Iolan Don Hillbrant spent about three weeks in Hawaii in December, learning about bits of the state’s history, including the story of Father Damien and the island of Molokai.
Now, Hillbrant hopes to share Damien’s story with local churches or other civic organizations.
The history of Molokai, the fifth largest of the Hawaiian islands, is a brutal one, Hillbrant said.
Shortly after British navigator Capt. James Cook arrived in Hawaii in 1778 — thus opening the island to scores of immigrants from the East and West — Hawaii proved fertile ground for disease, because the natives had no such resistance to smallpox, influenza or whooping cough.
One of the most sinister diseases of the time, leprosy, also took hold. It spread so rapidly that King Kamehameha III issued a decree demanding all those afflicted be dispatched to Kalaupapa, a colony on the north edge of Molokai.
Because of the unknown quality and transmission of the disease, fear guided lawmakers’ decisions in establishing the colony, Hillbrant noted.
Leprosy (now known as Hansen’s Disease) was for all practical purposes a death sentence at the time. Sufferers were banished to colonies and no longer allowed a role in civilized societies.
Molokai was home to such a colony for more than century, until the forced quarantine was ended in 1969.
THE PLIGHT Of Molokai’s people grabbed the world’s attention through the efforts of Father Damien, a Belgian priest who made it to Hawaii as a stroke of misfortune.
His brother had originally been scheduled to serve in Hawaii until he became sick shortly before his mission was to begin. Damien petitioned his superiors that he take his brother’s place. He arrived in March 1864 and operated one of Hawaii’s largest parishes for about nine years before volunteering to serve the nearby Molokai colonists.
There, Damien’s eyes were opened to the horrors of leprosy and the agony of those afflicted.
Housing was spartan at best, with most huts easily blown apart in storms. The grotesque smell of rotting flesh was accompanied most frequently with the sounds of constant coughing.
Even worse, the colonists were expeted to till the island’s rich soil, raise cattle and feed themselves with little assistance.
Damien’s mission was to restore a sense of personal worth and dignity for the lepers.
