Hawaii News Now - KGMB and KHNL HomeSpirit of Kalaupapa: Part I

Spirit of Kalaupapa: Part I

This was the face of leprosy in Hawaii. And this was the place that became a prison for the sick beginning in 1866.

State administrator Mike McCarten says of Kalaupapa, "Well once it was a place of horror, of great fear." There was no cure, only isolation on a lonely shelf of land locked in by sea cliffs.

"Early patients were sent here to die, there's no tactful way to say that."

Today the peninsula is peaceful, the suffering over. Powerful drugs cure the sickness now known as Hansen's Disease. And no one is forced to live here with some 8,000 graves. But 43 patients, all over 60 years old, choose to stay.

Patients like Kuulei, who breaks into song at the drop of a letter. She runs the Kalaupapa post office and she'll tell you why she's loyal to a place that she once feared.

"Because this is home and I don't have to be accountable to anyone. I don't have to explain about me," says Kuulei Bell.

And others want to share their feelings. Patients like Henry, he's known as the historian of Kalaupapa and he loved the place from the minute he saw the mountains.

"I had a different kind of freedom. I had a freedom to grow up on my own. I had a freedom to do what I wanted to do," says Henry Nalaielua.

Patients like Makia, a part-time resident, known as the storyteller. He lost his fingers and his sight to the disease, but not his spirit.

Makia Malo says, "I learned how to be alone and not lonely. that was a big lesson for me."

Patients like Katherine. She rediscovered Kalaupapa after years in Honolulu.

She says, "It's a special place here. It's something you cannot find on the outside."

It's not that they don't have memories of loss and unbearable sadness.

Kuulei says, "You have a child and then the child is taken away from you. You cannot touch your own child."

Memories of tears when the sickness claims a child.

"Both my parents were home crying and I had no idea why they were crying. They knew what I had," says Henry.

Whatever the memories, they've come to treasure them and share them. Their faces are now the faces of Kalaupapa and their words the last chapter.

"Wherever I go, I take Kalaupapa with me. I am the essence of Kalaupapa," says Makia.