Simple Courage: An Historical Portrait for the Age of AIDS

<v Narrator>Major funding for this program was provided by the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture <v Narrator>and the Arts through an appropriation from the 1990 Hawaii state legislature. <v Narrator>Additional funding was provided by the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities. <v Narrator>[Blowing wind and choir singing omniously] <v Narrator 2>An expedition force of 35 men fully armed is being sent to Kalalau,

<v Narrator 2>a small Krupp howitzer will be taken and shells will be used if necessary to dislodge the <v Narrator 2>lepers. It is the intention of the government to clean out every leper from the valley, <v Narrator 2>either dead or alive. <v Narrator 3>The sheriff of Waimea, Louis Stoltz, was instantly killed on the 27th by two <v Narrator 3>rifle shots from the hands of leppers that he was seeking to arrest. <v Narrator 3>Their leader Ko'olau seems to be a desperado, a violent character. <v Narrator 4>Ko'olau, the murder refused to come in and said he would fight and if cornered, would <v Narrator 4>kill his wife, Piilani and his child and then himself. <v Narrator 5>[Speaking Hawaiian] I affirm to the world that this is the correct true <v Narrator 5>and one and only story of my beloved husband, Ko'olau. <v Narrator 5>The order came that all the leper's must be removed. <v Narrator 5>My husband, Ko'olau askedSheriff Louis, "Will my wife be allowed to <v Narrator 5>go with me to Kalalau?" Louis refused, saying, "No, you <v Narrator 5>and all those who have the sickness will be taken.

<v Narrator 5>No one else." My husband replied, "We swore <v Narrator 5>by the holy book to live together in sickness and in health until death <v Narrator 5>should part us." And now the power of the government <v Narrator 5>wants to make the oath before Almighty God as nothing. <v Narrator 5>When it began to darken that evening, we squatted near this rock watching <v Narrator 5>and listening constantly. <v Narrator 5>A gun was heard being cocked. <v Narrator 5>My husband protected me by putting me behind him. <v Narrator 5>And with a flash of powder, his gun was fired. <v Narrator 5>I saw Louis kneeling, holding the gun. <v Narrator 5>Paoa, shouted, "He's going to shoot." And this was the moment my husband fired <v Narrator 5>the second bullet and Louis died. <v Narrator 5>My husband turned to me and said, "If I had been slow, I would have died before <v Narrator 5>the Holy." And I replied, "That is the truth." <v Narrator 5>These actions of they're coming with a great army and rifles and cannons <v Narrator 5>to shoot and kill my husband, who is alone, these were deemed shameful <v Narrator 5>before the powerful governments of the world.

<v Narrator 6>I am sorry to state that three of my men <v Narrator 6>have lost their lives. <v Narrator 7>Due to the losses of these three men and there being no prospect of capturing Ko'olau, <v Narrator 7>the squad of soldiers was ordered back down a little. <v Narrator 7>Ko'olau was never captured or seen again outside of the valley. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Leprosy was unique. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Because it not only affected a large number of Hawaiiaans. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Those early years, but it was a disease <v Kekuni Blaisdell>that was easily detected. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>And because it was infectious, thought to be <v Kekuni Blaisdell>erroneously highly infectious. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Of course, our people who were affected were separated from the rest of the population.

<v Kekuni Blaisdell>Since we native people are people of Ohana family people, it contributed <v Kekuni Blaisdell>to the destruction of our own culture, which is based on <v Kekuni Blaisdell>the Ohana. But it was something that was so abhorent <v Kekuni Blaisdell>that we weren't permitted to talk about it. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>So it's only now that we are able to <v Kekuni Blaisdell>talk about it and we need to talk about it. <v Hyman Fujinaga>Once you have leprosy, you really, you were <v Hyman Fujinaga>outcast. <v Hyman Fujinaga>It is stigma, you know. <v Hyman Fujinaga>So. <v Hyman Fujinaga>I made up my mind, I said, well, I have to really <v Hyman Fujinaga>join into this community and make the best of life, <v Hyman Fujinaga>and those days we no-, I never think about marriage. <v Hyman Fujinaga>You know, even a girlfriend, maybe just, you know, for past time. <v Hyman Fujinaga>But we never I never thinking about married and have kids

<v Hyman Fujinaga>because. I was thinking about myself. <v Hyman Fujinaga>You know, the sickness that I have. <v Richard Marks>I used to ask, why me? How come me? <v Richard Marks>How come my family, when we have people all over the place, that did things <v Richard Marks>just as bad or worse? <v Richard Marks>And never got a sign of it. <v Richard Marks>And of course, you had some local idiot that always had some dummy around that would <v Richard Marks>push the idea that you brought it on yourself, or you brought in somebody of the family <v Richard Marks>and brought it on us. And not much you can do with people like that. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>From time to time, even on the soap operas, I heard the actor <v Olivia Robello Breitha>say, "Oh, I feel like a leper. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>You look like a leper." You know, if somebody had a banged up face from a beating <v Olivia Robello Breitha>or a mugging, "you look like a leper. I feel like a leper." I said, Oh, yeah. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>You feel like a leper. I'm going to let you know what it feels like to be one. <v Makia Malo>They sent us here like people sweep.

<v Makia Malo>Sweep the dust under the carpet. That was us. <v Makia Malo>We were the Opala that the cast out. <v Makia Malo>And so luckily for us, when <v Makia Malo>Damon started something way back when that we could enjoy the benefits. <v Narrator 8>[Guitar music] Strange when one's neighbors become less than acquaintances seeing us. <v Narrator 8>They drew away. They moved to sit elsewhere. <v Narrator 8>Whispering and a friend pointed a finger, "He is a leper." <v Narrator 8>I bowed my head. I knew it was true, in my heart <v Narrator 8>I hugged my shame What will become of Hawaii? <v Narrator 8>What will leprosy do to our land? <v Richard Marks>Coming on a door, get on the bus.

<v Richard Marks>You gotta understand Kalaupapa, Kalaupapa even way back in the old Hawaiian <v Richard Marks>days, [Truck starts] was a very special place. <v Richard Marks>They had many sacred ceremonies held here every 6 or 7 years. <v Richard Marks>They'd come from all over the islands. <v Richard Marks>Special gatherings here long before they ever heard of leprosy in Hawaii, long before <v Richard Marks>they ever heard a white man in Hawaii. <v Richard Marks>These were known as the great cliffs of Molokai the forbidden cliffs <v Richard Marks>of Molokai. [Acoustic music playing] <v Narrator 9>One year ago, there was but one case of leprosy in this district. <v Narrator 9>And now within a distance of five miles from that house, cases of this incurable <v Narrator 9>disease may be counted by the dozen. <v Narrator 9>This, surely, Mr. Editor, is a state of things which calls loudly for immediate

<v Narrator 9>steps to be taken by having all the disease cases collected and strictly <v Narrator 9>kept apart. <v David Scollard>The king of Hawaii was was confronted with a very difficult problem. <v David Scollard>Hawaiians were much more susceptible to this disease and it was spreading among them in <v David Scollard>great numbers. <v David Scollard>The colonists who are here were terrified of this disease <v David Scollard>and were advising him to send people away for life, <v David Scollard>which was contrary, I am sure, to his his own instincts. <v David Scollard>But he also had to consider preserving his people from a disease. <v David Scollard>[Acoustic music playing] <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>When you look at the act to prevent the spread of leprosy, you get an indication of how <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>these people were regarded. They weren't thought of as sick people, but rather as <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>criminals. The act talks about arresting people as leprosy suspects,

<v Anwei Skinsnes Law>and it gives the power for treating these people to the lawmakers rather than to the <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>physicians. And basically what they did was just round them up and send them to <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Kalaupapa <v Richard Marks>Dirt valley where they were dropped in the beginning with just too wet, the patients died <v Richard Marks>very fast in those days. <v Richard Marks>Very few lasted more than a year up in that valley. <v Richard Marks>Now hear you got a spot. Doesn't it look like something somebody dreamed up? <v Richard Marks>Doesn't even look real. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>When the government sent the patients to Kalawao, it was their intention that within <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>six months, these people could create a nice little community that would be self <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>supporting. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Unfortunately, what the government didn't think about was that these people were sick. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Most of them were in the advanced stages of leprosy. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>They couldn't grow their own food. They couldn't build their own houses. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>They certainly couldn't take care of their medical needs.

<v Anwei Skinsnes Law>But the government didn't think about this and basically just left them there to fend for <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>themselves. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>There was a Hawaiian expression associated with Kalawao, which basically translates, "In <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>this place. There is no law." There was no way that anybody could make the patients <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>abide by any laws because they couldn't threaten them with any punishment, which was <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>worse than that which had already been dealt them by sending them to college while in the <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>first place. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Consequently, horrible tales of Kalawao spread to Honolulu, and the place <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>gained a reputation as a living tomb. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Family members began to hide those who had leprosy and consequently the disease spread. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>[Piano music playing] Not everything at the settlement was bad. There were attempts to <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>improve conditions there. The Board of Health built a hospital and the patients <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>themselves established churches. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>However, physical improvements weren't enough what the people there really needed was <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>hope. <v Narrator 10>If a noble Christian priest, preacher or sister should be

<v Narrator 10>inspired to go and sacrifice a life to console these poor <v Narrator 10>wretches, that would be a royal soul to shine forever <v Narrator 10>on a throne reared by human love. <v Richard Marks>Okay, stop out here a couple of minutes, you get a chance to see the church. <v Richard Marks>Yeah, this is where Father Damon was buried in 1889, <v Richard Marks>1936, they dug him up, took him away. <v Richard Marks>Nobody in Hawaii knew what Belgium was. <v Richard Marks>This was a man that made the impression not by coming and preaching a new religion, <v Richard Marks>but by coming and doing what today you call Hands-On, working with his hands. <v Richard Marks>[Choir singing] They may never look down on the Hawaiians. <v Richard Marks>They may never ask. Are you Catholic or are you Christian?

<v Richard Marks>He did what he could to help anybody that came close to him. <v Narrator 11>By the providence of our divine Lord, who during his public life showed <v Narrator 11>a particular sympathy for lepers, my way was traced <v Narrator 11>toward Kalawao in May 1873. <v Narrator 11>A great many lepers had lately arrived from the different islands. <v Narrator 11>Their number at 860. <v Narrator 11>Some of them were old acquaintances of mine from Hawaii where <v Narrator 11>I was previously stationed as a missionary priest. <v Narrator 11>To the majority, I was a stranger. <v Richard Marks>Nobody heard of Damien til he got here. People get the idea all of a sudden Damien came <v Richard Marks>to work with the lepers and he got a vision and all of a sudden he was a saint. <v Richard Marks>No, Damien was like Damienn was a workaholic on the big island even before he came here.

<v Gavan Daws>He's the most ordinary of men. <v Gavan Daws>He's not tremendously intelligent. <v Gavan Daws>He's certainly not charming. <v Gavan Daws>He's not a sophisticated man. He's not a learned, man. <v Gavan Daws>He's not a good handler of people particularly. <v Gavan Daws>He's not a good public relations person. <v Gavan Daws>He's got great limits. He's temperamentally stubborn. <v Gavan Daws>He's dogood to the point of being obstinate. <v Gavan Daws>He worries endlessly about his own preoccupations, except that his own <v Gavan Daws>preoccupations are the universal and timeless preoccupations <v Gavan Daws>of humankind. <v Gavan Daws>And it's just the jump that he can make somehow in his life from being the most ordinary <v Gavan Daws>of men to doing the most extraordinary things. <v Narrator 11>This may give you some idea of my daily walk. <v Narrator 11>picture yourself a collection of ?hush? <v Narrator 11>with 8 ?inaudible? <v Narrator 11>No.

<v Narrator 11>In fact, there's no cure. <v Narrator 11>There seems no place for a doctor's scale <v Gavan Daws>And he's in the middle of that, doing everything, making coffins, changing <v Gavan Daws>bandages, washing dirty bandages because there weren't clean ones, <v Gavan Daws>putting his hands on patients. Moment by moment. <v Gavan Daws>Day after day. Month after month. <v Gavan Daws>Year after year. Virtually alone. <v Gavan Daws>All that time. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Father Damien knew that there were certain risks associated with being at Kalawao, <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>but he had already given his life over to God and he felt that the most important thing <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>was serving his fellow man. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>He especially felt that it was important to treat the patients there as his equals. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>He ate out of the same calabash with them. He smoked the same pipe. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Some people criticized him and said that he was stupid for doing this, but he wasn't <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>stupid. He just had a different set of priorities. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>And to him, the most important thing was to take care of these people whom society <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>had cast aside.

<v Terence Knapp>You see, when Damien went to Kalawao to look after <v Terence Knapp>the Catholic lepers, Leprosy was regarded <v Terence Knapp>as a venereal disease. <v Terence Knapp>You could only contact leprosy, it was thought, by some <v Terence Knapp>by sleeping around. <v Terence Knapp>That didn't stop Father Damien from going over there and <v Terence Knapp>getting in up to his elbows, as it were. <v Terence Knapp>It's a case of the singer, not the song. <v Terence Knapp>You know, every human life is precious to the father. <v Terence Knapp>To God. As Father Damien perceived it, that <v Terence Knapp>gave him the courage to do what he had to do. <v Richard Marks>Many of them would not have anything to do with a priest. <v Richard Marks>So the only way Damien succeeded was he touched him. <v Richard Marks>So this is part of the old Hawaiian culture. <v Richard Marks>This is the way it was, is always a personal contact. <v Richard Marks>And Damien understood this. It was no big deal.

<v Richard Marks>He made nothing of it because it was an accepted thing. <v Narrator 12>Father Damien told me he had always expected that he should sooner or later become a <v Narrator 12>leper, though exactly how he caught it, he does not know. <v Narrator 12>He's now 49 years old. <v Narrator 12>His countenance must have been handsome, but he is a good deal, disfigured by leprosy, <v Narrator 12>though not so badly as to make it anything but a pleasure to look at his bright, sensible <v Narrator 12>face. <v Narrator 12>His forehead is swollen and rigid. <v Narrator 12>The eyebrows are gone. The nose is somewhat sunk and the ears are <v Narrator 12>greatly enlarged. <v Narrator 12>"I would not be cured," he said to me, "if the price of my cure was that I must leave the <v Narrator 12>islands and give up my work." <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Those were some of his hardest days because he was deprived of spiritual consolation. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>What he really needed was a true confrere, somebody could spend time with talk <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>to confess to. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>His superiors, made his hardships even worse because they questioned his sincerity and <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>his humility.

<v Gavan Daws>And he he's doing things which his superiors don't like. <v Gavan Daws>And they say, obey, obey. Don't do this. <v Gavan Daws>Don't get your name in the papers. <v Gavan Daws>Don't do that stuff. And he says, I'm not. <v Gavan Daws>And he's not. He does not write to the papers. <v Gavan Daws>He gets in the papers against his will. <v Gavan Daws>His name was known in Paris and London and New York. <v Gavan Daws>With that came a rush of charitable money given by Americans, by Englishman, by <v Gavan Daws>by Europeans, specifically for his work at the leprosy settlement. <v Gavan Daws>And with that came embarrassment about where that money was coming <v Gavan Daws>from, because it was coming from Protestants as well as Catholics. <v Gavan Daws>It was coming past the Catholic Church in Hawaii earmarked for Damien. <v Gavan Daws>He didn't go to Molokai to become famous. <v Gavan Daws>He didn't go to Molokai to become a public beggar. <v Gavan Daws>He went to Molokai to serve the leprosy settlement, to try to heal the souls <v Gavan Daws>of physically ?doing? bodies. <v Terence Knapp>Father Damien is one of those rare people who do <v Terence Knapp>what has to be done according to conscience

<v Terence Knapp>and to spiritual persuasion. <v Terence Knapp>He saw his life in Imitation of Christ. <v Terence Knapp>Period. Christ did some fairly unpopular things, like driving <v Terence Knapp>the moneylenders out of the temple. I don't suppose that endeared him to an awful <v Terence Knapp>lot of people. I think, Damien, when necessary, he took his <v Terence Knapp>walking stick and cracked the Hawaiian lepers over the head. <v Terence Knapp>If he caught them doing the hula. Well, I don't suppose they liked him very much either <v Terence Knapp>at that particular time. But there was something over and above that behavior, <v Terence Knapp>if you follow me, it was a deep empathy for their condition <v Terence Knapp>and for their suffering. <v Terence Knapp>Totally, of course. <v Richard Marks>Yeah, well, they come in, you know, and they can see the eyeballs roaming all over the

<v Richard Marks>place and once in a while, you know, they kind of looking to see a leper, to see a leper. <v Richard Marks>And then they ask I said, well, I'm a patient. My drivers are all patients. <v Richard Marks>Over the years we've been of course, you can see the relief across their face. <v Richard Marks>You know, they were afraid that they might encounter somebody that was going to make them <v Richard Marks>very, you know, unhappy, uncomfortable, <v Richard Marks>I tell them its like anything else, you got to learn to understand it. <v Richard Marks>The first thing is accept them as somebody like your own family, somebody <v Richard Marks>that had bad luck that's all. [World music playing] The <v Richard Marks>fingers. The digits, the extremities lose blood circulation. <v Richard Marks>And then many times they get so badly crippled, they get amputated. <v Richard Marks>Other times they just naturally wither away. <v Richard Marks>But it's not a deal of walking on the street and seeing fingers and toes all over the <v Richard Marks>place. <v Richard Marks>Over 1100 people have come here to work over the years, and some of them stayed

<v Richard Marks>almost 50 years, never got leprosy. <v David Scollard>Although leprosy is now treatable and curable. <v David Scollard>The fear and the stigma are still very strong and therefore it's <v David Scollard>still a tragedy to people, even though it doesn't have to be. <v David Scollard>Patients who learn this diagnosis sometimes think it's worse than <v David Scollard>death. And that is perpetuated by by false <v David Scollard>information. And it doesn't have to be. <v Narrator 13>[Violin music playing] Abandoned, cut off from family and dear ones, we were left <v Narrator 13>alone with our grief, our love. <v Narrator 13>Reign of tears streamed from Lepper eyes, Lepper cheeks glistened

<v Narrator 13>with raindrops in the sun. <v Narrator 13>Never again would we look upon this land of ours, this lovely harbor town. <v Narrator 13>What will become of Hawaii? <v Narrator 13>What will leprosy do to our land? <v Kekuni Blaisdell>[World music playing] Well, the total figure for leprosy victims in Hawaii <v Kekuni Blaisdell>is estimated to be around 8000 and over 90 percent of <v Kekuni Blaisdell>them were Kanaka maoli, native Hawaiian. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>So I suspect that every Hawaiian family has been affected, <v Kekuni Blaisdell>just as in my own family. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Well, there's clear evidence. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>That our ancestors at that time, 1770, <v Kekuni Blaisdell>did not have the contagious infectious epidemic

<v Kekuni Blaisdell>illnesses that were the scourge of the continents at that <v Kekuni Blaisdell>time. Our ancestors were completely isolated from the rest <v Kekuni Blaisdell>of the world. Because of that, they had no immunity. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>They had no need to have immunity from these infectious illnesses. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Of course, once those illnesses were introduced in the form of Captain <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Cook's crewman who infected our people, <v Kekuni Blaisdell>mainly with gonorrhea and syphilis at that time, probably also tuberculosis. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>Then those illnesses began to devastate populations. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>[Acoustic guitar music playing] By 1820, when the missionaries arrived, they estimated <v Kekuni Blaisdell>the population to be 150000. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>And in 1893, with the armed invasion of Hawaiian nations,

<v Kekuni Blaisdell>the overthrow of our government population, native population was <v Kekuni Blaisdell>down to 40000 a holocaust, by any definition. <v Kekuni Blaisdell>So it was repeatedly predicted that we were a dying race. <v Gavan Daws>This was for the Hawaiians, a particularly unfortunate conjunction that <v Gavan Daws>in the very same decades, there should be the worst of their epidemics, <v Gavan Daws>reducing their population to his lowest point. <v Gavan Daws>At the same time as things were running, a tide was running. <v Gavan Daws>A historical tide was running in favor of the white man. <v Narrator 14>The fear of contagion and of possible infection hangs over the ill fated kingdom. <v Narrator 14>The Hawaiians are susceptible people possessed of much physical beauty <v Narrator 14>and of but little strength and endurance. <v Narrator 14>They succumb easily under the influence of diseases that with us are of <v Narrator 14>small moment

<v Gavan Daws>And in the white man's world that seem very, very clear that the white man was not only <v Gavan Daws>surviving, he was thriving. If you look at the map of the world in the 19th century, <v Gavan Daws>decade by decade, the white man moves to different parts of the world, takes charge, <v Gavan Daws>controls, runs and dominates, and to the white man's mind, fairly clearly, <v Gavan Daws>this is an index of superiority. He deserved to do that. <v Gavan Daws>There was some plan in life. <v Gavan Daws>Some plan on the universe which made it inevitable that the white man's destiny <v Gavan Daws>was to run the world. <v Gavan Daws>And that hooked in perfectly with the ideas which became current in the Western <v Gavan Daws>world as a result of the work of Charles Darwin, his scientific studies in the <v Gavan Daws>animal and plant world seemed to prove that there was a constant struggle in nature. <v Gavan Daws>And in that struggle the fittest survived and those who did not <v Gavan Daws>survive were unfit to survive. <v Gavan Daws>And holding all those things in mind, perhaps leprosy then was just again <v Gavan Daws>an example of the working out of this universal law, and it wouldn't take long <v Gavan Daws>and the Hawaiians would be gone.

<v Gavan Daws>And that was what was meant to happen. <v Gavan Daws>That was destiny working itself out. <v Gavan Daws>And from there, it's one step to saying that it was the white man's destiny <v Gavan Daws>to control the Hawaiian islands leading up to the white man's revolution <v Gavan Daws>and the United States taking the Hawaiian Islands as American territory. <v David Scollard>In order to understand what happened here 150 years ago, you have to understand <v David Scollard>what they knew about disease and what they didn't know. <v David Scollard>Leprosy came down to them as one of the many curses. <v David Scollard>There were biblical references, of course, but the medieval Europeans were very familiar <v David Scollard>with this disease. And the first colonists who came to Hawaii brought that tradition <v David Scollard>with them. The disease was presumed to be a divine curse because

<v David Scollard>they had no other explanation. <v David Scollard>Now, it happened in the 1870s that Armauer Hanson, <v David Scollard>who was in charge of a large leprosarium in Norway, observed under his primitive <v David Scollard>microscope germs. <v David Scollard>And he then stated in his first publications, I think these are germs <v David Scollard>and I think they caused this disease. <v David Scollard>This didn't have to be a divine curse. It had to cause a physical cause in nature. <v David Scollard>You could you could look at. <v David Scollard>But there was still a treatment. Without a definitive treatment, <v David Scollard>the general policy was what it had been for centuries, and that was <v David Scollard>to quarantine people. [Acoustic guitar music playing] <v Olivia Robello Breitha>People were set to ?Kalihi? because they had a disease; it really wasn't a <v Olivia Robello Breitha>hospital because only patients with <v Olivia Robello Breitha>this disease were accepted there, were sent there, supposedly <v Olivia Robello Breitha>to be cured.

<v Olivia Robello Breitha>There was no medicine to cure nothing. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Cory was very boring. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>So I ran away and I ran away one time too many. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>And so eventually I got a letter saying that treatment would be no <v Olivia Robello Breitha>longer any benefit to me and then I would be sent to <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Kalaupapa, that meant Kalaupapa to die. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Cause Kalaupapa didn't have any treatment either. <v Narrator 15>The Mosaic law was explicit in regard to the treatment of those afflicted <v Narrator 15>with leprosy. They were to be set apart without the gates and to walk <v Narrator 15>alone crying, unclean, unclean. <v Narrator 15>Their garments were to be burned, their houses cleansed, and all direct communication <v Narrator 15>between the clean and the unclean was expressly prohibited. <v Gavan Daws>The Protestant Bible arrived here within a couple of decades <v Gavan Daws>of the first leprosy cases ?and so the?

<v Gavan Daws>19th century in Hawaii was a time when those two things were visible <v Gavan Daws>to the Hawaiian people. First, the Bible and leprosy. The ideology of the Protestant was <v Gavan Daws>simply to label leprosy an unclean <v Gavan Daws>disease, not only physically but morally. <v Gavan Daws>And to connect that with the sexuality of the Hawaiians and to try to banish <v Gavan Daws>all uncleanliness from the site and from the dominion <v Gavan Daws>of the clean, the godly and the clean- themselves, <v Gavan Daws>the Protestants. <v David Scollard>The quarantine that was done here was really draconian because patients were ripped away <v David Scollard>from their families, sent away to another island, and everyone was told <v David Scollard>they'd never come back. <v David Scollard>It was just the worst thing that could happen to them. It was worse than the sickness to <v David Scollard>the Hawaiians who didn't have such a terrible stigma associated with this disease <v David Scollard>at the time. They had many diseases that had been introduced by foreigners. <v David Scollard>This was just another one. What was terrible to them was the separation

<v David Scollard>of the family. And it was to be forever. <v Gavan Daws>Well, decade by decade, the disease gets worse. <v Gavan Daws>The epidemic rises and roars and sized people down until by the 1880s, <v Gavan Daws>it's so fierce in its incidence and has taken so many people and the government is so <v Gavan Daws>incensed and outraged of segregation, laws are being enforced <v Gavan Daws>very rigorously. [Sad music playing] And by that time you get among certain <v Gavan Daws>Hawaiians, at least not just passive resistance, not just hiding from <v Gavan Daws>a disease or being hidden from the disease, but active resistance in some cases, violent <v Gavan Daws>resistance. And on one or two islands, there are shootings by Hawaiians of sheriffs who <v Gavan Daws>come after them. And there are deaths in the course of the roundups. <v Gavan Daws>And that's the that's the awful high point of leprosy in Hawaii. <v Gavan Daws>In the early days of Kalawao, Kalaupapa the striking thing was

<v Gavan Daws>how many Hawaiians who did not have leprosy were down there with Hawaiians who did. <v Gavan Daws>And this goes to a Hawaiian concept called kōkua, which simply means to help or and now <v Gavan Daws>to be a helper. And this is not Christian charity. <v Gavan Daws>This goes back before Christians, before white men. <v Gavan Daws>The notion was that your fellow man, your fellow woman was deserving of <v Gavan Daws>your embrace and your presence and your help. <v Gavan Daws>No matter what. It's an astonishing thing that Hawaiians are capable <v Gavan Daws>of looking at leprosy, which is hard for anybody to do. <v Gavan Daws>And smelling leprosy, which is harder and touching the person <v Gavan Daws>with leprosy, which is almost impossible for whites to do except for exceptional people <v Gavan Daws>like Damien. <v Narrator 16>The smell of their filth mixed with exhalation of their souls was simply <v Narrator 16>disgusting and unbearable to a newcomer. <v Narrator 16>As an antidote to counteract the bad smell, I made myself accustomed <v Narrator 16>to the use of tobacco.

<v Narrator 16>I have baptized more than armed persons since my arrival. <v Narrator 16>[Bell ringing] A good part of days dyed with a bright rope <v Narrator 16>of baptismal grace, I have also buried a large number. <v Narrator 16>The average of deaths is at least one day. <v Richard Marks>Over the years, every once in a while, a rumor would come up that Damien was being taken <v Richard Marks>away and the patients would be very frantic. <v Richard Marks>So one morning at Mass, he said, "My fellow lepers," <v Richard Marks>And there was a hush. <v Richard Marks>Everybody stopped and looked at him. <v Richard Marks>Then he kept talking about my fellow lepers and finally he said, <v Richard Marks>"We lepers, Now we know I am one of you. <v Richard Marks>Now I know we are one family. <v Richard Marks>Now we know they cannot take me away." [Man humming in background] <v Narrator 17>I should have written before of his death. <v Narrator 17>Yet I don't know that there is very much to say the day before his death.

<v Narrator 17>I raised him up in bed for the government physician to get a photograph. <v Narrator 17>It is the most striking picture I have seen of him. <v Narrator 17>He lay for the last three weeks of his life, unable to say mass much of the time, <v Narrator 17>quite helpless and died April 15th at eight o'clock the Monday <v Narrator 17>after Palm Sunday. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Brother Dan had been there since 1886, but he provided a different kind <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>of help. In the early years, he helped with the physical labor and manual projects. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>But he didn't really provide the spiritual leadership that was necessary. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>The most important thing that happened in the last months of Damien's life was the <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>arrival of mother Marianne and two other sisters of St. Francis. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>When she arrived in November of 1888, I think he felt a real peace <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>because he knew that his work would be continued and his people wouldn't be forgotten. <v David Scollard>In the earlier part of our century, quarantine was a rational and

<v David Scollard>practiced measure in dealing with infectious diseases. <v David Scollard>But in the case of Hansen's disease, they were talking about lifetime <v David Scollard>quarantine. They were talking about banishment because they they never they had no <v David Scollard>way of knowing when they had separated <v David Scollard>the patient from society long enough. <v David Scollard>The question then arises of whether this was really a rational thing to do. <v David Scollard>And in doing, it was some sort of line crossed <v David Scollard>between what was perhaps medically justifiable or <v David Scollard>necessary and what was not. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>The nurse told me to pin my hair up. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>I did. She then told me to cross my hands on my chest. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>The photographer was all set. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>He said, will you give me a smile? <v Olivia Robello Breitha>I thought to myself, I'm dying inside and you ask me to smile. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster.

<v Olivia Robello Breitha>I thought, "You stupid man. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>What do I have to look forward to except misery and you expect me to smile? <v Olivia Robello Breitha>After you take my picture, you can get out of this place. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>The doctors can go home. I can't go home and you expect me to <v Olivia Robello Breitha>smile?" <v Richard Marks>When I came in 56, they asked me what name I was going to use. <v Richard Marks>Well, you know my name. You lock up enough of my family. <v Richard Marks>What are you talking about? What name you're going to be registered under. <v Richard Marks>What the heck are you talking about? <v Richard Marks>Oh, we got a law in Hawaii that says if you declared a leper, you can <v Richard Marks>change your name. I said why the hell should I do that? <v Richard Marks>Oh, to protect your family on the outside. <v Richard Marks>Somebody might find out you got leprosy and then your family be shamed. <v Richard Marks>They shame your whole family, because you got sick. <v Henry Nalaielua>I remember boarding the boat kind of rocky,

<v Henry Nalaielua>you know, finally I jumped into the boat and <v Henry Nalaielua>for me, one one sad thing was the fact that I was looking at my father <v Henry Nalaielua>who stood on the wall, you know, with tears flowing down, like <v Henry Nalaielua>if it was low tide, he would've fill that ocean up and make it to <v Henry Nalaielua>a high tide. That's how much he was crying. <v Henry Nalaielua>And I didn't understand it. <v Henry Nalaielua>I had to grow up and finally understand that he cried because <v Henry Nalaielua>I was the only son. <v Henry Nalaielua>That was the youngest and was being taken away. <v Hyman Fujinaga>We didn't see the uh the sores at all, the sickness, <v Hyman Fujinaga>from the- from the boat. <v Hyman Fujinaga>Well when we got on the pier and then everybody got closer, you know. <v Hyman Fujinaga>Just like we cannot tell him, go away. <v Hyman Fujinaga>My sister and my sisters and my brother came. <v Hyman Fujinaga>And he said, I'm you know, my brother Bill and Rose and Alice.

<v Hyman Fujinaga>I said, no, you're not my. <v Hyman Fujinaga>You're know, my sister and brother, you know, you look different. <v Hyman Fujinaga>I'm sorry I say that, but that's the way you look. <v Hyman Fujinaga>You see them six months ago and then all of a sudden they change. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>He came in after I did. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>I think a few months after I did, and he was such a little boy. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>He was blond and blue eyed and very <v Olivia Robello Breitha>lonely, I'm sure, because every time his mother came down to visit him <v Olivia Robello Breitha>and when she stood up to leave to go home, he tried to run out the gate <v Olivia Robello Breitha>and said, Mommy, I want to go home with you, Mommy. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>And when I saw that young as I was, I, <v Olivia Robello Breitha>I said to myself, I never want to have a little child ever. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Please, God, don't let me have children in this place because <v Olivia Robello Breitha>we won't be together.

<v Ronald Bayer>When one looks at a place like Kalaupapa I mean, there's an extraordinary beauty here <v Ronald Bayer>which masks the kind of suffering that took place when one looks out at the sea and sees <v Ronald Bayer>these beautiful waters and those rocks. <v Ronald Bayer>And then it looks gorgeous. And one is tempted to say, wouldn't this be a lovely spot for <v Ronald Bayer>a resort? And then one thinks back to the 19th century when people were cast <v Ronald Bayer>into the sea, forced to swim ashore with whatever belongings they had. <v Ronald Bayer>It makes me really think about the two kinds of misery that that existed here, <v Ronald Bayer>the misery that came as a result of a bacterial assault against which medicine had <v Ronald Bayer>no response and the kind of misery that came as a result of society's assault <v Ronald Bayer>on those people who were afflicted with a disease

<v Hyman Fujinaga>They rolled me in into the surgery. <v Hyman Fujinaga>Put me on the table, and start strapping me up. <v Hyman Fujinaga>You know, I was going, "Hey, what's going on," you know? <v Hyman Fujinaga>"Why al- why do you have to strap me if they gonna put me to sleep?" <v Hyman Fujinaga>So that was that is that is why they put this, they strap me up, because they put me to <v Hyman Fujinaga>sleep at all. <v Hyman Fujinaga>They just cut me. <v Hyman Fujinaga>Even they didn't give me even any uh novacaine, whatever, they just got skin <v Hyman Fujinaga>and work without anything. <v Hyman Fujinaga>I was up all the time, maybe 6, 7 hours, maybe 8 hours. <v Hyman Fujinaga>I don't know how long it was. <v Hyman Fujinaga>All I felt was that pain <v Henry Nalaielua>All of us who were able to leave here had to go <v Henry Nalaielua>to a fumigation area. <v Henry Nalaielua>The treatment that was used was formaldehyde. <v Henry Nalaielua>Well, you would have to put your whole clothing in a valise, in a <v Henry Nalaielua>suitcase, whatever it was, and have

<v Henry Nalaielua>it sit there for 24 hours before you leave. <v Henry Nalaielua>When you were ready to go, then you would come down, change your clothes, <v Henry Nalaielua>wear this clothing, which was not as pleasant as most people would think. <v Henry Nalaielua>Sometimes the formaldehyde would be overpowering <v Makia Malo>For the years that those early years when I was here, and when we were <v Makia Malo>attending school in Harlem Hollow at Pearl City. <v Makia Malo>The main edict that they they announced or pronounce <v Makia Malo>no personal contact. <v Makia Malo>If your visitor were caught hugging you, kissing <v Makia Malo>you. You could be said what you know, walking the polly. <v Makia Malo>When I left. <v Makia Malo>The hospital to attend the rehab center for the Blind in Honolulu. <v Makia Malo>I had I didn't want people touching me.

<v Makia Malo>And vice versa because of that thing jumped into my head all those <v Makia Malo>years. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>The mental barriers that begin those things begin when we <v Olivia Robello Breitha>first enter that place. Because if you don't have a fence, <v Olivia Robello Breitha>they have a sign that says you cannot enter here. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>You can't walk where a non-patient is. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>You, You can't touch a non-patient. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>So those barriers, even though now after Mr. Judd came <v Olivia Robello Breitha>and he took down fences and railings. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>But the barriers that are in here, <v Olivia Robello Breitha>they're still there. They don't go away ever. <v News Reporter>[News intro music] The <v News Reporter>island of Molokai in the center of the group is the site of the leprosy <v News Reporter>sanatorium at Kalaupapa. <v News Reporter>The 235 victims of leprosy or Hansen's disease at

<v News Reporter>Kalaupapa live normal, comfortable lives. <v News Reporter>Today, treatment with new ?cell phone? <v News Reporter>drugs has brought the once dreaded disease under control. <v News Reporter>Since 1946, when the drugs were first used, 120 <v News Reporter>patients have been cured and released from Kalaupapa [Men talking] <v Doctor>Are all in now and they're all negative. <v Doctor>You're finally eligible for discharge. <v Patient>Thank you sir, I was uh waiting a long time... [men continue talking] <v Olivia Robello Breitha>That, was a joy, unbelievable joy and hope. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>It's just like being in a desert and coming across a bucket of ice water. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>That's what it felt like. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>It wasn't free, exactly. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>They had strings. If you didn't obey the laws of coming to have examination <v Olivia Robello Breitha>and ?snip? <v Olivia Robello Breitha>monthly, they would with withdrawal your tr- parole papers is what they called th- <v Olivia Robello Breitha>parole.

<v Olivia Robello Breitha>We were parolees. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>Took a lot of courage for Richard to appear on the cover of Beacon magazine in 1967. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>What he was doing at the time was he was trying to say to people, look, we've had a cure <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>for this disease since the 1940s, but you're still treating us like, quote, lepers, <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>unquote. That article set the stage for sweeping changes in the isolation <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>law that resulted in the official abandonment of the isolation policy in 1969. <v News Reporter 2>State law enforcement officers cut open the locked main gate of ?Holly Mohalo? <v News Reporter 2>just after 6:00 this morning and entered the grounds, warning those inside <v News Reporter 2>not to interfere with the eviction operation. <v Government Officer>[Officer speaking inaudibly] This is a government operation

<v News Reporter 2>As the eviction party entered the main building. <v News Reporter 2>They found the two ?Rennard Ponakania and Clarence Niah?, seated defiantly <v News Reporter 2>at a wooden cross. <v News Reporter 2>The authorities... [continues talking] <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>?Holly Mahalo? really the first time that a large group of patients stood up and fought <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>for their rights. What they were saying was that they wanted a voice in their future. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>They wanted some control over their lives. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>And basically they just didn't want to be pushed around anymore. <v Anwei Skinsnes Law>[People singing] <v Gavan Daws>[Brass ensemble playing] The moral community, that problem exists in every age. <v Gavan Daws>Who is my tribe? Who am I responsible for? <v Gavan Daws>Who do I care about? Who will care about me? <v Gavan Daws>Who will I take care of? Who will take care of me? <v Gavan Daws>That question is a human question for every culture, every age. <v Gavan Daws>And it's a rare person who can speak across the centuries. <v Gavan Daws>With resonance and with reverberation by his acts and

<v Gavan Daws>interests in the proposition that that mall community is there always for our. <v Gavan Daws>It has our it needs our attention all the time. <v Richard Marks>I've been here several times, and each time I come away [people talking inaudibly] <v Richard Marks>I just get a better feeling for being that. <v Richard Marks>He came from a farm like most of Hawaiians in those days came from the land <v Richard Marks>they worked they land, I do a lot of walking here. <v Richard Marks>And everyplace I go, I see things that remind me of home. <v Richard Marks>Like things that Damien did, building stone walls and fences, <v Richard Marks>planting trees. Damien planted hundreds and hundreds of trees. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>I think all over the world give not completely <v Father Jef Eerdekens>best people, not completely good people. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>Everybody had a mix for good and bad things also that <v Father Jef Eerdekens>you see and Damien's life and you can find anything <v Father Jef Eerdekens>of yourself in him.

<v Father Jef Eerdekens>Also, the desire to do good. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>To give it a part of yourself to people, who are in needs. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>And we like him and we have admiration to him <v Father Jef Eerdekens>because in his life ego more far <v Father Jef Eerdekens>than we have used to go because we keep it <v Father Jef Eerdekens>for ourselves and incidents. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>We give, but not all. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>We grow apart, but not too far. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>Our own our personal security. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>We keep it safely and Damien, not. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>We see in Damien's lives that nobody how ill he <v Father Jef Eerdekens>is. What kind of illness he had, how poor or <v Father Jef Eerdekens>or what kind of off or oppression he have to life in his life, <v Father Jef Eerdekens>nobody may fall outside of the human community. <v Father Jef Eerdekens>And nobody how intelligent, how bad or how good he is.

<v Father Jef Eerdekens>Nobody is exempt to do to good to other people. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Thank you, Father Damien, for coming to Kalaupapa when you did. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Thank you very much. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>It make it better for everyone. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>Thank you, Father. <v Gavan Daws>Look at his life for five minutes or five years or for the rest of your life. <v Gavan Daws>And what comes out of it is this. He asked that ultimate <v Gavan Daws>question, who is my brother and am I my brother's keeper? <v Gavan Daws>And if I am my brother's keeper, what does that mean? <v Gavan Daws>Must I reach out of my own limitations and my own disabilities in my own hesitancies <v Gavan Daws>and my own self-absorption? <v Gavan Daws>Must I reach across and touch somebody else even if <v Gavan Daws>I get my hands dirty, even if I put myself at risk?

<v Gavan Daws>Must I do that? Should I do that? <v Gavan Daws>Can I do that? And Damien's answer is yes. <v Terence Knapp>If he were alive today, I believe with all my heart that <v Terence Knapp>he would be in the middle of <v Terence Knapp>the AIDS situation. [Guitar msuic playing] <v Ronald Bayer>Well, you know, some people say that whatever Father Damien <v Ronald Bayer>represents in terms of spirit is is reflected in the work of people who <v Ronald Bayer>devote themselves to working with AIDS patients. <v Henry Nalaielua>Well, I guess so <v Ronald Bayer>it formed in the same way very often. <v Ronald Bayer>Martin, working in very bad neighborhoods. <v Henry Nalaielua>Impossible odds. <v Ronald Bayer>Impossible odds...[Men continue talking] What one gets a sense of in <v Ronald Bayer>terms of Father Damien when one's here is an extraordinary kind of <v Ronald Bayer>heroism that allowed someone to enter a situation which was both isolated, <v Ronald Bayer>desperate, a situation in which he was rejected by

<v Ronald Bayer>his own community but moved to care for people. <v Ronald Bayer>Despite that rejection, when thinks about AIDS, when thinks about those doctors who came <v Ronald Bayer>to treat AIDS patients in the beginning, before it was popular, <v Ronald Bayer>before there were many doctors taking care of patients, doctors who put themselves at <v Ronald Bayer>risk, before it was really understood how this how the virus that causes AIDS was <v Ronald Bayer>transmitted. And they did it because they were doctors. <v Ronald Bayer>They did it because they had a calling in America and throughout the world, really <v Ronald Bayer>over the last 10 years, thousands, tens of thousands of people have come forward <v Ronald Bayer>to care for people with AIDS, often at great sacrifice to themselves. <v Ronald Bayer>And they've reflected a kind of humanity that really marks one of the extraordinary <v Ronald Bayer>events in the AIDS epidemic. Ordinary people from all walks of life doing many different <v Ronald Bayer>things to take care of patients who are young, old, some of whom <v Ronald Bayer>have en- have engaged in behaviors that their caregivers can't understand and they even <v Ronald Bayer>reject, but they don't reject them as people.

<v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>I know that ever since I got my diagnosis of AIDS, that my circle <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>of friends has narrowed down to a very, very few people <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>who love me enough to love me through my illness, <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>and that quite often I spend a great deal of time alone <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>because those few friends still have lives of their own <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>and. <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>A lot of things that are in the normal realm of human relationships are not <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>possible for me. <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>I cannot and do not date <v Patrick Fujimora Mitchell>I. I have no romantic interests. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>People, when they get fearful, they forget that people <v Olivia Robello Breitha>that are sick or, you know, anything, <v Olivia Robello Breitha>they're just fearful. And so what they want to do is put them away out of sight, <v Olivia Robello Breitha>out of mind, get them out of the way.

<v Olivia Robello Breitha>So we won't be troubled by it. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>We we can't catch it. Even though they know more about <v Olivia Robello Breitha>AIDS than they did know about leprosy when it happened to me. <v Olivia Robello Breitha>[News reporter talking in background] They still want to get rid of the people that have <v Olivia Robello Breitha>aids, but they forget that people that have AIDS are also people just as we <v Olivia Robello Breitha>were <v Jesse Helms>Well, I may be the most radical person you've talked to about AIDS. <v Jesse Helms>But I think somewhere along the line that we don't have to quarantine if we are really <v Jesse Helms>going to contain this disease, did it back with syphilis, <v Jesse Helms>did it with other diseases. <v Jesse Helms>And nobody even raised the question about it. <v Ronald Bayer>Early in 1986, Cuba decided they would screen its <v Ronald Bayer>virtually its entire sexually active population and everyone who was infected was <v Ronald Bayer>going to be sent to a quarantine, tend to just outside of Havana.

<v Ronald Bayer>They're willing to isolate hundreds of individuals to make sure that none transmit <v Ronald Bayer>the virus. Though most of those hundreds of individuals might have behaved in ways that <v Ronald Bayer>would have posed no public health threat at all. <v Ronald Bayer>But think that we have to bear in mind is the architects of the Cuban approach are <v Ronald Bayer>not evil. They believe that what they are doing is being done in <v Ronald Bayer>terms of the name of the highest good of public health in Cuba. <v Ronald Bayer>And as it's done with the best of intentions, it's a warning about the best of <v Ronald Bayer>intentions, after all. <v Ronald Bayer>So if you had a chance to meet Fidel Castro and talk to him about what he's doing in <v Ronald Bayer>Cuba, what would you say? <v Olivia Robello Breitha>I'd punch him in the nose that's what I'd say. <v Ronald Bayer>Uh-huh <v Olivia Robello Breitha>But it seems to me that Cuba has done what Americans <v Olivia Robello Breitha>have thought of doing. <v Richard Marks>I've had a lot of them come on the tour, you know, and talk, and at the end of the tour

<v Richard Marks>I've had them come up and kiss me and uh, with tears in the eyes, tell me so <v Richard Marks>much, "Thank you so much for bringing this up about AIDS." This is the first time we even <v Richard Marks>admit our son died of AIDS. <v Richard Marks>And I've heard it more than once. <v Richard Marks>And we say, well, we try to understand. <v Richard Marks>Well, it's very hard to understand. <v Makia Malo>People ask me on the street, in classes, in the hallways. <v Makia Malo>They asked me what happened to you and I'll give it to them straight. <v Makia Malo>I said, well, I had Hansen's disease <v Makia Malo>or leprosy. <v Makia Malo>Oh? I say, yeah. <v Makia Malo>But now, you know, I've been released. I'm in, the community. <v Makia Malo>And, you know, don't make it such a big deal. <v Makia Malo>And the thing that I've come to learn is that once they get to know me, <v Makia Malo>the disease doesn't matter. <v Hyman Fujinaga>After a while, you kinda like it here. You know, this is all

<v Hyman Fujinaga>this is home. This is a place that you were brought here, that nobody out <v Hyman Fujinaga>there was you. <v Hyman Fujinaga>But this is this is home. <v Hyman Fujinaga>[Guitar music playing] [Hawaiian <v Hyman Fujinaga>music playing] <v Narrator>Major funding for this program was provided by the Hawaii State Foundation

<v Narrator>on culture in the arts through an appropriation from the 1990 Hawaii State Legislature. <v Narrator>Additional funding was provided by the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities.