there is love between us,” he said. Damien had urged Dutton to become a priest; but Dutton felt unfit. “That requires a high character and great purity,” he said and he evidently felt that his early life had disqualified him. (Burton)

On Molokai, Dutton found real peace and joy. One peer recalled: “Dutton had a divine temper; nothing could ruffle it.” At 83, Joseph wrote: “I am ashamed to think that I am inclined to be jolly. Often think we don’t know that our Lord ever laughed, and here my laugh is ready to burst out any minute.” (McNamara)

He never left Molokai; he never wanted to. “Seek a vacation?” he asked. “Anything else would be slavery … The people here like me, I think, and I am sure I like them.” He added: “I would not leave my lepers for all the money the world might have.”

The one exception was in 1917, when the 74-year-old patriot tried “to buckle on my sword-belt again” and re-enlist. His application was rejected, but he wasn’t heart-broken. (McNamara)

Brother Joseph taught the children the games he had played as a child. Molokai became very proud of its baseball teams, coached and uniformed by Brother Joseph himself.

The one thing that had troubled Father Damien was what would happen to his children when he died. Now he could smile and say, “I can die now. Brother Joseph will take care of my orphans.” (Burton) (Damien came to Kalawao in 1873, he died in 1889. Brother Joseph worked with Damien for three years; he continued to serve the patients there for several more decades.)

In 1908, while the fleet of the US Navy toured the Pacific, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the ships to sail with flying colors as they passed the leper colony of Molokai in order to acknowledge the years of selfless service given by Brother Joseph. Despite such an honor, Brother Joseph’s desire was to work and pray in obscurity. (Heisey)

Still, more honors came. A bill in the Hawaiʻi Territorial legislature proposed to give Brother Joseph a $50 monthly pension for his “inspiring services;” the bill was tabled at his request and he said he “was in good health and wanted no reward for his work among the lepers.” (Arkansas Catholic, July 19, 1919) In 1929 Pope Pius XI sent his apostolic blessing. (Heisey)

On the eve of his 86th birthday, the 1929 session of the legislature adopted a resolution of appreciation of Brother Joseph Dutton’s services that briefly notes, “Resolved, that this House put on record its appreciation of the great and inspiring service and influence for good in the splendid and effective service he has rendered in their behalf during the past 40 years by Brother Joseph Dutton, in his ministration to the afflicted in Kalawao and Kalaupapa, and that the thanks of the House of Representatives be extended to him in this memorial.” (Thrum)

Brother Joseph died on March 26, 1931. Former president Calvin Coolidge in his daily syndicated newspaper column noted, “Far out in the islands of the Pacific the soul of Brother Joseph Dutton has been released from the limitations of this earth … (T)his man died a saintly world figure.”

“His faith, his works, his self-sacrifice appeal to people because there is always something of the same spirit in them. Therein lies the moral power of this world. He realized a vision which we all have. The universal response to the example of his life is another demonstration of what mankind regard as just and true and holy.”

“He showed the power of what is good and the binding force of the common brotherhood of man.” (Milwaukee Sentinel, March 29, 1931)

A couple interesting side notes relate to Brother Joseph and Stowe, Vermont. After fleeing Austria in 1938, the von Trapp family (Trapp Family Singers (of Sound of Music fame; refugees from pre-war Austria)) bought a farm in the mountains of Stowe in 1942 and made it their adopted home.

When the town was looking for a site for a new church, Maria von Trapp, the family matriarch, provided support for acquisition of land and building of the Blessed Sacrament Church (they purposefully purchased a portion of the Dutton’s former farm where Brother Joseph was born.) The first mass was held on March 6, 1949.

The church windows, walls and ceilings were painted and decorated by internationally renowned French artist Andre Girard. Twelve exterior panels depict the life of Damien and Brother Joseph at Kalawao. The church and its panels were recently restored.

In March 1952, the Trapp Family Singers visited Molokai and sang over Brother Joseph’s grave. (Yenkavitch) “Gently, Johannes placed our Mount Mansfield pine wreath at the foot of the cross. Then we began to sing. How often have I felt with deepest gratitude this great glory of our life as a singing family: that, whenever words failed to say what was taking place in our hearts, we could always express it in music.” (Maria von Trapp, The News and Tribune, January 3, 1960)

Recently, a 7-foot marble statue of Brother Joseph, depicting him as a young Civil War Union soldier, was placed at Molokai’s St. Joseph Church in Kamalo (the church Damien built;) a second statue is expected to be installed at Damien Memorial School in Honolulu (it is planned to be placed in back of the school, facing the campus’ running track.)