Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory

Chapter 43. Changed in One Day: The Restoration of Family Ties

515 43 Changed in One Day The Restoration of Family Ties year after year, decade after decade, century after century, the lingering social effects of Hawaii’s public health policies related to leprosy have separated families and resulted in a legacy of deep personal and collective loss that has persisted into modern times, decades after the discovery of a cure and the abolition of the isolation laws. Clarence Naia: “I was born in Kalaupapa in 1928 and sent out. I was told my grandmother came here and got me and took me to Maui. . . . My grandmother never told me anything about my parents. I came here and then I found out about them. They were dead already. I never even saw my mother and never even saw my father. But John Cambra, he knew my mother and my father, so he was the one that told me all about my mother.”1 Pauline Cooke (daughter of Clarence Naia): “I was taken away from my parents and raised by my grandmother. My grandmother never told me anything. All she had told me was that I have a father living. He lives on the island of Molokai. She used to tell me, ‘Your father has some kind of disease, some kind of sickness.’ . . . The only time I really got in touch with my dad was when I got married, and that was in 1970. Never met my father until 1972 when I came to Kalaupapa. . . . When we met one another for the first time, it was like we’ve been together from the time I was born until now.”2 Cathrine Puahala told of seeing her daughter: Every mother likes to hold their baby, but we were not allowed­to, and we just watched them take her away. . . . When Mr. Judd became our administrator, he 516   chapter forty-three permitted us to go on a plane to Kahului airport, but they had to have a nurse there, a social worker to bring her to me. She came with her grandmother and grandfather, but they needed a nurse to watch us. . . . They didn’t want us to touch her. So we stayed there about an hour, looking at her, watching her cry or laugh. My in-laws brought me lots of pictures of her. . . . After they left, all the way home I just looked at the pictures and I cried. I cried for her, I cried because I couldn’t hold her. I wanted to hold her but I couldn’t and my husband just held me. He said, ‘Don’t cry,’ but the tears just kept coming. I just wanted to hold my baby. I cried all the way home and I had all of those pictures of her as a baby and I just looked at her pictures every day.3 Pauline Ka‘iulani Puahala Hess added her recollections: I knew they were away, but I don’t know at what age I realized where they lived or that they were patients. I think I heard the adults speaking about left: Joseph Naia, who died at Kalaupapa the same year that his son Clarence­was born; Alice Smith Naia, Clarence’s mother. Photos Courtesy of Clarence Naia. Clarence Naia at home with his daughter, Pauline Cooke. Photo by Wayne Levin. Three generations (left to right): Terry-Lee Haunani Hess, Cathrine Puahala, and Pauline Puahala Hess at Kalaupapa. Cathrine’s T-shirt reads “Kau Inoa, ” which means “Place your Name, ” referring to the Native Hawaiian Registry being compiled as the first step in the process of building a Native Hawaiian­governing entity. Photo by Wayne Levin. 518   chapter forty-three them, talking about them and I always remember the whispers that I heard. You know where they would whisper to other people and say this is Jubilee and Catherine’s daughter—the ones from Kalaupapa. That’s the first that I knew that my parents lived in Kalaupapa, but I don’t think I knew right away why they were there. I may have asked at some point when I was a child why I didn’t live with my parents, but I just thought that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I never felt in Lahaina that I was treated differently, although there was, I call it whispering, you know, when people nodded their heads and I always knew what they were saying. That was okay but...