A Dwindling Kalaupapa Population Honors 1st Exiles With Tributes And Tears 0 Despite the painful history, many former Hansen’s disease patients have chosen to remain even after the government freed them from quarantine.
Gathered in the corrosive salt air at the Kalaupapa pier, a dozen people listened to a moving Hawaiian language reading of the royal government edict that criminalized Hansen’s disease and outcast those afflicted by it to Hawaii’s leprosy colony.
Former Hansen’s disease patient Meli Watanuki, 88, wiped her eyes with a tissue pulled from the pocket of her puffer vest.
“This is a celebration of our people who are buried here,” she said Friday. “It reminds me of my husband who is buried here, too. I remember all my friends.”
The solemn ceremony marked the anniversary of the arrival of the first dozen patients on Jan. 6, 1866 under a measure to protect the rest of society from a then-little understood and incurable infectious disease.
