Kalawao | Page 3 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

March 1, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hawai‘i’s 5th County

Kalawao, encompassing the Kalaupapa Peninsula (also known as the Makanalua Peninsula,) is midway along the North Shore of Molokai.

Archaeological evidence suggests the earliest settlers in the peninsula probably lived in the Waikolu Valley in the A.D. 1100-1550 timeframe. At that time, people had been living in the windward Hālawa Valley for hundreds of years.

The Kalaupapa Peninsula, however, was probably not occupied until slightly later, perhaps around 1300-1400 A.D.

On the peninsula where it is dry and there are no permanent streams, people built field walls to protect crops like sweet potato (‘uala) from the northeast tradewinds. The remnant field walls can be seen from the air as one arrives at Kalaupapa Airport.

In wetter areas near the base of the cliffs, people built garden terraces. True pond field agriculture may have only been practiced in the Waikolu Valley or at the mouth of the Waihanau Valley.

The first peoples of Kalaupapa also collected marine resources along the shore, the reef, and offshore except when strong winter storms prevented it. People visited other parts of the island both by canoe and by trail over the cliffs.

In 1905, the Territorial Legislature passed a law that formed the basis of modern government in Hawaii, the County Act, forming local County governance.

While we easily recognize the four main Counties in Hawai‘i: Kauai, O‘ahu, Maui and Hawai‘i; we often overlook the County of Kalawao, Hawai‘i’s 5th County (encompassing the Kalaupapa Peninsula and surrounding land.)

The four main Counties are governed by elected County Councils. Kalawao is under the jurisdiction of the state’s Health Department; the director of Health serves as the Kalawao County ‘Mayor.’

State law, (HRS §326-34) states that the county of Kalawao consists of that portion of the island of Molokai known as Kalaupapa, Kalawao and Waikolu, and commonly known or designated as the Kalaupapa Settlement, and is not a portion of the County of Maui, but is constituted a county by itself.

This area was set aside very early on as a colony for sufferers of Hansen’s disease (leprosy.) The isolation law was enacted by King Kamehameha V; at its peak, about 1,200 men, women and children were in exile at Kalaupapa.

The first group of Hansen’s disease patients was sent to Kalawao on the eastern, or windward, side of the Kalaupapa peninsula on January 6, 1866.

The forced isolation of people from Hawaiʻi afflicted with Hansen’s disease to the remote Kalaupapa peninsula lasted from 1866 until 1969. This is where Saint Damien and Saint Marianne spent many years caring for the lepers.

On January 7, 1976, the “Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement” was designated a National Historic Landmark to include 15,645 acres of land and waters.

On April 1, 2004, the NPS renewed its cooperative agreement with the State of Hawai‘i, Department of Health for an additional twenty years, entitled “Preservation of Historic Structures, Kalaupapa.” The NPS is maintaining utilities, roads and non-medical patient functions and maintenance of historic structures within the park.

Access to Kalaupapa is severely limited. There are no roads to the peninsula from “topside” Molokaʻi. Land access is via a steep trail on the pali (sea cliff) that is approximately three miles long with 26 switchbacks.

Air taxi service by commuter class aircraft provides the main access to Kalaupapa, arriving and departing two to four times a day, weather permitting.

Mail, freight, and perishable food, arrive by cargo plane on a daily basis. The barge brings cargo from Honolulu to Kalaupapa once a year, during the summer months when the sea is relatively calm.

While at DLNR, I had the opportunity to visit Kalaupapa on two occasions: once on a visit to the peninsula to review some of its historic buildings, the other as part of a planning retreat/discussion with the National Park Service.

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Kalawao,_Molokai,_(WC-Starr)

Beginnings of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony

Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Molokai

Kalaupapa, Molokai-Bertram

Kalaupapa Molokai-Bertram

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

Kalawao-Kalaupapa

Edward_Clifford-E2-80-93View_of_the_Kalaupapa_Settlement-1880s

Charles R Bishop Home for Unprotected Girls and Women-Kalaupapa, Molokai-1900

Sisters (Mother Marianne center) and patients at the Bishop Home in Kalaupapa

Kalaupapa home for unprotected girls

Father_Damien_the year he went to Kalaupapa-in_1873

Mother_Marianne_Cope,_Kalaupapa,_1899

January 10, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

John Emil Van Lil

“In September, 1865, the spit of land on the northern or windward side of the island of Molokai was chosen as a suitable site for the establishment of a settlement for the segregation of lepers.”

“The site is probably one of the most suitable and isolated that could have been chosen for such a purpose. It is surrounded on the north, east, and west by the sea, and the base or southern side is placed beneath a steep pali or precipice from 1,800 to 2,000 feet high, which discourages communication with the rest of the island.”

“The first settlement was at Kalawao, on the eastern side of the spit of land. It lies close to the mountains at the rear and is much exposed to the northeast trade winds.”

“Kalaupapa, the more recent and larger settlement, is situated on the plain to the westward, is further removed from the steep cliffs, and is somewhat protected from northeast winds by the crater of Kahukoo.”

“When the board of health first opened the settlement, and for many years afterwards, much difficulty was experienced from the presence of persons who owned parcels of land in this tract and who were called Kamainas or old settlers. They were not subject to the laws governing lepers, and were free to come and go from the settlement at will.”

“The Hawaiian government has secured the property owned by those Kamainas, and they have been removed from the settlement. Molokai is probably the most complete settlement of its kind in the world.”

“It has hospitals, churches, homes for leprous children, male and female, stores, market dispensaries, cottages for leper residents, jail, storehouses, etc. The majority of the lepers live in cottages built by themselves or by the government, and in the settlement there is a total of all buildings of 716.” (Carmichael, Leprosy in the US, December 30, 1898)

“At a distance Kalaupapa looks like a prosperous little town, and in anticipation of the visit of the board of health a large number of the habitants had gathered at the landing place, some on foot and many mounted on horses.”

“Some difficulty was experienced in landing, which was done by open boat, there being no docks or wharves, as there was a strong northerly swell and the surf was somewhat dangerous. In the hands of natives skilled in surfboating this was soon accomplished without accident, and the entire party landed.”

“Here were seen the different churches, Protestant, Catholic, and Mormon, including that built by Father Damien, and the grave of this leper martyr by the church side. The Baldwin Home for leprous boys was then visited, and the hospitals and cottages for the accommodation of lepers in various stages of the disease.” (Carmichael, Public Health Reports, December 30, 1898)

American Protestant missionary H Harvey 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.

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.

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.

Another Belgian, John Emil Van Lil, son of John Francis Van Lil and Marie Teresa, came to the peninsula near the turn of the century. He was a lay Catholic brother assisted at the Baldwin Home.

He later was in “charge of all (animal) stock. Mr. Van Lil is a practical farmer, and enthusiastic in his work and I feel that our dairy and farm matters are in good hands.” (Report of the Superintendent of the Leper Settlement, BOH Annual Report, 1903)

“(A) hog ranch (had previously been started) with one boar and ten sows. We have now over one hundred pigs. but through lack of food am unable to go ahead as fast as we might. As the pork is to be issued to the people in lieu of beef, I do not believe it would be a paying proposition to purchase food from the outside.”

“We have cleared about six acres of land in one of the sheltered valleys and planted four thousand papaia trees; about 50 per cent. of which are coming along nicely.”

“We have also planted about two acres in pumpkins which are also doing well. As papaias and pumpkins make good hog feed combined with the cooked offal from the slaughter house. it is only a question of time until we will have sufficient food for all the hogs we can raise.” (Report of the Superintendent of the Leper Settlement, BOH Annual Report, 1903)

“The general health conditions of the Settlement have been excellent … and I here with wish to express my appreciation to Superintendent McVeigh for his foresight in establishing and maintaining this dairy …”

“… as well as to Mr. Emil Van Lil for his able management of the same; not one of the numerous daily milk orders issued having been dishonored, although some 56 gallons of milk are requisitioned daily.” (Board of Health Annual Report, 1906)

A patient from Lahaina, Elizabeth Kaehukai (Baker) Napoleon, had “married Walter U(w)aia Napoleon on April 26, 1890 and they had 12 children together. Seventeen years later, she and Uaia divorced on Dec. 27, 1907.”

“The divorce decree states, ‘On 11 Nov. 1907, Uaia, without just cause or provocation, turned Elizabeth out of his house, and refused to allow her to re-enter their house. Uaia utterly failed, neglected and refused to provide Elizabeth lodging, clothing, food and other necessities. Uaia also refused to allow their children to see or talk with her.’”

“It is likely that Uaia suspected Elizabeth had early signs of leprosy and this is why he kicked her out of the house. By court order, Elizabeth was allowed visits with her children on Saturdays and Monday from 9 am to 7 pm. On Sept. 22, 1911, she was taken in for suspicion of leprosy. She was sent to Kalaupapa on April 9, 1912.” (NPS)

There, she met and married (October 12, 1914) Van Lil at Kalawao. “Six months later, Van Lil was examined on April 10, 1915 and found to have leprosy. He was 59 years old.” (NPS)

“The huge Belgian dairyman, good Van Lil, of old memory, now a patient, had married another, and the pair lived happily in a vine-hidden cottage near Kalawao, making the most of their remaining time on earth.”

“Beyond a fleeting embarrassment in his vague blue eye, he met us on the Damien Road with the undimmed buoyancy of other years, and our eyes could see no blemish on his face. Probably we were more affected than he, for in the main the victim of leprosy is as optimistic as he of the White Plague.”

“And Emil Van Lil was not the only one whom we saw who had perforce changed his status toward society in the intervening eight years. The little mail-carrier who had led us up out of the Settlement, we found in the Bay View Home, cheerful as of yore, although far gone with the malefic blight.”

“And, auwe! some of the men and women we had known here before as extreme cases still lingered, sightless perhaps, but trying to smile with what was left of their contorted visages, in recognition of our voices.”

“Others, whose closing throats had smothered them, breathed through silver tubes in their windpipes. Strange is this will to persist tenacity of life!” (Charmian London )wife of Jack London), 1917)

“Van Lil died four years after Elizabeth on May 2, 1925. He does not have a marked grave.” (NPS)

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John Emil Van Lil

Kalaupapa Molokai-Bertram

Kalaupapa Dairy-Van Lil in white-NPS

Kalaupapa Dairy-Van Lil center-NPS

Catholic Mission_Church-Bertram

Kalaupapa, Molokai-Bertram

Catholic Mission Church-Bertram

St. Philomena’s Church-Bertram

St. Philomena Church-Bertram

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)

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)

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 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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