Kalaupapa | Page 4 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 29, 2017 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Siloama Protestant Church

In 1832, twelve years after initiation of the American Protestant Mission, a young New England Protestant minister, the Reverend Harvey R Hitchcock, was sent with his wife to Christianize the people of Molokai. They settled at Kalua‘aha. The first Protestant church at Kalua‘aha was built of thatch in early 1833.

A school soon followed, and it was not long before a small community was forming around the church buildings. It became the social center of the entire island, with people coming from as far away as the windward valleys, over the pali and by canoe, just to attend church sermons on Sunday. (Strazar)

Despite Kalaupapa’s distance from that station, its residents often climbed the pali or came by sea to attend church meetings. (NPS)

The Kalua‘aha Mission Station Report (1836-37) notes, “At Kalaupapa a populous district on the windward side of the island and about thirty miles from the station a school of 160 scholars might be collected immediately were there a teacher to superintend it.”

Hitchcock held a three-day meeting at Kala‘e, on the cliffs above Kalaupapa, in 1838, which was attended by many from the peninsula and the northern valleys. (An out-station of the Kalua‘aha mission was established there around 1840.) In 1839 a Hawai’ian missionary teacher named Kanakaokai was stationed on the peninsula.

Hitchcock noted on a tour of the island in August of that year that a large stone meeting house had been constructed at Kalaupapa with a thatched house for the missionary.

Adjacent to the house was a field where cotton was planted to be used at a missionary spinning and weaving school at Lahaina, Maui. Hitchcock also mentioned that people living in Pelekunu were part of the Kalaupapa congregation. (NPS)

In 1841 the population of Kalaupapa, probably including Waikolu Valley, was about 700 persons, of which 30 were church members. Hitchcock noted that “There are considerable comfortable accommodations for a family there, a large native house walled in – The meeting house is large.” (Kalau‘aha Mission Station Report, 1841)

By 1847 the first Kalaupapa stone meetinghouse had been replaced with a more substantial structure measuring twenty-eight by seventy feet. Also another missionary, the Reverend C. B. Andrews, had been assigned as assistant to Hitchcock on Molokai. (NPS)

“The People at Kalaupapa who have but recently finished a stone house – 60 by 30 feet, are now engaged in collecting funds for a new and more durable one intending to devote the old one to the use of the school.” (Kalau‘ahu Mission Station Report, 1851)

Then, life in the Islands, and the peninsula, changed. In 1865, the Legislative Assembly passed, and King Kamehameha V approved, ‘An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy,’ which set apart land to isolate people believed capable of spreading the disease. (NPS)

On January 6, 1866, the first group of patients including nine men and three women arrived. Of the twelve who arrived on that day, two men and a woman – Kahauliko, Lono and Nahuina – would go on to become founding members of the first church to be established in the settlement. (Keawelai)

During the first year of patients arriving at Kalawao in 1866, church members came together and formed a Congregational church, they named it Siloama, Church of the Healing Spring.

“Thrust out by mankind, these 12 women and 23 men, crying aloud to God, their only refuge, formed a church, the first in the desolation that was Kalawao.”

Despite being hungry, cold, and, at times, neglected, the people of Kalawao worked hard from the very beginning to build their own community, establishing a church the very first year. Siloama Church – the Church of the Healing Spring – gave residents something to cling to, a refuge in God. (HCUCC)

The Protestant patients organized a congregation and saved $125.50 for a church building. Additional funds were donated in Honolulu and lumber shipped to Kalawao. (NPS)

Siloama Protestant Church was the first church to be erected at Kalawao Settlement at Kalaupapa, it was originally constructed and dedicated on October 28, 1871 by the Protestant Congregational Church.

The church was named for the pool of Siloam (the Hebrew word ‘Siloam’ means ‘sent,’ Pool of the Sent.) It was where Jesus told a blind man, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam”. So the man went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:7)

Kana‘ana Hou Church (New Canaan church) was a branch of Siloama’s church; it was built in Kalaupapa in 1878 and enlarged in 1890. In 1881, the congregations of Kalawao and Kalaupapa united as Kanaana Hou. Siloama Church was rebuilt in the 1960s.

Belgium-born Joseph De Veuster arrived in Honolulu on March 19, 1864. There he was ordained a Catholic Priest in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on May 31 and took the name of Damien.

His first calling was on the big island of Hawai‘i, where he spent eight years, serving in Puna, Koala and Hāmākua. He learned of the need for priests to serve the 700 Hansen’s disease victims confined at Kalawao; he arrived on May 10, 1873 (following the Protestants and Mormons to the isolated peninsula.)

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Siloama Protestant Church-DMY-400

Siloama Protestant_Church-HMCS

Siloama Protestant Church, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Kalawao County, HI-LOC

Siloama Protestant Church-HMCS

Siloama Protestant Church-PPWD-11-6-012

Siloama Protestant Church-general view, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Kalawao County, HI-LOC

Siloama Protestant Church-from Southwest, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Kalawao County, HI-LOC

Siloama Protestant Church-facing, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Kalawao County, HI-LOC

Siloama Protestant Church-entrance to alter, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Kalawao County, HI-LOC

Kanaana Hou Calvinist Church, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Kalawao County-LOC

Kalawina Church is the oldest religious, built in 1854-now used as Ranger Station

Siloama Protestant Church plaque

February 7, 2017 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Timeline Tuesday … 1860s

Today’s ‘Timeline Tuesday’ takes us through the 1860s – Queen’s Hospital formed, Hansen’s Disease patients to Kalaupapa and first Japanese contract laborers. We look at what was happening in Hawai‘i during this time period and what else was happening around the rest of the world.

A Comparative Timeline illustrates the events with images and short phrases. This helps us to get a better context on what was happening in Hawai‘i versus the rest of the world. I prepared these a few years ago for a planning project. (Ultimately, they never got used for the project, but I thought they might be on interest to others.)

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Timeline-1860s

August 6, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Jonathan Hawaii Napela

“The moment I entered into the house of this native and saw him and his two friends, I felt convinced that I had met the men for whom I had been looking. The man who owned the house was a judge and a leading man in that section. His name was Jonatana H Napela.”

“His companions’ names were Uaua and Kaleohano. They were all three afterwards baptized and ordained to be Elders, and all are still members of the Church. They were graduates of the high school in the country, fine speakers and reasoners, and were men of standing and influence in the community.”

“Napela was very anxious to know my belief, and wherein our doctrines differed from those taught by the missionaries in their midst I explained to him, so well as I could, our principles, with which he seemed very well satisfied.” (Cannon; Millennial Star, April 10, 1882)

Let’s look back …

Two decades after the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in 1830, Mormonism was introduced to the Hawaiian Islands.

In the fall of 1850, Elder Charles C Rich of the LDS Church Council of the Twelve Apostles called on a company of LDS (Mormon) gold miners working on the American River near Sacramento, California.

The miners had been sent from Utah the previous year on a “gold mission,” an unusual decision in light of the fact that church president Brigham Young was strongly opposed to the Saints running off to California in the pursuit of riches.

Yet he was willing to make an exception, for it was agreed that the Mormon missionaries would bring home to Utah whatever treasure they gleaned. (Woods)

Ten men accepted the call to preach Mormonism in what came to be known as the Sandwich Islands Mission. Embarking from San Francisco on November 12, they landed in Honolulu on December 12, 1850.

Elder George Q Cannon was called to serve in the Sandwich Islands, in October 1849 while fulfilling a unique assignment in California: He was mining for gold; it was not his favorite assignment. “I heartily despised the work of digging gold. … There is no honorable occupation that I would rather not follow than hunting and digging gold.” (Livingston; DeseretNews)

One of the early baptisms was Jonathan Hawai‘i Napela, who is considered by many to be the most influential Hawaiian convert to Mormonism. Descending from the ali‘i, Napela was born September 11, 1813, in Honokōwai on the island of Maui, to his father, Hawai‘iwa‘a‘ole, and his mother, Wikiokalani.

In 1831 at the age of 18, Jonathan began his formal education on Maui among the first group of 43 students to attend the Protestant school called Lahainaluna.

From this academic foundation, Jonathan developed a keen mind and went on to practice law. He later served as a district judge in Wailuku during the years 1848–51.

On August 3, 1843, Jonathan married Kitty Kelii-Kuaaina Richardson (half-Hawaiian and half-Caucasian), who was also from ali‘i blood. From them came one known child, Hattie Panana Kaiwaokalani Napela.

Napela was introduced to the Mormon Church by Cannon (who would later serve as a counselor in the LDS Church First Presidency.) (Woods)

Cannon first came into contact with the influential Hawaiian judge on March 8, 1851. He said Napela was “the most intelligent man I have seen on the Islands.” (and further noted the quotes at the beginning of this summary.) During their island years together, Napela and Cannon enjoyed a warm friendship.

Less than two weeks after their first meeting, Cannon noted, “I was invited by Napela to come and stay with (him.) I having told (him) I wanted to find somebody to learn me Hawaiian and I would him English; he told (me) he wanted (to learn) & to stay with him.” Ten months after their first meeting, Cannon recorded that he baptized Napela on January 5, 1852.

Not only did they learn each other’s language, but Napela, while also learning the principles of Mormonism from Cannon, was able to show Cannon and eventually other Utah missionaries a greater dimension of faith. (Woods)

Napela dedicated himself to building Mormonism in the islands and thus had a great influence in furthering the work in his native homeland. Not only did he collaborate with Cannon on the translation of the Book of Mormon (1852–1853,) Napela also deserves credit for having first suggested the idea of a missionary training center. (Woods)

Then in 1873, tragedy struck the Napela household; his wife Kitty contracted leprosy. She faced confinement on the island of Molokai at the settlement of Kalaupapa. Napela joined her as her kōkua (helper.) (This was the same year that Father Damien volunteered and started to serve at Kalaupapa.)

In the October conference at Laie, the members, reluctant to see him leave, sorrowfully sustained Brother Napela as the branch president of the Kalaupapa branch of the Church. His return to a conference in Laie the following year was his last opportunity to be blessed by a gathering of the Saints in a conference. (Spurrier; LDS)

He returned to Kalaupapa and served the settlement there. Notwithstanding their differences in religiosity and ethnicity, one resident in the Kalaupapa settlement noted that Jonathan and Father Damien “were the best of friends.”

In 1877, a Utah missionary who visited the Saints in this remote peninsula during the time of Jonathan’s spiritual supervision wrote, “At this place we found brother Napela, who is taking care of his wife and presiding over the Saints there; he is full of faith, and is still that good-natured, honorable soul.”

Napela contracted leprosy, and like Damien, literally gave his life to service, dying from Hansen’s disease on August 6, 1879. (Welch) Kitty passed away just over two weeks later from complications related to the same illness. (Woods)

The Hawaiian Studies Center at Brigham Young University Hawai‘i is named after Napela. In 2010, the Roman Catholic Church presented the Polynesian Cultural Center with a certificate commemorating Napelaʻs cooperation with Saint Damien. (NPS)

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Jonathan_Napela,_1869,_photograph_taken_by_Charles_R._Savage-WC

Jonathan Napela and Elder George Q. Cannon Statue-BYUH

Kitty_Keliikuaaina_Richardson_Napela-WC

George Q Cannon-Woods

Edward_Clifford_–_Damien_in_1888

Bishop Silva presented PCC (LDS) a Certificate of Appreciation on May 7, 2010 for Napela’s cooperation

August 4, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Henry P Baldwin Home for Boys and Helpless Men

In 1879, Father Damien established a home at Kalawao for boys and elderly men. In 1886, Father Damien had some twenty or thirty of the patients in a little cluster of shanties and cabins scattered around his house.

Ira Barnes Dutton read about the work of Father Damien and he sought to help Damien on Molokai – “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)

Father Damien’s home for boys at Kalawao had always been one of the most important facilities at the settlement and a project very dear to his heart. After Brother Dutton’s arrival, most of the work of the home fell to him, which consisted of providing leadership and discipline, medical treatment, and food and clothing.

“In 1887 (the Home) began to spread, and we built two houses of considerable size. This enlargement was sufficient as to capacity up to 1890 – in fact, we had to do with it until May, 1894. … It also housed some women and girls.” (Dutton)

On January 1, 1889, the Damien Home was accepted as an official reality by the Board of Health and operated as a home under the management of Father Damien.

After Damien’s death (April 15, 1889,) the Board of Health placed Mother Marianne in charge of the home, and provided a horse and carriage for the sisters to use in traveling between Kalaupapa and Kalawao. (Mother Marianne and the Sisters were operating the Charles R Bishop Home for Unprotected Leper Girls and Women that was constructed in 1888 at Kalaupapa.)

On May 22, 1889, Sisters Crescentia and Irene arrived at Kalaupapa from Kaka‘ako to help at the Boys’ Home. While the sisters generally supervised the domestic operations, such as sewing and housekeeping, Dutton was expected to be disciplinarian and leader.

He, however, concentrated mostly on keeping the accounts, attending to correspondence and general business affairs, handling the sore dressing, and attending the sick at the home and in the Kalawao hospital.

(Most of Brother Dutton’s work, however, would eventually revolve around the Baldwin Home for Boys, an enlargement of Father Damien’s Boys’ Home, and it was there that he probably made his most valuable and lasting contribution. (Greene, NPS))

By 1899, one of the chief features of Kalawao was the garden attached to the home – a banana plantation with several acres of vegetables. Vegetation at the home became quite lush through the years.

In his memoirs, Dutton described bushy masses of countless Croton plants – actually small trees – back of the garden and all around the sides. The variegated foliage gave the home the appearance of being set in a big, red bouquet.

By late spring 1890, the first official Home for Boys at Kalawao was completed. On May 15, Sister Crescentia (Directress), Sister Renata, and Sister Vincent moved into the new Convent of Our Lady of Mercy at Kalawao and assumed charge of the home.

Its purpose, decided upon in discussions among William O Smith, president of the Board of Health, Brother Dutton, and Baldwin, was to assist the men of the colony, make them comfortable, provide some recreation, and generally help them make the most out of their lives.

In 1892, funds were given to the board by Henry P Baldwin, Protestant sugar planter, financier and philanthropist of missionary stock, for the erection of four separate buildings to comprise the Baldwin Home for Leprous Boys and Men at Kalawao.

The new home was occupied during the first week of May 1894. The complex consisted of twenty-nine separate structures, most new, but some moved across the street from the grounds of St. Philomena.

In the dormitories the smaller boys were at the lower end on the right side in front of the tailor shop. Advancing up the hill, the residents increased in age and size to the recreation hall. On the other side were full grown men, gradually increasing in age so that the two lower dormitories housed the old and helpless.

From there they were moved to the house for the dead, near the church, just below the singing house. Below the two dorms for old and helpless patients was the office, containing the stock of drugs and a storage room for drugs, surplus small materials, and tools, opening into the shoe shop, saddle room, and Dutton’s bathroom.

The bathhouse and sore dressing rooms connected with the office by ten-foot-wide verandahs. The verandahs, with long benches lining the sides, were used for playing games and musical instruments and for perusing magazines and books.

Under one roof were the poi house, boiler house, beef room, pantry, and banana room. Nearby were a dining room, kitchen, woodshed and coal room, a lime and cement room, and a slop house. The storage house, for provisions and housekeeping articles, fronted on the road.

While the institution was primarily for the housing and care of boys, regulations were passed later by the Board of Health which permitted the entrance, when room was available, of older patients who desired to live there, although only males were allowed.

The Baldwin Home was to be a retreat at all times open to leprous boys and to men who, through the progress of the disease or some other cause, had become helpless.

All boys arriving at the settlement under the age of eighteen, unless in the care of their parents or guardians or near relatives who would watch over them, were to enter the home until reaching eighteen, when they could leave with permission of the superintendent.

The patients were given clothing, food, care, and medical attention, and in return were expected to work about the establishment.

By the time the home was finished, the general movement of people toward Kalaupapa had already begun. This was a slow process, actually beginning in the 1880s.

Because of the disciplinary problems involved in running a home full of active boys, it was decided that a group of strong Christian men should be put in charge.

On December 1, 1895, the Catholic sisters were relieved of duty at the home by the arrival of four Sacred Hearts brothers, who were placed under the direction of Brother Dutton. (Greene, NPS)

According to Dutton, it was not until 1902 that all the patients at Kalawao, except for those in the Baldwin Home, had moved to the other side of the peninsula. As originally built and expanded upon, the home consisted of forty-five buildings, mostly dormitories.

Buildings in the complex by the early 1930s numbered about fifty-five, including small structures such as the ash and oil houses. The brothers’ house (formerly lived in by the Catholic sisters) was the best constructed, with a fine yard in front, on the road nearly opposite the singing house (fashioned from Damien’s old two-story house).

In 1932, the ice plant and airport at Kalaupapa were completed and a new hospital opened. The old Kalaupapa general hospital was converted to the new Baldwin Home, after the old home at Kalawao burned down.

This completed the transfer of patients to the Kalaupapa side of the peninsula. In 1950, the Baldwin Home for Men and Boys merged with the Bay View Home. (Bay View Home, first established in 1901, served as a group home for older, disabled, and blind residents. Patients at Bay View shared meals in a central dining room, and received round-the-clock nursing care.)

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Baldwin Home & St. Philomena Church

Baldwin Home Kalawao

Damien at the Boys’ Home

Baldwin Home-Molokai-eBay

Baldwin Home-Kalawao-NIH

Baldwin Home Kitchen Ruins, West of St. Philomena Church-LOC

Baldwin Home Kitchen Ruins, West of St. Philomena Church-Kalawao-LOC

Rock Crusher, At ruins of Baldwin Home For Boys,Molokai-LOC

April 15, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Kamiano

The history of the Christian missionary movement that got underway in the nineteenth century and lasted well into the twentieth characterized the whole of Western Christianity at the time – Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant.

The missionary movement was part of the large-scale religious revival that followed the 18th-century Enlightenment thinking and the bloody French Revolution.

Joseph De Veuster was born in Tremeloo, Belgium, in 1840. Like his older brother Pamphile, Joseph studied to be a Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts.

Pamphile was to serve as a missionary in the far distant ‘Sandwich Islands,’ but when it came time for him to depart he was too ill to go. His brother Joseph went in his place. (NPS)

Joseph arrived in the Islands on March 9, 1864; he had the remainder of the schooling at Sacred Hearts Father’s College of Ahuimanu, founded by the Catholic mission on the Windward side of Oʻahu in 1846.

“The college and the schools are doing well. But as the number of pupils is continually on the increase, it has become necessary to enlarge the college. First we have added a story and a top floor with an attic; then we have been obliged to construct a new building. And yet we are lacking room.” (Yzendoorn)

Bishop Maigret ordained Father Damien de Veuster at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, on May 21, 1864. “Here I am a priest, dear parents, here I am a missionary in a corrupt, heretical, idolatrous country. How great my obligations are! How great my apostolic zeal must be!” (Damien to parents; Daws)

Early in June, 1864, Maigret appointed Damien to Puna on the east coast of the island of Hawai‘i; another new missionary, Clement Evrard, was appointed to Kohala-Hāmākua.

Damien learned the Hawaiian language (he had just previously learned English during his long journey to Hawai‘i. His Hawaiian was far from perfect, but he could manage to get by with it. Damien’s name became ‘Kamiano.’

Like most Catholic missionaries of that time, he saw his mission in intense competition with that of the Protestant ‘heretics,’ who did not kneel while praying and who distributed the local kalo (taro,) instead of bread for communion and even water instead of wine. (de Volder)

Shortly after arriving in Puna, in a letter to Pamphile, Damien wrote, “I regret not being a poet or a good writer so as to describe our new country to you.” Although he had not yet seen the active Kilauea volcano erupting, he added, “from what the other Fathers say it seems there is nothing like it in the world to give a correct idea of Hell.” (Daws)

A few months in Puna taught Damien at first-hand what he had heard in advance from the Maui missionaries: that life in the field was nothing like life as a novice in the religious order in Europe.

“Instead of a tranquil and withdrawn life, it is a question of getting used to traveling by land and sea, on horseback and on foot; instead of strictly observing silence, it is necessary to learn to speak several languages with all kinds of people …”

“… instead of being directed you have to direct others; and the hardest of all is to preserve, in the middle of a thousand miseries and vexations, the spirit of meditation and prayer.” (Damien in letter to father-general of the Sacred Hearts, 1862; Daws)

Father Clement Evard, his closest but distant neighbor, had an even more formidable area to cover: the double district of Kohala-Hāmākua, about a quarter of the Island. He was not as strong as Damien.

Damien carried his church on his back (a portable altar which he set up with four sticks pounded into the ground and a board balances on top with a cover cloth.)

His life was simple – with the help of the faithful, Damien began to do some small farming (keeping sheep pigs and chickens; bees for honey and wax for candle making; etc.) “The calabash of poi is always full; there is also meat; water in quantity, coffee and bread sometimes, wine and beer never.” (Daws)

Eight months after they arrived in their respective districts, Damien and Clement discussed exchanging posts; in early 1865, Damien left Puna for Kohala-Hāmākua.

Damien was a considerable builder of chapels. In the months he was in Puna, he and his Hawaiian helpers put up four small buildings where Mass was said; in the eight years he was in Kohala and Hāmākua, he almost always had one or another construction project in hand. (Daws)

Damien stayed in Kohala until 1873; then an impassioned plea appeared in a Hawaiian newspaper: “This we respectfully suggest. The presence of His Majesty (King Lunalilo) at Kalaupapa would have a most inspiring effect upon his unhappy subjects, who are necessarily exiled; and also upon all others throughout the Kingdom, on observing this evidence of a paternal care for the saddest and most hapless outcasts of the land.”

It went on to note, “If a noble Christian priest, preacher or sister should be inspired to go and sacrifice a life to console these poor wretches, that would be a royal soul to shine forever on the throne reared by human love.” (Nuhou, April 15, 1873; Report of Board of Health)

Maigret was aware the lepers needed stable spiritual support, but did not dare to permanently charge a priest to that assignment, fearing it was too much of a risk or too cruel. He asked, Who wanted to go, in rotation to Molokai, each for a period of three months?

Four candidates quickly volunteered: Gulstan Robert, Boniface Schaffer, Rupert Lauter and Damien de Veuster. Damien was chosen as the first to go; the reason for the choice is unknown. (de Volder)

At thirty-three years of age, he was as old as Jesus at the time of his passion. Damien was ready, more than ever. “Lord, send me!” (de Volder)

Damien spent the rest of his life in Hawaiʻi; he was diagnosed with Hansen’s Disease in January, 1885. He died April 15, 1889 (aged 49) at Kalaupapa. In 2009, Damien was canonized a Saint in the Catholic Church. The image is a portrait of Father Damien, attributed to Edward Clifford. (1868)

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‘Portrait_of_Father_Damien’,_attributed_to_Edward_Clifford-1868

Church of Waiapuka Kohala built by Father Damien