March 2, 2016 • 27 mins
When Hansen's disease was introduced to Hawaii, businessmen, especially from the U.S., were having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government. That influence directly affected how Hawaii handled the disease.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by squar Space. Start
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Squarespace Build it Beautiful. Welcome to Stuff you missed in
History Class from house works dot com. Hello, and welcome
(00:23):
to the podcast. Countracy P. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
It has been quite a while since Hawaiian history made
an appearance on our podcast. Back Into Katie and Sarah
covered up the long arc of Hawaii's history from its
unification under kamehameh had a Great which was completed in
eighteen ten, to the overthrow of its last monarch, Lily
(00:44):
Ulu Kalani, which was only eighty three years later, and
that was at the hands of American business interests with
the support of United States troops. Today's episode is connected
to that history, but those two shows from the archive,
while totally we're are worth listening to, you aren't really
required listening to understand what we're talking about today. Sometime
(01:05):
probably in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, leprosy,
which is now known as Hanson's disease, was introduced to Hawaii,
and as this disease was spreading through a population that
had no resistance to it. Businessmen, especially from the United States,
we're having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government. This
(01:25):
influence had a direct effect on how Hawaii approached the
disease and it's spread. We'll start by setting the stage
with some information about Hanson's disease, named for Norwegian scientist
and physician Gerhard Einrich Armer Hanson, who identified its cause.
Hanson's disease is a bacterial infection. Today it's easily treatable
(01:47):
with antibiotics, although treatment usually takes a lot longer than
a course of antibiotics for say, a strip throat. Often,
Hanson's disease is successfully cured after antibiotic treatment that lasts
one to three years, and it stops being contagious after
the first few doses, and it's not highly contagious even
without treatment. For example, prior to the development of antibiotic treatments,
(02:09):
only about five percent of spouses living with patients contracted
the disease, and parts of the world where diagnosis and
treatment are readily available, uh Handson's disease presents itself mostly
as a relatively minor skin condition, albeit one it takes
a really long time for antibiotics to completely cure. But
in places where people don't have easy access to antibiotics
(02:30):
and knowledgeable doctors to prescribe them, hands Handson's disease can
become much more complicated, damaging, disabling, and disfiguring. As it progresses,
Hanson's disease can cause skin growths, blindness, ulcers on the
hands and feet, and softening of the body's cartilage. As
the nerves become damaged, people lose their sense of touch
(02:52):
and can become injured without realizing it. A lot of
the perception that leprosy causes people's fingers or toes to
fall off is really applications from injuries because they did
not realize that they were touching something dangerous. Hanson's disease
progresses very very slowly, though, so it can take years
or even decades for it to reach the point where
people begin to experience its most dramatic and damaging effects.
(03:16):
Somewhat ironically, it's actually easy for Handson's disease to be
overlooked or misdiagnosed in wealthy nations with good health care systems.
This is mostly because it's rare enough that physicians in
a lot of the world don't ever see it in
their daily practice. So when somebody shows up with this
like sore that feels kind of numb, that misdiagnosed it
as other more innocuous things, as was the case with
(03:39):
scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and many of history's other most feared
but now treatable diseases. Before the discovery of antibiotics, leprosy
was regarded much much differently. Before Dr Hanson discovered that
it was caused by bacteria in eighteen seventy three, people
thought leprosy was caused by everything from sinful behavior to curses.
(04:00):
People with the disease were considered unclean, and of course
people recognize that it was contagious. We're not going to
get into all of the various things that humanity tried
while looking for a cure to hands this disease, but
if you're interested, the podcast saw Bones has an episode
on it that will link to in this show notes, however,
that combination of a contagious disease with an unknown cause,
(04:24):
no effective treatment, and terrifying effects when left untreated meant
that for centuries, a lot of societies around the world
treated leprosy through lifelong quarantine of anyone who was believed
to be infected. This was particularly true in Western societies,
in part because, beginning in the medieval period, people started
(04:44):
to interpret biblical instructions to shun and separate people with
a skin condition as being in reference to leprosy. The
root of this was a Hebrew word that really encompassed
multiple conditions, including things that were pretty benign even at
the time, like videlago. Often, the resulting quarantine zones, which
came to be called leprocality. Often the resulting quarantine zones,
(05:09):
which came to be called lepre colonies or leprosaria, were
basically places where people were sent to die out of
the site of the rest of society. There are actually
colonies still in existence today, and because of the deep
stigma that still exists about handsome disease and some handsome
disease in some parts of the world, some of the
people living in them have been completely cured but have
(05:31):
not been allowed to return to society. Hanson's disease was
first diagnosed in Hawaii in eight while Hawaii was still
a constitutional monarchy, and for nearly twenty years after that,
first diagnosis, Hawaii's approach to patients was completely different from
in Europe and North America. A central part of Hawaiian
culture is the idea of ohana, which is a person's
(05:54):
immediate and extended family, including people related by marriage and adoption.
Also important is the idea of the place where a
person was born. So for years, when a person was
diagnosed with leprosy, their family pulled together to take care
of them at home, surrounded by their ohana and in
the place where they were born. The idea that you
should be disgusted by leprosy was so ingrained in Western
(06:18):
culture that the fact that Hawaiians were not disgusted became
caused to stigmatize Hawaiians as a whole. According to Western
thinking at the time, the only normal response to leprosy
was discussed, and the fact that they weren't repulsed meant
that native Hawaiians must be less than civilized. In the
decades after the first diagnosis of leprosy in Hawaii, white
(06:40):
business interests, particularly American business interests, had a bigger and
bigger influence on the Hawaiian government. This influence started decades
before the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown white men established Hawaii's
first Board of Health in In eighteen sixty five, under
pressure from the Board of Health, the King and the
legislative A Lee passed an Act to prevent the spread
(07:02):
of leprosy. This act authorized the government to purchase land
to be used as a leprosarium along with the creation
of a hospital. It authorized the Board of Health to
arrest and confine anyone with leprosy. It basically criminalized leprosy
and sentenced anybody who was deemed to be incurable to
confinement for life. On the island of Molokai E, a
(07:25):
portion of the peninsula of Callao Papa, which at the
time was better known by the name Mcina Luna, was
acquired for the leprosarium. Overwhelmingly the people who were sentenced
to live there under the act were native Hawaiians. That
was of the people exiled within the first twenty years
after the act was passed, and this exile was particularly
(07:46):
harsh punishment for the people who were sent away. Being
sent to the leprosarium cut off a person from their
lohanna and from their place of birth for a little while.
Patients were allowed to be a company to buy a
cocoa or a helper, and that was often a person's
spouse or family member, and that was their only tie
(08:06):
to their ohana after being exiled. Eventually, though, this allowance
was rescinded, so people were sent away by themselves. Being
separated from a person's family in place of birth did
not stop once a person was at Kalaupapa. People exiled
to the peninsula meant married and had children there, as
did spouses who were exiled there together. These children were
(08:30):
removed from their families and placed in adoptive homes, usually
on other islands entirely, and they were often not told
who or where their birth parents were. In the words
of a nineteen thirteen public health report quote, the children
that are born to these unions are at once removed
to clean surroundings and are cared for by the territory
until they've become self supporting. The rest of that report,
(08:51):
by the way, is all about how generous the Hawaiian
government had been to give people this well appointed isolation
in an island paradise, the cry eyeing the notion that
it was a prison, while also blithely talking about how
anyone who escaped from it would be apprehended by police
and returned. So the idea that you would just cut
(09:12):
somebody off from their home and their family and send
them away to be quarantined it is completely antithetical to
Hawaiian cultures, ideals, and values. In fact, the exile was
so disruptive and traumatic that the literal meaning of one
of the terms for leprosy in Hawaiian is the separating sickness.
Another term also translates to Chinese sickness from the belief
(09:32):
that it was introduced by Chinese immigrants. In addition to
the fact that this punishment for having leprosy was particularly
harsh in light of Hawaiian culture, there was also no
real medical care available in the colony from eighteen sixty
five to eighteen seventy three, and the care available from
eighteen seventy three until the eighteen eighties was pretty minimal.
(09:54):
In eighteen nine, one family in particular violently resisted the
effort to remove them to muloch I E. We'll talk
about that after we first paused for a brief word
from one of our sponsors. As we mentioned at the
top of the show, with the help of the United
States military, white businessman overthrew the native Hawaiian monarchy in
eight and one of the acts of Hawaii's new provisional
(10:16):
government was to step up the enforcement of the previous
eighteen sixty five acts to prevent the spread of leprosy.
A small community had been living in Kalalau Valley, Kawaii
uh including several people with leprosy, and it becomes sort
of an unofficial leprosarium populated by patients and their families.
The government knew they were there, but they hadn't done
(10:39):
much to force them to move. Before eighteen however, Attorney
General and President of the Board of Health, William Owen
Smith issued orders for the people of the Khalilau Valley
to be moved to Kalao Papa on June. Sheriff Lewis H.
Stolza was to lead the operation. First, the sheriff visited
(11:01):
Koala Lau and tried to persuade the people living there
to move to Kalau Papa, where, in the words of
the Hawaiian Gazette on July quote, they would be properly
looked after by the government. Several of the people who
were living there did agree to go, but a couple
of them refused. One of them was a man known
as Koolau, whose full name was Paniolo Kaluaillau. Health authorities
(11:27):
had learned that Koolau had contracted leprosy the year prior,
and had told him that he would be relocated to
Kalo Papa. At that point, he moved to Kalala with
his wife and son, who also had leprosy, and said
that he would kill anyone who tried to separate him
from his family. Since the sheriff had gotten all but
two patients to agree to be removed to Kalau Papa,
(11:49):
he left, intending to return later to convince the last holdouts.
Once he left, though, Coolau started trying to convince the
rest of the colony that they should stay where they were.
One reason. He had previously been told that his wife
pi Ilani would accompany him as Cookua, but a deputy
had informed him that this would in fact no longer
(12:10):
be the case. Gradually, co Allow convinced many of the
residents of kallow to stay. When the sheriff returned with
a constable a couple of days later, he was surprised
to find that most of the residents were no longer
willing to come with him. He temporarily deputized some of
some of Kallallaw's healthy residents to serve as guides. Once
he returned with reinforcements to try to remove the entire community.
(12:34):
While he was away, co Allow and several others began
planning to resist the sheriff, and when the sheriff came back,
violence followed. Historical accounts differ significantly on what happened and
how this played out. One newspaper reports that another patient
deliberately lured the sheriff to where co Allow was hiding
in order to kill him, and another reports that the
(12:56):
sheriff was about to kill another patient when co Allow
fire his gun in an effort to protect that man.
Pilani's own account is that Colau had heard that the
sheriff was under orders to kill him if he resisted,
and so he was defending himself. Whatever the details, the
result was that co Allow shot and killed Sheriff stoles A.
The government responded by implementing martial law and mustering a
(13:19):
force of about thirty five armed men to force the
relocation out of the makeshift leprosarium. Once it became clear
how outnumbered and outgunned they were. Colao advised the other
residents of Kalalau to cooperate, but for his own part, he,
his wife, and their son fled. Law enforcement tried to
track them down for days, including firing a cannonate caves
(13:42):
where they were hiding, and at one point Collau seems
to have killed at least two other deputies in self defense.
Colla and his family lived in remote and inaccessible parts
of Kalalau for years, sometimes getting help from other Hawaiians
in the area. Eventually, their son die and Coo Allau
died of his disease as well. After both of their deaths,
(14:04):
Planni left the valley in seven and she composed a
lengthy poem in Hawaiian about her family's story. Allow became
a folk hero and an important figure in Hawaiian culture,
and there's now a play about him as well, called
The Legend of Coollau, which premiered uh and it will
be performed in Sacramento, California, in April of this year.
(14:25):
We're recording in t co Allows Rebellion was really the
thing that drove me to research this and in my
head because it has the folk hero elements and the
resistance of being unjustly exiled. I was not expecting it
(14:45):
to be as sad a story as it actually is.
There's also a Jack London story about this whole thing,
but it is really not accurate, and don't read it
for accuracy for anything but enjoyment. Even that, like, I mean,
(15:06):
you can read it, but no, that like, not only
is its portrayal of what actually happened not accurate, it's
portrayal of people with Hanson's disease is not accurate either.
So even though I got into this episode with the
intent of talking about co Allows rebellion, we would be
remiss if we didn't also talk about one of the
other most famous figures associated with Hanson's disease in Hawaii.
(15:27):
But we will do after one more sponsor break. There
is another famous figure associated with Hanson's disease in Hawaii
for completely different reasons, and that is Father Damien. Father
Damien was born Joseph de Wuster in Belgium in eighteen forty,
and he became a priest in the Congregation of the
Sacred Hearts. Joseph's brother was assigned to missionary work in Hawaii,
(15:50):
but when it came time for him to depart. He
was too sick to go, so Joseph went in his place.
On March nineteenth, eighteen sixty four, Joseph arrived in ham Lulu.
He took the name Damien when he was ordained there
at the end of that month, and he spent several
years in ministry on the island of Hawaii. In eighteen
seventy three, he heard that priests were needed to help
(16:11):
leprosy patients on the klau Papa Peninsula. Father Damien volunteered
to go, and he was the first priest to arrive
at the peninsula in response to this particular call. Three
other priests followed shortly thereafter. There had been other religious
workers and caregivers on the peninsula prior to this point,
but as we noted earlier, eighteen seventy three was really
(16:31):
the first year that there was any real medical care
available there at all. Once he got to the klau
Papa Peninsula, Father Damien became one of the many religious
caregivers who tried to give the Hanson's disease patients exiled
they're a better quality of life. He tried to attend
to both the spiritual and the physical needs of the patients.
In addition to taking care of sick people, bandaging their sores,
(16:54):
and providing comfort and counsel, he helped to build houses
and a water system, and to organize schools and social events.
He also added a wing to his church. About three
years into his time at the Leprosarium, Father Damien was
made the interim superintendent of the colonies, basically the administrator
in charge that followed the death of the previous man
(17:14):
to hold the post. He wound up being removed in
favor of a patient named William Sumners, who was half Hawaiian.
There was also some controversy over a minister that Father
Damien had had had arrested during this time. The minister
alleged that Father Damien's treatment of him had been arbitrary
and that his demeanor in his post of superintendent was overbearing.
(17:35):
Several years after he arrived on the peninsula, Father Damien
contracted Hanson's disease as well. This was due to the
years of hands on care he had provided patients, and
he died on April fifteenth of eighteen eighty nine at
the age of forty nine. He saw his contracting the
same disease as the people he had spent more than
a decade trying to help as the will of God.
(17:56):
They've also been some more practical explanations put forth, which
was the apparently was kind of cavalier about maintaining his
own higi and during a lot of this hands on care.
In six Father Damien's remains were exhumed in return to Belgium.
His body hadn't been returned there upon his death because
travel to and from the Peninsula was so rare. The
(18:17):
remains of his right hand were returned to his original
burial site in Hawaii, and he was canonized as a
saint in the Catholic Church in two thousand nine. Although
Father Damien was definitely one of Hawaii's most famous religious
caregivers at the lepre Sarium, the way his story is
retold today often has some problems. Basically, it's made to
(18:38):
seem like everyone lived in squalor too lazy or ignorant
to care for themselves until Father Damien got there and
started fixing things himself and advocating for better treatment. This
is really not true. Native Hawaiians had been petitioning for
the creation of regional leprosy hospitals since the eighteen sixties,
and the reasons for why the colony on Colo Pop
(19:00):
hadn't become self sufficient prior to Father Damien's arrival really
had nothing to do with ignorance or laziness. A lot
of the first patients mistakenly believed that their exile was temporary,
so they didn't start planting crops that they thought wouldn't
even have matured by the time they got to go home.
Others understood that their sentence was lifelong, but thought that
(19:21):
this was just so unjust that surely it would be
overturned soon, allowing them to leave. Also, the part of
the peninsula that was originally set aside for the Leprosarium
didn't really include that much farmland. The nearby farmland that
did exist was least to healthy farmers or, in some cases,
the king. Once farmland was turned over to the residents
(19:42):
of the Leprosarium, patients started using the fields as a
route to escape, because the way through the cliffs was
less treacherous from there. This led the government to forbid
people from living close to the farmland, which made it
harder for people to actually farm. So there are lots
of reasons of like wishful thinking and miss communication and
resources that all tied together to why Kalo Papa was
(20:05):
not really that self sustaining before Father Damien got there.
So basically, it is clear that Father Damien did very
real and compassionate work in Hawaii, and that in a
lot of ways his work with Hanson's disease patients was
both tireless and selfless, but it is really not accurate
to portray it as though he swooped in and saved
(20:25):
all of these Hawaiians from themselves. From the time of
its establishment, roughly eight thousand people were sentenced to exile
on Kalo Papa. Many of their names are unknown because
of spotty record keeping, and only about a thousand of
them were buried in grave sites that were marked with tombstones.
The peninsula's fourteen different graveyards accommodated burial traditions from numerous
(20:48):
religious faiths, including Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Buddhists, and the Hawaiian religion,
and the engravings that do survive on some of the
tombstones also reflect the languages of the people who were
sentenced to confinement on the peninsula. They include Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese,
and English. Leprosy was finally decriminalized in Hawaii in nineteen
(21:10):
sixty nine. The National Park Service designated the peninsula as
a national park in nineteen eighty. As of May, there
were still sixteen people who had lived lived in the
colony who were still alive, including six who were still
voluntarily living on in the colony itself, and we haven't
really addressed it before, like there were there are people
(21:31):
in parts of the world who were still living in
lepers area who are not permitted to return to society.
But then there are other people who, having lived in
a place for their whole life, feel like it's their
home and don't really want to leave. So there are
lots of different reasons for why people are still living
in Leprosaria when there's not really a medical reason to
keep them keep them quarantined. There's those who are really
(21:53):
passionate debate going on on exactly what to do with
the former Leprosarium site once the six people who were
still lived ing there have passed away. They're basically people.
It's a national park currently, and there are people who
want to make it easier and more accessible for people
to be able to visit the park. There are other
people who feel like an increasing number of tourists would
(22:13):
ruin the rather remote and tranquil atmosphere that exists there now.
So as some Hawaiian history and some medical history all
rolled together. Yeay, yeah, that's how I feel about. As
I mentioned before one of the before one of the breaks,
I really as I was deciding what to talk about today,
(22:35):
I have a I have a fondness for folk heroes,
and often folk heroes stories, while sometimes have have a
tragic end, are often uplifting in their tenor, like they
often come off as an inspirational story, and like Colo
is definitely a heroic figure in Hawaiian uh ho li
(23:00):
in history, in Hawaiian culture. But then all the things
that you have to explain to make sense for why
that is are really upsetting. So uh uh do you
have uh equally upsetting listener mail? And actually is kind
of upsetting, It's not that upsetting. It actually is something
that I had had thought about touching on in a
(23:21):
previous episode and didn't, which I'll explain it just a second.
This is from Micah Mica says Tracy and Holly, I
was so thrilled when I saw an episode about my
hometown of Portland. Excited to listen to your telling on
the Vanport flood. I immediately played it and was seriously
impressed with how well you tied Vanport's creation into Oregon's
racial history. So I must admit, once we arrived in five,
I started to yell at my phone. You didn't spend
(23:43):
any time on the other residents of Vamport. Yes, it
was primarily in historically black city, but it was also
home to many Japanese Americans. After World War Two. When
the war ended in the exclusion zone was lifted from
the West Coast, some of the Japanese American population returned
to the West Coast from their wartime concert traction camps
and temporary homes out east. The niss that returned to
(24:04):
Portland in five didn't have any housing options, and without
businesses or farms to return to you, they had difficulty
finding housing, getting loans, and starting over. A lot ended
up living in Vanport. I do know from stories told
in the Portland Nis community that on the day of
the flood, most of the community was at a memorial
service for the Japanese American soldiers who died in World
(24:24):
War two, which is why only two of the dead
were Japanese. One resource on this is a video interview
with Francis Sumita pulk on Din showed up or digital archive.
Frances family moved to Vamport in nineteen forty five and
lived there during the flood. Then show is an amazing
free online resource for Japanese American history. You really should
check it out. Be amazing to have an episode on
(24:45):
the Japanese interment during World War two. Uh and thanks
for thanks for this awesome episode on Portland history. And
hopefully this didn't come out come off as one of
those annoying you didn't say this thing emails and we're
of a hey, here's some more info on this thing.
Email Mica PS. Fun history fact. Kaiser the shipbuilder also
started an insurance company for his workers and became a
(25:06):
private insured in his company, Kaiser Permanente is still a
major HMO in Oregon. I will add also elsewhere, lots
of places. Uh. So, I am actually really glad to
get this email from Mica because as I was working
on that episode, I had a sentence that was set
(25:27):
was like also many Japanese Americans lived there after World
War Two, and that was based on like the one
sentence in any of my sources that referred to that
at all, And I really wasn't able to find confirmation
of like who moved, There were Japanese Americans segregated by practice,
(25:47):
if not by rule, the way African Americans were. What
was the aftermath of the Japanese American community after the flood,
Like all of these things that we were answering about
the African American communit du Vanport, I couldn't find that
same information about the Japanese community in Vanport. And I
was afraid that mentioning it as one off handed acide,
(26:08):
We're just gonna raise more questions than it would answer.
So that is why I did not get into it.
Um So I was glad. I was glad that Micah
sent more information because of this information I was not
able to find when working on that episode. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast, we are at History Podcasts at how Stuffworks
(26:30):
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slash miss in History and on Twitter at miss in History.
Are tumbler is at miss in history dot tumbler dot com.
We're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss
in history. If you would like to learn more about
what we've talked about today, you can come to our
parent company's website. You can put the word leprosy or
leprosaria into the search bar, and you will find an
(26:52):
article about how these colonies worked and still work because
they still exist in parts of the world. You can
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(27:12):
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Squarespace Build it Beautiful. Welcome to Stuff you missed in
History Class from house works dot com. Hello, and welcome
(00:23):
to the podcast. Countracy P. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
It has been quite a while since Hawaiian history made
an appearance on our podcast. Back Into Katie and Sarah
covered up the long arc of Hawaii's history from its
unification under kamehameh had a Great which was completed in
eighteen ten, to the overthrow of its last monarch, Lily
(00:44):
Ulu Kalani, which was only eighty three years later, and
that was at the hands of American business interests with
the support of United States troops. Today's episode is connected
to that history, but those two shows from the archive,
while totally we're are worth listening to, you aren't really
required listening to understand what we're talking about today. Sometime
(01:05):
probably in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, leprosy,
which is now known as Hanson's disease, was introduced to Hawaii,
and as this disease was spreading through a population that
had no resistance to it. Businessmen, especially from the United States,
we're having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government. This
(01:25):
influence had a direct effect on how Hawaii approached the
disease and it's spread. We'll start by setting the stage
with some information about Hanson's disease, named for Norwegian scientist
and physician Gerhard Einrich Armer Hanson, who identified its cause.
Hanson's disease is a bacterial infection. Today it's easily treatable
(01:47):
with antibiotics, although treatment usually takes a lot longer than
a course of antibiotics for say, a strip throat. Often,
Hanson's disease is successfully cured after antibiotic treatment that lasts
one to three years, and it stops being contagious after
the first few doses, and it's not highly contagious even
without treatment. For example, prior to the development of antibiotic treatments,
(02:09):
only about five percent of spouses living with patients contracted
the disease, and parts of the world where diagnosis and
treatment are readily available, uh Handson's disease presents itself mostly
as a relatively minor skin condition, albeit one it takes
a really long time for antibiotics to completely cure. But
in places where people don't have easy access to antibiotics
(02:30):
and knowledgeable doctors to prescribe them, hands Handson's disease can
become much more complicated, damaging, disabling, and disfiguring. As it progresses,
Hanson's disease can cause skin growths, blindness, ulcers on the
hands and feet, and softening of the body's cartilage. As
the nerves become damaged, people lose their sense of touch
(02:52):
and can become injured without realizing it. A lot of
the perception that leprosy causes people's fingers or toes to
fall off is really applications from injuries because they did
not realize that they were touching something dangerous. Hanson's disease
progresses very very slowly, though, so it can take years
or even decades for it to reach the point where
people begin to experience its most dramatic and damaging effects.
(03:16):
Somewhat ironically, it's actually easy for Handson's disease to be
overlooked or misdiagnosed in wealthy nations with good health care systems.
This is mostly because it's rare enough that physicians in
a lot of the world don't ever see it in
their daily practice. So when somebody shows up with this
like sore that feels kind of numb, that misdiagnosed it
as other more innocuous things, as was the case with
(03:39):
scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and many of history's other most feared
but now treatable diseases. Before the discovery of antibiotics, leprosy
was regarded much much differently. Before Dr Hanson discovered that
it was caused by bacteria in eighteen seventy three, people
thought leprosy was caused by everything from sinful behavior to curses.
(04:00):
People with the disease were considered unclean, and of course
people recognize that it was contagious. We're not going to
get into all of the various things that humanity tried
while looking for a cure to hands this disease, but
if you're interested, the podcast saw Bones has an episode
on it that will link to in this show notes, however,
that combination of a contagious disease with an unknown cause,
(04:24):
no effective treatment, and terrifying effects when left untreated meant
that for centuries, a lot of societies around the world
treated leprosy through lifelong quarantine of anyone who was believed
to be infected. This was particularly true in Western societies,
in part because, beginning in the medieval period, people started
(04:44):
to interpret biblical instructions to shun and separate people with
a skin condition as being in reference to leprosy. The
root of this was a Hebrew word that really encompassed
multiple conditions, including things that were pretty benign even at
the time, like videlago. Often, the resulting quarantine zones, which
came to be called leprocality. Often the resulting quarantine zones,
(05:09):
which came to be called lepre colonies or leprosaria, were
basically places where people were sent to die out of
the site of the rest of society. There are actually
colonies still in existence today, and because of the deep
stigma that still exists about handsome disease and some handsome
disease in some parts of the world, some of the
people living in them have been completely cured but have
(05:31):
not been allowed to return to society. Hanson's disease was
first diagnosed in Hawaii in eight while Hawaii was still
a constitutional monarchy, and for nearly twenty years after that,
first diagnosis, Hawaii's approach to patients was completely different from
in Europe and North America. A central part of Hawaiian
culture is the idea of ohana, which is a person's
(05:54):
immediate and extended family, including people related by marriage and adoption.
Also important is the idea of the place where a
person was born. So for years, when a person was
diagnosed with leprosy, their family pulled together to take care
of them at home, surrounded by their ohana and in
the place where they were born. The idea that you
should be disgusted by leprosy was so ingrained in Western
(06:18):
culture that the fact that Hawaiians were not disgusted became
caused to stigmatize Hawaiians as a whole. According to Western
thinking at the time, the only normal response to leprosy
was discussed, and the fact that they weren't repulsed meant
that native Hawaiians must be less than civilized. In the
decades after the first diagnosis of leprosy in Hawaii, white
(06:40):
business interests, particularly American business interests, had a bigger and
bigger influence on the Hawaiian government. This influence started decades
before the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown white men established Hawaii's
first Board of Health in In eighteen sixty five, under
pressure from the Board of Health, the King and the
legislative A Lee passed an Act to prevent the spread
(07:02):
of leprosy. This act authorized the government to purchase land
to be used as a leprosarium along with the creation
of a hospital. It authorized the Board of Health to
arrest and confine anyone with leprosy. It basically criminalized leprosy
and sentenced anybody who was deemed to be incurable to
confinement for life. On the island of Molokai E, a
(07:25):
portion of the peninsula of Callao Papa, which at the
time was better known by the name Mcina Luna, was
acquired for the leprosarium. Overwhelmingly the people who were sentenced
to live there under the act were native Hawaiians. That
was of the people exiled within the first twenty years
after the act was passed, and this exile was particularly
(07:46):
harsh punishment for the people who were sent away. Being
sent to the leprosarium cut off a person from their
lohanna and from their place of birth for a little while.
Patients were allowed to be a company to buy a
cocoa or a helper, and that was often a person's
spouse or family member, and that was their only tie
(08:06):
to their ohana after being exiled. Eventually, though, this allowance
was rescinded, so people were sent away by themselves. Being
separated from a person's family in place of birth did
not stop once a person was at Kalaupapa. People exiled
to the peninsula meant married and had children there, as
did spouses who were exiled there together. These children were
(08:30):
removed from their families and placed in adoptive homes, usually
on other islands entirely, and they were often not told
who or where their birth parents were. In the words
of a nineteen thirteen public health report quote, the children
that are born to these unions are at once removed
to clean surroundings and are cared for by the territory
until they've become self supporting. The rest of that report,
(08:51):
by the way, is all about how generous the Hawaiian
government had been to give people this well appointed isolation
in an island paradise, the cry eyeing the notion that
it was a prison, while also blithely talking about how
anyone who escaped from it would be apprehended by police
and returned. So the idea that you would just cut
(09:12):
somebody off from their home and their family and send
them away to be quarantined it is completely antithetical to
Hawaiian cultures, ideals, and values. In fact, the exile was
so disruptive and traumatic that the literal meaning of one
of the terms for leprosy in Hawaiian is the separating sickness.
Another term also translates to Chinese sickness from the belief
(09:32):
that it was introduced by Chinese immigrants. In addition to
the fact that this punishment for having leprosy was particularly
harsh in light of Hawaiian culture, there was also no
real medical care available in the colony from eighteen sixty
five to eighteen seventy three, and the care available from
eighteen seventy three until the eighteen eighties was pretty minimal.
(09:54):
In eighteen nine, one family in particular violently resisted the
effort to remove them to muloch I E. We'll talk
about that after we first paused for a brief word
from one of our sponsors. As we mentioned at the
top of the show, with the help of the United
States military, white businessman overthrew the native Hawaiian monarchy in
eight and one of the acts of Hawaii's new provisional
(10:16):
government was to step up the enforcement of the previous
eighteen sixty five acts to prevent the spread of leprosy.
A small community had been living in Kalalau Valley, Kawaii
uh including several people with leprosy, and it becomes sort
of an unofficial leprosarium populated by patients and their families.
The government knew they were there, but they hadn't done
(10:39):
much to force them to move. Before eighteen however, Attorney
General and President of the Board of Health, William Owen
Smith issued orders for the people of the Khalilau Valley
to be moved to Kalao Papa on June. Sheriff Lewis H.
Stolza was to lead the operation. First, the sheriff visited
(11:01):
Koala Lau and tried to persuade the people living there
to move to Kalau Papa, where, in the words of
the Hawaiian Gazette on July quote, they would be properly
looked after by the government. Several of the people who
were living there did agree to go, but a couple
of them refused. One of them was a man known
as Koolau, whose full name was Paniolo Kaluaillau. Health authorities
(11:27):
had learned that Koolau had contracted leprosy the year prior,
and had told him that he would be relocated to
Kalo Papa. At that point, he moved to Kalala with
his wife and son, who also had leprosy, and said
that he would kill anyone who tried to separate him
from his family. Since the sheriff had gotten all but
two patients to agree to be removed to Kalau Papa,
(11:49):
he left, intending to return later to convince the last holdouts.
Once he left, though, Coolau started trying to convince the
rest of the colony that they should stay where they were.
One reason. He had previously been told that his wife
pi Ilani would accompany him as Cookua, but a deputy
had informed him that this would in fact no longer
(12:10):
be the case. Gradually, co Allow convinced many of the
residents of kallow to stay. When the sheriff returned with
a constable a couple of days later, he was surprised
to find that most of the residents were no longer
willing to come with him. He temporarily deputized some of
some of Kallallaw's healthy residents to serve as guides. Once
he returned with reinforcements to try to remove the entire community.
(12:34):
While he was away, co Allow and several others began
planning to resist the sheriff, and when the sheriff came back,
violence followed. Historical accounts differ significantly on what happened and
how this played out. One newspaper reports that another patient
deliberately lured the sheriff to where co Allow was hiding
in order to kill him, and another reports that the
(12:56):
sheriff was about to kill another patient when co Allow
fire his gun in an effort to protect that man.
Pilani's own account is that Colau had heard that the
sheriff was under orders to kill him if he resisted,
and so he was defending himself. Whatever the details, the
result was that co Allow shot and killed Sheriff stoles A.
The government responded by implementing martial law and mustering a
(13:19):
force of about thirty five armed men to force the
relocation out of the makeshift leprosarium. Once it became clear
how outnumbered and outgunned they were. Colao advised the other
residents of Kalalau to cooperate, but for his own part, he,
his wife, and their son fled. Law enforcement tried to
track them down for days, including firing a cannonate caves
(13:42):
where they were hiding, and at one point Collau seems
to have killed at least two other deputies in self defense.
Colla and his family lived in remote and inaccessible parts
of Kalalau for years, sometimes getting help from other Hawaiians
in the area. Eventually, their son die and Coo Allau
died of his disease as well. After both of their deaths,
(14:04):
Planni left the valley in seven and she composed a
lengthy poem in Hawaiian about her family's story. Allow became
a folk hero and an important figure in Hawaiian culture,
and there's now a play about him as well, called
The Legend of Coollau, which premiered uh and it will
be performed in Sacramento, California, in April of this year.
(14:25):
We're recording in t co Allows Rebellion was really the
thing that drove me to research this and in my
head because it has the folk hero elements and the
resistance of being unjustly exiled. I was not expecting it
(14:45):
to be as sad a story as it actually is.
There's also a Jack London story about this whole thing,
but it is really not accurate, and don't read it
for accuracy for anything but enjoyment. Even that, like, I mean,
(15:06):
you can read it, but no, that like, not only
is its portrayal of what actually happened not accurate, it's
portrayal of people with Hanson's disease is not accurate either.
So even though I got into this episode with the
intent of talking about co Allows rebellion, we would be
remiss if we didn't also talk about one of the
other most famous figures associated with Hanson's disease in Hawaii.
(15:27):
But we will do after one more sponsor break. There
is another famous figure associated with Hanson's disease in Hawaii
for completely different reasons, and that is Father Damien. Father
Damien was born Joseph de Wuster in Belgium in eighteen forty,
and he became a priest in the Congregation of the
Sacred Hearts. Joseph's brother was assigned to missionary work in Hawaii,
(15:50):
but when it came time for him to depart. He
was too sick to go, so Joseph went in his place.
On March nineteenth, eighteen sixty four, Joseph arrived in ham Lulu.
He took the name Damien when he was ordained there
at the end of that month, and he spent several
years in ministry on the island of Hawaii. In eighteen
seventy three, he heard that priests were needed to help
(16:11):
leprosy patients on the klau Papa Peninsula. Father Damien volunteered
to go, and he was the first priest to arrive
at the peninsula in response to this particular call. Three
other priests followed shortly thereafter. There had been other religious
workers and caregivers on the peninsula prior to this point,
but as we noted earlier, eighteen seventy three was really
(16:31):
the first year that there was any real medical care
available there at all. Once he got to the klau
Papa Peninsula, Father Damien became one of the many religious
caregivers who tried to give the Hanson's disease patients exiled
they're a better quality of life. He tried to attend
to both the spiritual and the physical needs of the patients.
In addition to taking care of sick people, bandaging their sores,
(16:54):
and providing comfort and counsel, he helped to build houses
and a water system, and to organize schools and social events.
He also added a wing to his church. About three
years into his time at the Leprosarium, Father Damien was
made the interim superintendent of the colonies, basically the administrator
in charge that followed the death of the previous man
(17:14):
to hold the post. He wound up being removed in
favor of a patient named William Sumners, who was half Hawaiian.
There was also some controversy over a minister that Father
Damien had had had arrested during this time. The minister
alleged that Father Damien's treatment of him had been arbitrary
and that his demeanor in his post of superintendent was overbearing.
(17:35):
Several years after he arrived on the peninsula, Father Damien
contracted Hanson's disease as well. This was due to the
years of hands on care he had provided patients, and
he died on April fifteenth of eighteen eighty nine at
the age of forty nine. He saw his contracting the
same disease as the people he had spent more than
a decade trying to help as the will of God.
(17:56):
They've also been some more practical explanations put forth, which
was the apparently was kind of cavalier about maintaining his
own higi and during a lot of this hands on care.
In six Father Damien's remains were exhumed in return to Belgium.
His body hadn't been returned there upon his death because
travel to and from the Peninsula was so rare. The
(18:17):
remains of his right hand were returned to his original
burial site in Hawaii, and he was canonized as a
saint in the Catholic Church in two thousand nine. Although
Father Damien was definitely one of Hawaii's most famous religious
caregivers at the lepre Sarium, the way his story is
retold today often has some problems. Basically, it's made to
(18:38):
seem like everyone lived in squalor too lazy or ignorant
to care for themselves until Father Damien got there and
started fixing things himself and advocating for better treatment. This
is really not true. Native Hawaiians had been petitioning for
the creation of regional leprosy hospitals since the eighteen sixties,
and the reasons for why the colony on Colo Pop
(19:00):
hadn't become self sufficient prior to Father Damien's arrival really
had nothing to do with ignorance or laziness. A lot
of the first patients mistakenly believed that their exile was temporary,
so they didn't start planting crops that they thought wouldn't
even have matured by the time they got to go home.
Others understood that their sentence was lifelong, but thought that
(19:21):
this was just so unjust that surely it would be
overturned soon, allowing them to leave. Also, the part of
the peninsula that was originally set aside for the Leprosarium
didn't really include that much farmland. The nearby farmland that
did exist was least to healthy farmers or, in some cases,
the king. Once farmland was turned over to the residents
(19:42):
of the Leprosarium, patients started using the fields as a
route to escape, because the way through the cliffs was
less treacherous from there. This led the government to forbid
people from living close to the farmland, which made it
harder for people to actually farm. So there are lots
of reasons of like wishful thinking and miss communication and
resources that all tied together to why Kalo Papa was
(20:05):
not really that self sustaining before Father Damien got there.
So basically, it is clear that Father Damien did very
real and compassionate work in Hawaii, and that in a
lot of ways his work with Hanson's disease patients was
both tireless and selfless, but it is really not accurate
to portray it as though he swooped in and saved
(20:25):
all of these Hawaiians from themselves. From the time of
its establishment, roughly eight thousand people were sentenced to exile
on Kalo Papa. Many of their names are unknown because
of spotty record keeping, and only about a thousand of
them were buried in grave sites that were marked with tombstones.
The peninsula's fourteen different graveyards accommodated burial traditions from numerous
(20:48):
religious faiths, including Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Buddhists, and the Hawaiian religion,
and the engravings that do survive on some of the
tombstones also reflect the languages of the people who were
sentenced to confinement on the peninsula. They include Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese,
and English. Leprosy was finally decriminalized in Hawaii in nineteen
(21:10):
sixty nine. The National Park Service designated the peninsula as
a national park in nineteen eighty. As of May, there
were still sixteen people who had lived lived in the
colony who were still alive, including six who were still
voluntarily living on in the colony itself, and we haven't
really addressed it before, like there were there are people
(21:31):
in parts of the world who were still living in
lepers area who are not permitted to return to society.
But then there are other people who, having lived in
a place for their whole life, feel like it's their
home and don't really want to leave. So there are
lots of different reasons for why people are still living
in Leprosaria when there's not really a medical reason to
keep them keep them quarantined. There's those who are really
(21:53):
passionate debate going on on exactly what to do with
the former Leprosarium site once the six people who were
still lived ing there have passed away. They're basically people.
It's a national park currently, and there are people who
want to make it easier and more accessible for people
to be able to visit the park. There are other
people who feel like an increasing number of tourists would
(22:13):
ruin the rather remote and tranquil atmosphere that exists there now.
So as some Hawaiian history and some medical history all
rolled together. Yeay, yeah, that's how I feel about. As
I mentioned before one of the before one of the breaks,
I really as I was deciding what to talk about today,
(22:35):
I have a I have a fondness for folk heroes,
and often folk heroes stories, while sometimes have have a
tragic end, are often uplifting in their tenor, like they
often come off as an inspirational story, and like Colo
is definitely a heroic figure in Hawaiian uh ho li
(23:00):
in history, in Hawaiian culture. But then all the things
that you have to explain to make sense for why
that is are really upsetting. So uh uh do you
have uh equally upsetting listener mail? And actually is kind
of upsetting, It's not that upsetting. It actually is something
that I had had thought about touching on in a
(23:21):
previous episode and didn't, which I'll explain it just a second.
This is from Micah Mica says Tracy and Holly, I
was so thrilled when I saw an episode about my
hometown of Portland. Excited to listen to your telling on
the Vanport flood. I immediately played it and was seriously
impressed with how well you tied Vanport's creation into Oregon's
racial history. So I must admit, once we arrived in five,
I started to yell at my phone. You didn't spend
(23:43):
any time on the other residents of Vamport. Yes, it
was primarily in historically black city, but it was also
home to many Japanese Americans. After World War Two. When
the war ended in the exclusion zone was lifted from
the West Coast, some of the Japanese American population returned
to the West Coast from their wartime concert traction camps
and temporary homes out east. The niss that returned to
(24:04):
Portland in five didn't have any housing options, and without
businesses or farms to return to you, they had difficulty
finding housing, getting loans, and starting over. A lot ended
up living in Vanport. I do know from stories told
in the Portland Nis community that on the day of
the flood, most of the community was at a memorial
service for the Japanese American soldiers who died in World
(24:24):
War two, which is why only two of the dead
were Japanese. One resource on this is a video interview
with Francis Sumita pulk on Din showed up or digital archive.
Frances family moved to Vamport in nineteen forty five and
lived there during the flood. Then show is an amazing
free online resource for Japanese American history. You really should
check it out. Be amazing to have an episode on
(24:45):
the Japanese interment during World War two. Uh and thanks
for thanks for this awesome episode on Portland history. And
hopefully this didn't come out come off as one of
those annoying you didn't say this thing emails and we're
of a hey, here's some more info on this thing.
Email Mica PS. Fun history fact. Kaiser the shipbuilder also
started an insurance company for his workers and became a
(25:06):
private insured in his company, Kaiser Permanente is still a
major HMO in Oregon. I will add also elsewhere, lots
of places. Uh. So, I am actually really glad to
get this email from Mica because as I was working
on that episode, I had a sentence that was set
(25:27):
was like also many Japanese Americans lived there after World
War Two, and that was based on like the one
sentence in any of my sources that referred to that
at all, And I really wasn't able to find confirmation
of like who moved, There were Japanese Americans segregated by practice,
(25:47):
if not by rule, the way African Americans were. What
was the aftermath of the Japanese American community after the flood,
Like all of these things that we were answering about
the African American communit du Vanport, I couldn't find that
same information about the Japanese community in Vanport. And I
was afraid that mentioning it as one off handed acide,
(26:08):
We're just gonna raise more questions than it would answer.
So that is why I did not get into it.
Um So I was glad. I was glad that Micah
sent more information because of this information I was not
able to find when working on that episode. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast, we are at History Podcasts at how Stuffworks
(26:30):
dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com
slash miss in History and on Twitter at miss in History.
Are tumbler is at miss in history dot tumbler dot com.
We're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss
in history. If you would like to learn more about
what we've talked about today, you can come to our
parent company's website. You can put the word leprosy or
leprosaria into the search bar, and you will find an
(26:52):
article about how these colonies worked and still work because
they still exist in parts of the world. You can
also come to our website would is missed in history
dot com. You will find show notes, and you will
find an art five of every episode we've ever done.
You will find various helpful tips about how to contact
us and how to search our archive. Stuff like that,
so we can do all that kind a whole lot
(27:12):
more at how stuff works dot com or missed in
History dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics because it how stuff works dot com
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Tracy Wilson
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