The Lands of Father Damien: Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii - Hardcover

James H. Brocker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0964219735 ISBN 13: 9780964219731

Publisher: Islander Group Inc, 1998

Synopsis

This story takes place at an isolated peninsula located on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was on this insignificant splinter of land that people who were deathly ill and free of any crimes against nature or mankind were banished to spend their lives segregated from all civilized society. Forced from their families and stripped of dignity, these men, women and children came from all races, religions and walks of life.

Over the last 130 years there have been many strangers who came freely to these lonely shores and brought compassion, assistance and self-respect. Foremost among those was one whose destiny it was to achieve greatness by his humble efforts to relieve and ultimately share the pain of his fellow man. This Roman Catholic priest is known to the world as Father Joseph Damien deVeuster.

As the last of his people and the 20th Century fade into memory, the human tragedy that occurred here must be left as a reminder for all time of man's injustice to his own. The chronicle of suffering and loneliness within these pages belongs to each and every one of those exiled to the Kalaupapa Peninsula over the decades, and it is for them that this story is told....

About this title

About the Author

Born and raised of German ancestry in the farm and ranching country of central Texas, the author received his formal education at Sam Houston State University, majoring in Business Administration and History. He is a Federal Aviation Administration certified Airline Transport Pilot in both single and multi-engine aircraft, a commercial helicopter pilot, and a Certified Flight Instructor in both single and multi-engine jet and propeller powered fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

During his diversified flying career, Captain Brocker has logged over 13,000 hours of flight time world-wide. With extensive flying throughout the South Pacific, he has made hundreds of commercial flights in and out of the small Kalaupapa Airport on Molokai. He also guided visitors on the Kalaupapa Peninsula before the segregation ban, which allowed former patients to come into contact with visitors from the outside, was lifted in 1969.

Calling Hawaii his home since the 1960s, Brocker moved from Honolulu to the island of Molokai in the late 1970s, and after a time put aside his flying career to establish several corporations in the retail and wholesale trades. Among his hobbies are raising rare and exotic tropical parrots, photography, horticulture, scuba diving and fishing. He has also authored another of the island's best selling books,A Portrait of Molokai, which takes a step-by-step journey around the island, describing the history and local culture of Molokai.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from any major continent, lies a string of small, emerald-hued islands whose peaks thrust upward from fathomless, cobalt waters. The archipelago consists of 8 major islands and numerous others, settled only by seals, sea birds and turtles, with a sprinkling of tall, waving coconut trees. The major islands named in order of their alignment from east to west are: Hawaii, Maui, Kahoolawe, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau.

It is on one of these tiny islands of Hawaii that our story of great suffering and perseverance unfolds. The island is Molokai and lies in an east-west direction, between the islands of Oahu, 26 miles to the west, and Maui, 8 miles to the east. Molokai is some 2,200 miles from the west coast of the United States. It is thirty-seven miles long and never more than 10 miles wide at any given point; with 88 miles of coastal shoreline, of which 14 miles contain some of the highest sea cliffs in the world, Molokai's total land area of 261 square miles qualifies it as the fifth largest in the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Over the ages, Molokai's population has changed very little when compared to the other inhabited islands in the chain. Settled since about 600 A.D., her population seems to hover in one spot and never gets over the 10,000 mark. In 1836, Molokai's population was reported by The Missionary Herald of Honolulu as being 8,700 people; of these, 2,700 lived on or within a few miles of the Kalaupapa Peninsula. In the 1920s, the entire island's population dropped to 1,120 people; presently, it is about 7,000 people.

The creation of Molokai was the result of three separate volcanoes as they pushed molten lava from the ocean's floor. They were located where the island's West End, East End and the Kalaupapa Peninsula are today. Over the ages, lava flows from the two larger volcanic mountains to the east and west formed a plain between them; as a result, one large island was created. The third volcanic eruption, only one-half a million years old and the smallest of the three, formed a 2 1/4 mile wide area of land, the Kalaupapa Peninsula. The brief activity of its volcano, Kauhako, did not allow the lava to reach the height above sea level that its two older and bigger sisters attained. Rather than pushing upward, it spread its mass outward to rise just a little more than 400 feet above the violent sea surrounding it. Eons ago, the northern shore of Molokai crumbled and fell into the ocean, creating steep and unscalable cliffs rising hundreds of feet above the ocean. During its later eruption, Kauhako effectively welded itself to this cliff, thereby becoming a permanent part of the island. The Kalaupapa Peninsula points the tip and two of its sides directly into the savage winds and waves of the Pacific Ocean. As a result of exposure to these salty northeast trade winds roaring across its harsh surface, the low-lying land mass was bare of trees and vegetation for most of history. The fact that it is surrounded by a deep, furious ocean on three sides, framed with razor-sharp lava rocks at water's edge and blocked by high cliffs on the fourth side make the Kalaupapa Peninsula a natural prison. Indeed, the peninsula is one of the most isolated, remote and primeval places in all Hawaii.

The peninsula is divided into three districts: Kalawao, whose shores are craggy and weather-beaten to the east; Kalaupapa, placid and accessible by boat to the west; and Makanalua, with the dormant volcano Kauhako and surrounding land separating the former two. Today, although the peninsula is comprised of these separate land divisions, all are simply referred to by most as Kalaupapa, without regard to the distinct and separate districts. For the purpose of The Lands of Father Damien, and historical references, however, each district wil be referred to by its proper name.

For centuries the only way to get from sea level at Kalaupapa to the top of the high cliffs has been a narrow path chiseled into the side of the cliff's wall. It starts near Awahua Bay and ascends to the district known as Kalae, which today is referred to as Topside Molokai. The trail is nearly perpendicular, over 3 miles long and 1,600 feet in elevation. Along its course are 26 switch backs that corkscrew in and out of the various canyons and ravines.

It was adjacent to the base of this trail that for over 900 years there existed an isolated settlement of Islanders who, without interference from the outside world, lived their lives in tranquility and harmony with themselves and their aina, land. The people of this village called Kalaupapa quietly went about their unhurried and simple life, fishing the rough, surrounding oceans by outrigger canoe with nets and spears. They also farmed the land, coaxing the harsh volcanic soil into giving them sweet potatoes, onions and, on a limited scale, taro. With the vines of the sweet potato, their main vegetable, they fed their pigs, which in turn they used to barter with other villagers in the nearby eastern valleys.

While the rest of the peninsula was not largely settled, it was traveled much and used extensively. The entire area is divided by low rock walls that continue for mile after mile, creating thousands of small lots of every imaginable shape. With no written history of the people who built them, the theory is that they were constructed as pens for raising pigs, as windbreaks for growing crops and possibly as property boundaries and land divisions.

Numerous camp sites left from the old days are visible today, scattered at spots along the peninsula's coastline. Blended in the areas can be found fishing shrines, made of stones in circular or square-shaped platforms. The early Hawaiians built these structures to make offerings for their safety while fishing in the turbulent waters that surrounded the peninsula. There are also lava tubes and caves which were not only used as temporary shelters in bad weather or when a war was raging, but also as permanent homes. Some of these shelters have small family shrines erected within the enclosure, where the owners made known to their gods their wishes for health, peace and prosperity. In addition to the shelters and shrines, there are twelve major stone heiau, temple, sites which were constructed before there was written history in the islands. Built for worship and making offerings to gods whose names are unknown, they stand today as silent reminders of a culture that remains forever lost.

As the centuries turned slowly over, very little change occurred in the lifestyle of these bronze-skinned people who called the Kalaupapa Peninsula their home. Their existence, while not easy, was good in the sense that the sea and land gave them all that was needed to be content within their tiny universe. The atmosphere that prevailed was one typical of the Hawaiian race: tranquility and proud self-reliance filled with iron-willed determination.

In the 1860s, however, the lonely peninsula's future would be changed from an easygoing and peaceful lifestyle to one where a dark cloud of sorrow and despair cast its gloomy shadow over that small sliver of land. For a time, the entire world would close its eyes so as not to see the horrors that were held before them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Islander Group Inc
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0964219735
• ISBN 13: 9780964219731
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 135