Atop Kauhakō Crater the ocean views are as endless as the blowing wind. Graveyards dot the landscape everywhere on the peninsula, including here at its highest point. (Click the image for a larger view.) - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

A full gallery of photos from this story may be viewed at http://urltea.com/2r1h

By Lisa Asato | Ka Wai Ola

At Kalaupapa Airport a woman wearing a green mu'umu'u and white flowers in her hair waves from the gate as the plane touches down. She's the wife of kahu Richard Matsushita, and the couple is returning to Honolulu after a monthly visit to provide TLC in service of the United Church of Christ.

As the passengers exit the 11-seat Cessna, a kōkua approaches to help resident Henry Nalaielua, who uses a wheelchair. And in the parking lot, Danny Hashimoto organizes bundles of just-arrived newspapers in the back of his truck for distribution. The kahu describes him as reticent, but ask him about his special skills, like his green thumb, and Hashimoto won't mind sharing some pointers. “Draining a plant is the hardest part,” he says. “You supposed to get hāpu'u but the cheapest one to get is coconut fiber.”

Churches are beautiful and plentiful in Kalaupapa. This is St. Francis Catholic church in the main settlement. (Click the image for a larger view.) - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Kalaupapa in 2008 is nothing like the Kalaupapa of the past, which saw inhumanities like sexual slavery and dumping exiles over the sides of ships and leaving them to swim to shore. But reminders of its dual legacy of hope and death lie scattered throughout its landscape, where those afflicted with Hansen's disease were banished from 1866 until the quarantine was lifted in 1969. The disease was treatable by the late 1940s.

“The cemeteries are the heritage,” says Kalaupapa's resident doctor Kalani Brady, who is part of a trio of doctors from the University of Hawai'i School of Medicine Department of Native Hawaiian Health who tend to the patients. “Eight thousand people came through. Olivia Breitha, one of the most famous, is right here,” he says, stopping at one of three cemeteries along the short drive from the airport to Kalaupapa town. “Every Monday we had lunch, and if I didn't go to lunch with Olivia, I was in big trouble.”

Kalaupapa kauka (doctor) Kalani Brady at the mouth of Old Woman's Cave, a former look-out site from where kūpuna wahine would stand sentinel against attackers rounding the faraway Hālawa Valley coast by canoe. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Hansen's disease is not highly contagious — only 5 percent of the population is susceptible, Brady says. But among the groups with a genetic predisposition to it are Hawaiians and Chinese. An early term for the disease was “ma'i Pake,” or Chinese sickness.

Kalaupapa is now a National Historic Park and home to about 150 people, mostly state Health Department and National Park Service employees. More importantly, it is also home to about 20 patients, who are free to leave, but who choose to stay.

“Being here, it's a home for me,” says Ivy Kāhilihiwa, who came to Kalaupapa in 1956 when she was 20. “If Kalaupapa ever closes, and we have to get out then we have no choice. But this is my home. I been here now many years working with everybody, nonpatients and patients. This is my life.”

Kahu Richard Matsushita waits at Kalaupapa Airport for a flight to Honolulu following his monthly visit to provide TLC in service of the United Church of Christ. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

That's not to say that things are perfect in Kalaupapa, she says. “We get problems here. We come out, and we all solve the problems,” and things get better, says Kāhilihiwa, who has been married three times and whose three children were taken from her after birth and sent to be raised outside Kalaupapa as a matter of policy. “I have one daughter living in California. I saw her when she was one young baby. Two years old at the time and after that I didn't see her,” she says. “She's in the mainland now. (My brother-in-law) adopted her. I didn't want that but all of us here and even at Hale Mōhalu, those days when women have babies, we cannot handle the babies. That time. Cannot.” Hale Mōhalu was a Pearl City hospital for Hansen's patients, now at Lē'ahi Hospital near Diamond Head.

Visible from the airport, and atop Kauhakō Crater stands a 40-foot-tall white cross, erected by the Lions Club in 1956 with the placard “Love never faileth.”

Father Damien brought love to the settlement in 1873, imposing civility and order to Kalawao, Kalaupapa's predecessor on the peninsula's windward side, a site beset by lawlessness and a “might makes right” mentality, says Brady.

Kalaupapa resident Danny Hashimoto prepares newspapers, just off the plane, for distribution. Hashimoto is an accomplished gardener who loves to share his knowledge. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Nowadays the congregation of St. Francis Church in Kalaupapa celebrates mass once a month at St. Philomena's Church in Kalawao, where Damien preached until he succumbed to Hansen's in 1893. Likewise, members of Kana'ana Hou Church revisit Kalawao's Siloama Church for worship on the first Sunday of the month. The churches also attract tourists, and the February visitors' log at Siloama shows entries from Hilo to St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Matsushita, the kahu, works with patients as part of the Kana'ana Hou Church. “The stories they have to share are just heart-wrenching,” he says, sharing a story of a patient who would stare across the Kaiwi Channel at night and, seeing the glow of lights from Honolulu, would cry, “ 'Mama, mama.' He never saw his mother. She never came.”

For Brady, who knows of the violations Hansen's patients endured, including being subjected to the Monkey Show — in which patients stood naked or nearly naked in front of a group of medical people to be examined, touched and sometimes sexually assaulted — gaining the trust of the patients is something he treasures.

The treacherous waves and rocky coastline of Kalawao, across the peninsula from Kalaupapa, were often a patient's first introduction to their new home. Sea captains safeguarding the safety of their ship would often hurl sick patients over the side, instructing them to swim to shore and fend for themselves. (Click the image for a larger view.) - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

“Even though I'm a medical school professor it's very difficult to bring my students in because the patients say, 'Kauka, we trust you, but never again. No more monkey shows.' Because it's not that they read about (it happening to) the generation before — they were on that pedestal,” he says. “They have been maligned.”

After five years as their kauka, he says, the relationship is and always will be tenuous. Hospital workers are considered kōkua, he says: “We are second rate; the patients are first rate. We are all here only to help. As long as we are kōkua, we have a place here. If I were let go tomorrow, I would no longer have a place in Kalaupapa.”

One of the highlights for Brady comes when Kalaupapa travels “topside” for a wedding. “They call me and I gotta be there. There's no question. It's worse than Hawaiian Civic Club,” he says, tongue-in-cheek. “They book a room for me, and I'm right there next to Ivy and Boogie,” her husband. “In Kalaupapa, when we travel, we travel as one. And when we go to the reception we're recognized: 'Kalaupapa is here.' ”