Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory

Chapter 36. Suddenly the Whole World Changed: Twenty Stories of Separation

425 36 Suddenly theWhole World Changed Twenty Stories of Separation despite the recommendations of Governor Judd’s commission that people no longer be forcibly sent to Kalaupapa, the 1930s and 1940s saw many “shipments” of people whose relocation to Kalaupapa was not by choice. William Malo: “The ‘bounty hunter’ at that time came to the house down at Laie and got my tutu-man, my step-grandfather, and reported him to the health department. She came to pick him up. My tutu-lady and I said goodbye to him and he walked away from the house and we watched him walk until he was down to the highway—he was taken away never to come back. . . . My tutu-man was gone.”1 Herbert Hayase: “I was put on one of the interisland boats that shipped the cattle. . . . Right there I can say that I had a thought of suicide. But, I consider myself a good swimmer, so what’s the use if I jump in the water? So that’s how I landed in Kalihi Receiving Station in November, I think it was the day before Thanksgiving.” Bill Malakaua: “I was a suspect and I had five days to straighten out my business. I had a three-year-old daughter, a nine-months-old son. My ex-wife was about nineteen­years old. I was just twenty-two years old at that time. I believe it was Fourth of July—what a Fourth of July I had, being put away. Being put away, and Kalihi Hospital Receiving­Station—we had no definite time how long you’re gonna be there. They just say you shall be put away.” Olivia Robello, age eighteen. Courtesy of Olivia Robello Breitha. Suddenly theWholeWorld Changed    427 William Malo: “Because of my long association with my step-grandfather, not realizing what was happening to me, I came down with the disease. My mother recognized what was happening, so she kept me home and I didn’t go to school. We lived in a two-story home and she told me that whenever people came to the house, I was to go upstairs. So, half of my junior year and half of my senior year I was at home hiding, you might say. Apparently someone suspected and knew what was happening, so they reported me. The bounty hunter came one week in early December of 1939. When my mother saw her, she started wailing because she knew what was going to happen.” Olivia Robello Breitha: “I was eighteen and I had a boyfriend who I was planning to marry before Christmas. I never did tell my sweetheart anything about me. I never saw him again. I didn’t want him to know about it. Let him hate a lost love.”2 Kay Costales: “Do you know how it felt? I thought the whole world was gonna cave in on me. My son would have been one year old. At the time I went in, I was pregnant, expecting my second child.” A room at Kalihi Hospital. A. Law Collection. 428   chapter thirty-six Olivia Breitha: “It was devastating, you had an aching heart. You couldn’t talk things over before you went to bed. You couldn’t talk to anybody. Nobody was in the room with you but you. . . . So you cried a lot.” Kay Costales: “My second boy, my auntie adopted him. I couldn’t raise them. After I came here to Kalaupapa, I would only see them when I had to go to the doctor in Honolulu and that was about three to four times a year. That’s when I would get to see them. They have a love, but it’s a different type of a love, not as a mother and child. A child will love the face it sees in the morning. When they are sick, that’s the face that will always be there for them. I didn’t have the chance to raise my son— my second son lived ’til he was seven months old and he died. So I didn’t touch him because I had him in Kalihi Hospital. I just saw him and they whipped him off and then I didn’t see him anymore.” Edwin Lelepali: “I remember when I was a little boy, about four years old. They took my father away from me. He contracted tuberculosis, so they took him away...