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Chapter 32. Every Night We Have Music: John Cambra, Kenso Seki, and the Baldwin Home
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381 32 Every NightWe Have Music John Cambra, Kenso Seki, and the Baldwin Home the names John Cambra and Kenso Seki are synonymous with the Baldwin Home. They were members of the last generation to live at Kalawao, to know Joseph Dutton personally, and to use Father Damien’s church on a daily basis. More than sixty years after his arrival at the Baldwin Home, John would walk through the graveyard alongside Father Damien’s church and point out his friends from the Baldwin Home who were buried there, including Emmeran Palakiko, one of the Palakiko brothers, and George Kualaku, who had come on the same ship with him. John Cambra: “November 20, 1920 . . . all the people at my place, my people, came and bid me farewell for the last time. That’s when Kikila came and picked me up. . . . My mother was hanging on my neck and I was hanging on my mother’s neck. And then, I looked at the people, I just was crying and that’s all, just put my head down. And then Kikila took me to Kalihi Hospital. I went down to my building—I stayed at ‘Hawaii Ponoi.’ You see, we had ‘Mother’s Building,’ we had ‘Hawaii Ponoi,’ we had ‘Ingleside,’ ‘Majestic,’ and all those buildings. . . .1 “I didn’t eat for about two, three days you know. I wasn’t hungry. I was just crying John Cambra at the grave of George Kualaku,one of his friends from the Baldwin Home. Photo by Wayne Levin. [3.81.79.135] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:45 GMT) Every NightWe Have Music 383 and crying. . . . When I got used to things, I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna do something with my life in here.’ That’s when I went to exercise every day. Go on the rings, go around the compound, play tennis, play baseball. I used to do that every day for about three years, then I came up here. Me and Willie Correa, we wanted to go to Molokai. We wanted to die in Molokai. “Dr. Gorman said to me, ‘Well, before you go to Molokai you have to come and be examined.’ I said, No, I don’t want to be examined. I just want to go up there, that’s all. I want to pack my trunk and throw ’em on the truck. My mother was down there with somebody else and I jumped down from the truck and I went to kiss my mother goodbye. I think it was about five o’clock or half past five we left Honolulu. “They put us where the cattle were. You heard about it? The cattle. And then, about five, half past five, we reached Kalaupapa. And about six o’clock in the morning we came in, but those waves were big, boy. I tell you, I took my shirt off, I was ready to swim. . . . But those sailors, they were smart, real smart, Hawaiian sailors. They were good, real good. They would count the waves, you know. They counted— one, two, three, ahoy!! The grounds of Kalihi Hospital,c. 1920s. Courtesy of John Cambra. 384 chapter thirty-two “We went on shore and the first shipment, the 1923 shipment, they came and well they all know me, see, and they came and shook hands with me and they were glad that I came up here because they wanted me to go and pitch for them— baseball.Then I talked to these boys . . . and I know some of the old-timers. This Portuguese boy by the name of Peter Rosa. . . . So we talked and talked and talked. “By and by we went to the hall and then we all sat down front. They said, ‘You, you, Baldwin Home.’ We went walking around first to see the place. Then we started walking up to Baldwin Home, going, going. . . . I said, ‘By the way, where is Baldwin Home?’ He said, ‘Oh, pretty soon.’ Going down again, going down the hill, you know. ‘By the way, where is Baldwin Home?’ ‘Oh, little more.’ Well, those days had lotta people, all houses you know, old-timers used to live up there. So they say, ‘Aloha, aloha .’ That means, you know, just say, ‘Hello, hello.’ I say, ‘Hello.’ Then we start going. We went past the ylang ylang tree. So I tell him, ‘Hey, you told me little more, little more, but there is no Baldwin Home yet.’ He said, ‘Oh, little more.’ We saw...