In the second part of our Kalaupapa story, we hear how people exiled from society reconnected with family – and found a new community.
Listen to part one, “A Dangerous Word.”
Released on December 6th, 2022.
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Kamilah Kashanie (KK): It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR…I’m Kamilah Kashanie…
In this episode, we’re gonna pick up where we left off last week…
…hearing from the forgotten people… of the first and largest leprosy settlement in the US.
<MUSIC>
Around 8-thousand people were sent to live in Kalaupapa on the Hawaiian island of Molokai….
Last week, we heard from Doug Carillo…whose father was one of them…
Doug Carillo (DC): I was like 6 years old and somebody came to pick him up. We were all gathered on the porch watching him leave and we were all crying.
The forced separation affected families through generations…
…including some actually born to patients from Kalaupapa…like Linda Mae Lawelawe…
Linda Mae Lawelawe (LL) & Doug Carillo (DC)
LL: My mom had leprosy and as soon as she delivered me, the nurse picked me up and put me in another room.
And there was windows and my mom could see. But she never had the opportunity to touch me.
And I don’t know how many weeks old I was when my adoptive parents took me.
KK: Here’s producer Jo Corona with the rest of the story….
Jo Corona (JC): Linda Mae Lawelawe had happy memories of her childhood…
She grew up in a loving household with six other siblings.
But more than 50 years would go by… before she would discover the truth.. of where she came from.
What Linda Mae didn’t know was that she had a half-sibling… Doug…
Because while Doug’s father was in Kalaupapa… he had a child with another patient.
Doug and Linda Mae are both in their 70s now… and still have a lot of questions…
So they sat down for a StoryCorps conversation to ask some of them…
Linda Mae Lawelawe (LL) & Doug Carillo (DC)
DC: I knew I had a sister, half sister, but there’s no way of finding out how to trace you ‘cause they never had records.
So locating you was impossible. So we just say, ‘Well, I guess, she’s out in this world, but she’s carrying a different name’.
DC: My question is what was the story your adoptive parents told you?
LL: When I was 12, my mom, she told me that my father was – [Laughs] My father owned a grocery store, my mother was a nurse; I was their only child. And they had a career so they don’t want to be tied down. So they gave me up for adoption. This is what I was told.
DC: Ah. That’s a lie though. That’s a total lie.
LL: I know, but I didn’t know that.
DC: Yeah ok.
LL: So we all lived. And I never look for them, you know, my biological family. I says, why should I look for my parents when they gave me away, you know?
JC: And then, in 2003…she found out that both her parents were from Kalaupapa, and because of that…
They had to give their kids away…
LL: For my adoptive parents to tell me that story — At first I thought, you know, why did they lie to me for all those years? But now I think my adoptive parents never told anybody because leprosy was such a stigma.
DC: That’s right.
LL: So they think of different things to say to hide that — I guess for them not to have people looking down at them.
JC: Linda Mae was able to meet her mother… but her father had been dead for a decade.
LL: I missed the opportunity of meeting my father, and it just took a toll on me. You know, I had so many questions. And I’m still angry today because I don’t have any answers.
I close my eyes and just imagine touching him, you know, because that’s what I miss.
DC: Hmmh.
LL: That hurts. Yeah, it really hurts.
<BIG BEAT>
LL: Finding you took 55 years. What did you remember about the day I called your home?
DC: I think the first word I spoke to you was, ’Who this?’ The part that really excited me is when I first seen your face…
LL: Hmmh. I remember.
DC: I said, ‘She looks just like Dad!’
LL: [Laughs]
DC: You know, to see you with my eyes really made my heart say, ‘This girl is my sister.’
LL: You just ran to me and gave me the most biggest hug I ever had.
DC: We’d been looking for you for such a long time. So when we finally met, there was relief in my heart.
LL: Hmm.
LL: Did you ever wonder about me? What I was like? How I looked like?
DC: Of course I wondered about you! Because I knew you were there, but I didn’t know where you were.
And that’s the hardest thing to accept.
LL: When I found out what happened to my real life, I was not gonna let it go. Because I didn’t have the opportunity of having my brothers and sisters be there to protect me.
You know, watch me grow up.
DC: Mhm.
LL: It was scary for me because I was worried what they think of me, you know, because I’m not a little baby, you know?
DC: How has our relationship evolved since we’ve met?
LL: I have known you for almost 20 years, brother. And we’ve gotten so close.
Family is very very important, you know. It’s nice to know that I know that there’s people here in this earth that I’m part of because I have their blood running in me.
I am so fortunate that I can carry you with me forever until we leave this earth.
DC: You know how much I love you.
Even though Linda Mae lives halfway across the country from Doug… they still manage to see each other… a few times a year.
…And while thousands of families like theirs…were torn apart…
After the break, we’ll hear a story of how the settlement… also brought people together…
Stay with us.
<XPROMO>
JC: When I first started reaching out to people in Kalaupapa, the first patient to respond was Meli Watanuki.
Meli Watanuki (MW): I’m the last patient come here in Kalaupapa.
JC: Now 88-years old, Meli arrived in Kalaupapa in 1969. Leprosy alienated her from everyone she knew in Hawaii, so she went to the one place where she found community.
…She married another patient… Pili… and they were together until his death in 1981.
Meli still remembers the conversation she had with him the night before he died.
MW: My husband told me, ‘Honey, remember, you got to find someone. They love you and take care of you like how I do.’ And I told him, ‘Why you talk to me like that? It’s not right.
In the morning I woke up, 6 o’ clock and the nurse tell me, you’re husband is die.
<MUSIC>
JC: At around the same time as Pili’s death… the state hired Randy Watanuki to do carpentry work and other odd jobs in Kalaupapa.
They came to StoryCorps to remember the first time he noticed her.
Randy Watanuk (RW): I used to see you on Wednesday. And I used to think to myself, who that lady? How come you cry so much? And I found out that your husband died ten days before I came Kalaupapa.
And I helped dig your husband’s grave.
Meli Watanuki (MW): Yeah.
RW: That was the first thing that they made me do over here.
And so that’s why I think I was reincarnated from your husband, Pili. Because I ended up with you.
We fell in love with each other, and we became a couple.
MW: I found you as a good man in my life.
RW: I remember when I told my mom that I was gonna get married to you, and my mom was very against me marrying you.
MW: I was kinda sad, you know, because she never liked me. Because I’m a patient.
RW: Yeah, that’s only because of the sick, you know, they get the wrong idea of what’s going on.
The extent of their knowledge about leprosy was just like in the Bible, yeah? So my mother was real concerned that I would get sick.
MW: Yeah. I understand.
RW: But I thought you was special.
MW: And finally, they really love me… yeah.
RW: The happiest moments in my life is when when I see you smile. When you’re happy. That’s what makes me happy too.
MW: [Laughs] I always smile.
We love each other, right?
RW: Yeah.
MW: You love me.
RW: [Laughs] Yeah, I love you a lot.
MW: Ok.
JC: That was Meli Watanuki with her husband, Randy Watanuki.
JC: Meli and Randy first connected at Pili’s gravesite…
And graveyards play a huge role on the island… because the memory of death… is everywhere…
MW: Sometime I pū.ʻiwa. Pū.ʻiwa means scared. Just like you scared of ghosts. And I, that’s how I feel.
Me before I scared to walk where all the dead peoples’ grave.
But right now I feel, just like a guarding angel. They walk with me sometime.
And so… I no scared of nothing.
<MUSIC>
JC: My last day on the settlement I piled into the car with Sisters Alicia Damien Lau and Barbara Jean Wajda… the two nuns who have been my guides for the last week…
We went up a trail to the eastern side of the peninsula… Kalawao…
BJW: Is that a rainbow at the base of that?
JC: Oh my gosh, it’s a rainbow, yeah.
JC: The nuns then parked in front of a small church… and a field covered in purple flowers.
BJW: In this field, there are probably many of the 8000 patients, who are buried there with no markers at all. And probably in part, it was because there were so many dying every day. And it was just, you know, a logistical problem to keep up with it.
JC: There are only about 1200 marked graves out of the 8 thousand people who were sent there.
And so the nuns say that… actually… Kalaupapa… all of it… is a mass burial site…
JC: And with so few patients still alive, everyone I spoke to while I was there, had the same question…
ADL: So what will happen to Kalaupapa? The patients are saying we want it to be a place of remembrance, to help to perpetuate the stories, and keep it alive with the spirit of the people that have been here.
JC: Even though sister Alicia and Barbara Jean came here because of their faith and to minister to the patients… in all these years, they’ve become a part of the community themselves..
And they both agree on this one thing.
BJW: We have both made a commitment to stay here until the last patient either leaves or dies. That’s provided we’re alive.
So, let’s hang in there together forever.
ADL: Together forever.
BJ: Yes. Together forever.
<MUSIC>
JC: As I packed my things and got ready to leave the island… I was thinking about what I had hoped to discover before coming here…
I thought that once I arrived… I would understand… why thousands of people were separated from their families… how they survived decades of isolation… and what effects shame and secrecy had on generations.
I thought I would have answers.
But I didn’t…
As the nuns drove me to the airport…all I could think about were the patients and the residents of Kalaupapa… and how grateful I was to have met them and heard their stories.
Pilot: All right, hello everyone, welcome onboard. Thanks for joining us over to Honolulu. Just a quick safety briefing before we get on our way, please review the safety card… [airplane engine].
I witnessed Kalaupapa before it all goes away…
It’s a place preserved in time… where despite all the hurt and the sick and the death, people fell in love and had families and just… lived.
<MUSIC>
KK: This episode of the StoryCorps podcast was produced by Jo Corona and edited by Jarrod Sport, who is our Senior Producer. Our Lead Producer is Eleanor Vassili. Max Jungreis is our Associate Producer. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd, who also composed our theme song. Our fact-checker is Erica Anderson. Our story consultant is Jasmyn Morris.
Special thanks to Ben DeHaven, Sisters Alicia Damien Lau and Barbara Jean Wajda, the Department of Health and the National Park Service and the people of Kalaupapa.
To see what music we used in the episode… go to StoryCorps.org… where you can also check out original artwork created for this season by artist Lyne Lucien.
For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.
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