Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory

Chapter 35. Another Good Man: The Memoirs of Ambrose Hutchison

413 35 Another Good Man The Memoirs of Ambrose HUTCHISON in 1932, the year of his death, Ambrose Hutchison had been at Kalaupapa for more than fifty-three years. Throughout his half century at Kalaupapa, Ambrose remained extremely close to his brother William and also to his sister Christina. William’s life was quite different from Ambrose’s. He had eleven children, the first of whom he named Ambrose Ferdinand—after his brother and his father. William struggled throughout much of his life financially, and Ambrose was always there to support him with advice and financial assistance. On August 18, 1930, Ambrose wrote to William, “I note with regret that you have no teeth, so I have not one tooth in my mouth left—all is empty! Have to eat soft food. . . . We are in the same fix, brother and have to bear our lot patiently to the end.”1 On December 15, he was more reflective about their lives: Dear brother William, . . . as I cannot see writing in pencil to read, I had to ask my housekeeper to read your letter to me the contents of the same sank deep into my heart so that I cannot control my feeling which overcame me. . . . I burst out crying like a hurt child and the memory of our boyhood days when we were together in school having no cares but studies.­Happy boyhood­days forcing­itself into my mind made the heart ache, the separation in our youth and old age which fate decreed. The memory of it all is sickening. You and I 414   chapter thirty-five have experienced the hardship of life and know its effects. Poverty stared both of us in our youth and manhood. You overcame it by honest toil to earn your living while I became a ward of the Government when I was segregated from you dear brother William and from all I held dear, for no crime other than for having contracted a loathsome disease. Be assured dear brother as long as I have a penny to give you will not go empty handed. I will share with you to the last morsel.2 Ambrose Hutchison’s life story could not have been any more dramatic or inspiring. No one else’s life more powerfully symbolized the clash between cultures over how to treat people who had leprosy. Ambrose was forcibly isolated at Kalaupapa, the place selected by the Board of Health, led by his Caucasian father, Dr. Ferdinand Hutchison, as the solution to the kingdom’s problems with leprosy . Throughout his life he was loved and cared for by a Hawaiian woman, Mary Kaiakonui, who saw the man, not the disease, and who embodied the Hawaiian­ belief that great love was always more important than fear. What emerged from the confluence in one person of these two different cultural responses was an exceptional human being who continually fought against injustice and insisted on dignity for all. Ambrose Hutchison never wanted to be considered the object of charity. In 1900, when the Board of Health distributed money obtained from a concert in Honolulu, each person was to receive 50 cents. Father Wendelin observed that Ambrose­Hutchison was the only person who refused the 50 cents. Instead of taking­ charity, in 1903 he gave Mr. McVeigh fishing equipment valued at over $1,000 for use by the Board of Health.3 When he no longer had an official position in the settlement, Ambrose spoke of not knowing what to do with himself. A person who had always been active, he wrote, “It is unbearable and to while away weary hours I have to pass them in reading.”4 He credited his wife with providing the comfort he needed during these difficult times. She was married to Ambrose from 1881 until her death on May 16, 1905, at the age of forty-seven.5 It is unlikely that anyone thought he would outlive her by twenty-seven years. In the late 1920s, Howard D. Case, a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,­ went to Kalaupapa to record the life story of Joseph Dutton. Case would have had to pass through Makanalua and near Ambrose Hutchison’s house on his way to Another Good Man    415 Kalawao.­In search of the highly publicized, legendary Civil War veteran, Case passed by the story of the Hawaiian. He passed by the story of the person with leprosy...