Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory

Chapter 30. Chaulmoogra Oil—Hawaii’s Message of Renewed Life: Alice Kamaka and Rosalie Blaisdell

363 30 Chaulmoogra Oil— Hawaii’s­Message of Renewed­ Life Alice Kamaka and Rosalie Blaisdell on june 29, 1919, a skinny little thirteen-year-old girl arrived at Kalaupapa with a package of bread and hard-boiled eggs from her brother and a yellow umbrella from her mother under her arm. With an indomitable spirit, Alice Chang headed off to the Bishop Home and into history as the person who would likely live at Kalaupapa longer than any other—eighty-one years. About one week before her twelfth birthday, Alice had been taken to Kalihi Hospital­ by Kikila, the agent of the Board of Health who was commonly known as the “bounty hunter.” For some time she had noticed physical changes and lack of sensation in various parts of her body but took them lightheartedly. “Ma, look, my hand, cute no?” “Look, my slipper went over there, my foot stay over here.”1 But Alice’s­mother was from China and knew about leprosy. She got some medicine from a Chinese friend and tried to treat Alice at home with a poultice of brown powder and red candle wax. She later tried placing­ warm fried pancakes on the affected area. She told Alice to stay at home: “Whenever anyone knocks on the door, go hide. You’re sick, we don’t want someone to take you away Alice Chang Kamaka lived at Kalaupapa from 1919 until her death at the age of ninety-four in 2000. This photo was taken in 1983. Photo by Vincent Maggior, courtesy of Alice Kamaka. Chaulmoogra Oil—Hawaii’s Message of Renewed Life    365 from us. Mama doesn’t want to lose you.” Alice wondered why, if she was sick, she had to hide under the bed rather than go to a hospital. She was jealous of her sister who always got to go out and buy new clothes. Once she was allowed to choose something special from a salesman who came to the house. She chose a yellow umbrella. Alice’s mother considered sending her to Japan for treatment, but her brother felt it was better for her to be treated at Kalihi where they could visit her. When Alice was admitted to Kalihi, her last name was changed to Wong. Her family was not ashamed of her but was worried about what might happen to them if other people knew that she had leprosy. When Alice’s brother got married, the family did not tell his new wife that Alice had leprosy. When she went shopping with Alice’s mother, she wondered why they always bought things for a little girl. Alice’s mother said they were for a friend’s daughter, but Alice’s sister-in-law was suspicious and wondered why her mother-in-law never­had an appetite when she returned from visiting her “friend’s daughter” at Kalihi. When she was finally told the truth, it turned out that she herself visited­someone at Kalihi and had noticed a little Chinese girl there, but she never suspected it was her sister-in-law. Alice’s mother visited her every week. They were separated by two partitions, one screen and one glass. As time passed, Alice forgot how to speak Chinese since she spoke English at Kalihi. Saddened by this, her mother would say, “You forget?” “Yeah Ma, I forget.” A total of sixty people were sent to Kalaupapa in Alice’s group. There were twelve other girls and women, who ranged in age from eleven to seventy, and fortyseven men and boys, whose ages ranged from ten to seventy-four.2 Alice’s brother went to the wharf to see her off, handed her a package, and said, “Kau kau [food] for you, for your breakfast.” Over the next decades, Alice’s family would always send her food regularly. She would say, “I was the luckiest girl at the Bishop Home,” and she always shared her gifts with others. In addition to being a waitress at Bishop Home, Alice learned to sew and worked as a seamstress in the hospital. She mended pajamas and sewed doctors’ gowns and orderlies’ aprons, for which she was paid about $12 a month. Alice was discharged in 1934, at which time she went home for a few months. Her mother had died by this time, and Alice was filled with the fear that her mother never cared about her since no...