January is Kalaupapa Month

For more than 100 years, starting in 1866 through 1969, more than 8,000 patients diagnosed with leprosy (also known as Hansen's Disease) were forcibly exiled to the Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokaʻi. Roughly 90% of these patients were Native Hawaiian, with ages ranging from 4 years through 105.

The first 12 patients were isolated and confined to Kalaupapa on January 6, 1866, following the passage of an act by Hawaiʻi's legislative assembly and approval by King Kamehameha V. The act gave Hawaiʻi's Board of Health the authority to establish a settlement for people believed capable of spreading the disease. Under the act, law enforcement was permitted to arrest people suspected of having leprosy; the Board of Health could seize patient property to cover the expenses of confinement; and some patients were forced work to maintain the Kalaupapa settlement.

Most patients were too ill to work. Reports of insufficient housing, lacking supplies, and deplorable conditions spread. Native Hawaiian families that had inhabited the peninsula for over 900 years helped tend to the ill. These families, too, were forced to evict their land in the 1890s, following a crackdown on spread of the disease. 

Conditions improved under the Kalākaua monarchy, and with the arrival of Father Damien, a Belgian priest widely regarded as Kalaupapa's greatest caregiver (alongside Mother Marianne Cope). Damien built churches and homes, cared for the ill, and remained in the colony until his death from leprosy at the age of 49 (he was canonized in 2009, and Cope in 2012). 

Isolation laws in Hawaʻiʻi expanded amid the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The territory of Hawaiʻi instituted a policy of separating children born at Kalaupapa from their parents. Children were placed with relatives or in orphanages, never to reunite with family.

But this period also saw an expansion of infrastructure and development, leading Kalaupapa to establish bustling economies. The settlement saw its first fish market, poi factory, steam laundry, butcher shop, and communication with the outside world (via newspaper). It was home to glee clubs, athletic programs, and debate societies. In fact, 700 people from Kalaupapa signed the Kuʻē petition following the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani. New treatment helmed by Alice Ball (the first woman and first African American to receive a master's degree from the College of Hawaiʻi) in the 1920s gave hope of eradication. New therapies following World War II meant Hansen's Disease patients were no longer contagious and there was no further need for isolation (forced quarantine ended in 1969).

Kalaupapa was designated a national historic park in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter, and it is currently managed by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Nine of Kalaupapa's former patients are living today, four choose to reside in the settlement still. Families hope to dedicate a Kalaupapa memorial in 2025 on the grounds of the Baldwin Home for Boys facility (originally Kalaupapa's general hospital).

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