Stuff You Missed in History ClassThis 2016 episode covers the introduction of Hansen's disease to Hawaii, when businessmen, especially from the U.S., were having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government.
Happy Saturday. An upcoming episode of the show is going to talk a bit about the development of the first effective treatment for leprosy also called Hanson's disease to be used in US territory. That work happened in Hawaii in the early twentieth century, and we have a past episode related to the history of Hanson's disease in Hawaii, so to provide a little more context for that upcoming discussion, we are running it as Today's Saturday Classic.
At the end of this classic, we talk about people still living at the formal Lepresarium at Kalaupapa as of twenty sixteen, which was when this episode originally came out, and discussions of what to.
Do with that site.
Efforts are underway to build a memorial there, including legislation granting five million dollars of funding for that which was in twenty twenty two. As of May of twenty twenty four, eight patients from the Klaopapa Registry Worse still living in both Hello Papa and Oahu, and also often traveling in between those two places.
This episode originally came out on March second, twenty sixteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
It has been quite a while since Hawaiian history made an appearance on our podcast. Back in twenty ten, Katie and Sarah covered up the long arc of Hawaii's history from its unification under Kamehameheather Great which was completed in eighteen ten, to the overthrow of its last monarch, Lily Ulukalani, 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, aren't really required listening to understand what we're talking about today. Sometime 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, were having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government. This influence had a direct effect on how Hawaii approached the disease and its spread.
We'll start by setting the stage with some information about Hanson's disease, named for Norwegian scientist and physician Gerhard Heinrich Aermauer Hansen, who identified its cause. Hanson's disease is a bacterial infection. Today, it's easily treatable with antibiotics, although treatment usually takes a lot longer than a course of antibiotics for say, a strep 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, only about five percent of spouses living with patients contracted the disease.
In parts of the world where diagnosis and treatment are readily available, Hanson's disease presents itself mostly as a relatively minor skin condition, albeit one that takes a really long time for antibiotics to completely cure. But in places where people don't have easy access to antibiotics and knowledgeable doctors to prescribe them, Hanson'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 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 complications 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. Somewhat ironically, it's actually easy for Hanson'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, they misdiagnose it as other more innocuous things, as was the case with 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 doctor Hanson discovered that it was caused by bacteria in eighteen seventy three, people thought leprosy was caused by everything from sinful behavior to curses. People with the disease were considered unclean, and of course people recognized 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 Hanson's 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, 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 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 vidalaigo. Often, the resulting quarantine zones, which came to be called leper 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 hanson disease and some Hanson's disease in some parts of the world, some of the people living in them have been completely cured, but have not been allowed to return to society. Hanson's disease was first diagnosed in Hawaii in eighteen forty 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 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 diego ignosed 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 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 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 Assembly passed an act to prevent the spread 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 Molokaii, a portion of the peninsula of Kalaupapa, which at the time was better known by the name Makaina Luna, was acquired for the leprosarium. Overwhelmingly the people who were sentenced to live there under the Act were native Hawaiians. That was ninety seven percent of the people exiled within the first twenty years after the act was passed, and this exile was particularly harsh punishment for the people who were sent away. Being sent to the leprosarium cut off a person from their oahana and from their place of birth for a little while. Patients were allowed to be accompanied by a cocua or a helper, and that was often a person's spouse or family member, and that was their only tie 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 met married and had children there, as did spouses who were exiled there. Together. These children were 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 become self supporting. The rest of that report, by the way, is all about how generous the Hawaiian government had been to give people this well appointed isolation in an island paradise, decrying 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 somebody off from their home and their family and send them away to be quarantined is completely antithetical to Hawaiian culture's 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 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. In eighteen ninety three, one family in particular violently resisted the effort to remove them to Molokai. 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 businessmen overthrew the native Hawaiian monarchy in eighteen ninety three, and one of the acts of Hawaii's new provisional government was to step up the enforcement of the previous eighteen sixty five Act to prevent the spread of leprosy.
A small community had been living in Kolalau Valley, Kawaii, including several people with leprosy, and it had becomes sort of an unofficial lepresarium populated by patients and their families. The government knew they were there, but they hadn't done much to force them to move. Before eighteen ninety three.
However, Attorney General and President of the Board of Health, William Owen Smith issued orders for the people of the Kalalau Valley to be moved to Kalo Papa on June twenty fourth, eighteen ninety three. Sheriff Lewis H. Stolza was to lead the operation.
First, the sheriff visited Kolalao and tried to persuade the people living there to move to Koalaupapa, where, in the words of the Hawaiian Gazette on July fourth, eighteen ninety three, 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 haluai O Koolao. Health authorities had learned that Koolau had contracted leprosy the year prior, and had told him that he would be relocated to Kalaupapa. At that point, he moved to Kolalao 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 Kalaupapa, he left, intending to return later to convince the last holdouts. Once he left, though, Koolao starts to 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 Kokua, but a deputy had informed him that this would in fact no longer be the case.
Gradually, Koolao convinced many of the residents of Kalalau 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 deputies some of Kalalau's healthy residents to serve as guides. Once he returned with reinforcements to try to remove the entire community. While he was away, Coolao 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 Koolau was hiding in order to kill him, and another reports that the show was about to kill another patient when Koolau fired his gun in an effort to protect that man. Pi Ilani's own account is that Colao 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 Koolau shot and killed Sheriff Stolza. The government responded by implementing martial law and mustering a force of about thirty five armed men to force the relocation out of the makeshift lepisarium. Once it became clear how outnumbered and outgunned they were, Coolao advised the other residents of Kolalao 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 cannon at caves where they were hiding, and at one point Coolao seems to have killed at least two other deputies in self defense. Coolao and his family lived in remote and inaccessible parts of Kolalao for years, sometimes getting help from other Huwai in the area. Eventually, their son died and Cooolao died of his disease as well.
After both of their deaths, pi Ilani left the valley in eighteen ninety seven, and she composed a lengthy poem in Hawaiian about her family's story. Coolao 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 Coooliau, which premiered in twenty fourteen, and it will be performed in Sacramento, California, in April of this year. We're recording in twenty sixteen.
Cole Lao's 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 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, you can read it, but no, that like, not only is its portrayal of what actually happened not accurate, its 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 Alaus 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, which 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 Veuster 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 Hawaii, 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 Honolulu. 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 leprosy patients on the kalau 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 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 Hansens disease patients exiled there 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 and providing comfort and council. 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 of basically the administrator in charge that followed the death of the previous man 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 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. 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.
There have also been some more practical explanations put forth, which was that he apparently was kind of cavalier about maintaining his own hygiene during a lot of this hands on care. In nineteen thirty six, Father Damien's remains were exhumed and returned to Belgium. His body hadn't been returned there upon his death because travel to and from the Peninsula was so rare. The remains of his right hand were returned to his original burial site in Hawaii in nineteen ninety five, and he was canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church in two thousand and nine. Although Father Damien was definitely one of Hawaii's most famous religious caregivers at the Leprosarium, the way his story is retold today often has some problems. Basically, it's made to 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 Kalo Papa 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 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 Lepresarium 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 of the Leprosarium, patients started using the fields as a route to escape, because the way through the cliffs was less treacherous from there. 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 miscommunication and resources that all tied together to why Kalo Papa was 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 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 religious faiths, including casae Flix, 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 sixty nine. The National Park Service designated the peninsula as a national park in nineteen eighty.
As of May twenty fifteen, there were still sixteen people who had lived in the colony who were still alive, including six who were still voluntarily living in the colony itself, and we haven't really addressed it before. There are people in parts of the world who were still living in Leprosaria 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 keep them keep them quarantined. There's also a really passionate debate going on on exactly what to do with the former Lepresarium site once the six people who were still living there have passed away. There are 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 ruin the rather remote and tranquil atmosphere that exists there now. So that is some Hawaiian history and some medical history all rolled together.
Yay yay, although a lot of it is said.
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, I have I have a fondness for folk heroes, and often folk heroes stories, while sometimes have a tragic end, are often uplifting in their tenor yeah, like they often come off as an inspirational story, and like Cootelaw is definitely a heroic figure in Hawaiian uh Hawaiian history, in Hawaiian culture. But then all the things that you have to explain to make sense for why that is our really upsetting. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
