Leprosy Hawaii Molokai
Lepra Hawaii MolokaiUntil recently, Hawaiians were sent to the Kalaupapa settlement with leprosy.
In the last hundred years at least 8,000 Hawaiians have been displaced from their houses and quarantined in the settlement, Alia Wong reported for the Atlantic. The National Park Service now wants to open the part of the island that is occupied by Calaupapa. It is already conserved as a National Historic Park, but when the last of the patients die, the "long-term plan" is to open the entire island to the tourist.
It is still the home of some of them. This is Wong writing: The Wong wrote about marriages and "dances, music, competitions and soft ball games", which would have been a joyful souvenir for the local population. Make the gardens more open would make all the difference. There are some who claim that the conservation that the reserve would provide would be a way to honour the remembrance of those who once sojourned.
"There are some who fear that an inward flow of people, especially those unfamiliar with Kalaupapa's past, would worsen the peninsular spirit and erode its historic heritage," Wong states. Conflicts over the use of Hawaiian holy lands also shape the debate about the Kalaupapa's present state.
"Every now and then when a patient is dying, we get fewer and fewer," Clarence "Boogie" Kahilihiwa, one of the few surviving Calaupapa patient, said to the Times in 2008. This is Wong writing: