The Kalaupapa Saints Tour highlights a fraught yet hopeful and faith-filled history
The Kalaupapa Saints Tour takes visitors to Kalawao — the first area of the Kalaupapa peninsula that was settled by Hansen’s disease patients — via a dusty, rocky road. (Photos by Celia K. Downes / Hawaii Catholic Herald)
By Celia K. Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Amid the hustle and bustle of exiting the tiny airplane that lands outside the equally tiny Kalaupapa Airport, it’s easy to overlook one of the remote Molokai peninsula’s more striking qualities.
Pause for a moment, and you realize: Kalaupapa is quiet. With few cars and fewer people — more axis deer than anything else — the loudest sound is the rustling of trees as wind sweeps across the former Hansen’s disease settlement.
And yet there’s much life to be found here. A small but vibrant community coexists with the deer and other wildlife, and holds memories both tragic and joyful from Kalaupapa’s history as the final home for thousands of people afflicted with Hansen’s disease (also called leprosy).
Nearly all of those people have passed away; just a handful of patient-residents remain. They live alongside employees from the state Department of Health, which oversees the settlement, and the federal National Park Service — Kalaupapa was designated a national historical park in 1980 — as well as a Sacred Hearts priest and Franciscan sisters who represent a through line to the two saints who gave their lives to minister to patients and their families.
Before they were declared saints in 2009 and 2012, Sacred Hearts Father Damien de Veuster and Mother Marianne Cope of the Sisters of St. Francis arrived in the Kingdom of Hawaii decades apart in the 19th century, heeding the call to minister to the islands’ residents.
They sought to help Hawaii’s sickest and most shunned — those suffering from Hansen’s disease — which led them to the Kalaupapa peninsula. The first residents were isolated and forced to stay on the Kalawao side, to the west, and later the community expanded east to the Kalaupapa side.
Throughout the years and well into the 20th century, patients continued to arrive and live — and thrive — in Kalaupapa. When a cure for Hansen’s disease was discovered in the 1940s, many who lived there chose to stay, transforming Kalaupapa into a tight-knit community as well as a monument to past horrors and hardships.
A new tour company that began operations last month captures this history and much more. Founded by Meli Watanuki, herself a patient-resident and a vocal advocate for the settlement, the Kalaupapa Saints Tour marks the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that the public has been allowed to visit Kalaupapa.
Strict visitation rules remain in place. People cannot merely fly into Kalaupapa; they must be listed as guests, their presence allowed by the state DOH. Forms must be signed, and advisories are explained before tour groups depart Honolulu Airport’s intimate Terminal 3. (For example: There is no outside assistance available due to Kalaupapa’s isolation, and visitors must pack their own lunches for the daylong excursion.)
Tour guests also must be 16 and older in order to visit Kalaupapa.
The Kalaupapa Saints Tour is operated solely through Seawind Tours and Travel, which has worked extensively with the Diocese of Honolulu on past journeys including the beatifications and canonizations in Belgium and Rome of St. Damien and St. Marianne. (The diocese, however, is not involved with the new tours.)
On Sept. 18, Seawind Tours hosted a media preview of the Kalaupapa Saints Tour, inviting journalists from several news outlets, including the Hawaii Catholic Herald, to experience the tour ahead of its official launch a week later.
From top: A sign greets visitors to Kalaupapa — as does an axis deer in the background, one of hundreds that roam freely throughout the settlement. Joseph Dutton’s grave sits outside St. Philomena Church in Kalawao. An original portion of St. Philomena was preserved, with holes in the ground where patients could discreetly spit while still attending Mass. Jim McCoy, director of communications for Pacific Historic Parks, looked on as Franciscan Sister Alicia Damien Lau spoke in the reopened bookstore run by the National Park Service.
‘Blessing the day’
The day began inauspiciously with a nearly two-hour delay in Honolulu, but spirits remained high as the small Cessna traced the outline of Molokai’s northern coast toward Kalaupapa.
The group was greeted at the Kalaupapa Airport — really, the storage area, as the airport was undergoing its first renovation since being built in the 1950s — by Sister Alicia Damien Lau and Sister Barbara Jean Wajda of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, as well as by Watanuki. They would visit the tour at various points but did not travel with the media group.
Conditions were clear and breezy (in fact, a fire hazard warning was in effect due to the dry environment); Watanuki remarked that the saints were “blessing the day” with good weather.
The journalists piled into a large passenger van with John Meadows, a volunteer tour guide, at the wheel. Randy King, the founder and CEO of Seawind Tours, and Brooke Austell, a travel coordinator for the company, also accompanied the group.
The vehicle pulled away from the airport and headed down the main road into town, passing by patient-residents’ homes — if not still in use by the original owner or left vacant after his or her passing, they might then become residences for DOH or NPS workers — and Papaloa Cemetery, the peninsula’s largest cemetery that still contains just a fraction of the settlement’s total deceased.
A left turn brought the group into town, where Meadows described areas designated for use by visitors (Kalaupapa residents can invite people as guests, following DOH protocols) as well as buildings that serve as a care home, offices and other administrative buildings. The parks superintendent for Kalaupapa, Nancy Holman, also stopped for a brief visit with the group.
The tour continued toward Kalawao, passing through areas at turns barren and thick with trees that also revealed time-worn signs of life — a chicken farm, a heiau, a smaller cemetery, a church.
Legacy, then lunch
Key to the “saints” part of the tour was a stop at St. Philomena Church, which Father Damien expanded in the 1870s and which continued to grow after his death.
Stepping inside reveals a simply designed nave and sanctuary, with the altar currently in use as well as one used by Father Damien. An original portion of the church remains, marked by plain wooden pews and flooring — with holes cut into the planks at regular intervals, Father Damien’s design meant to allow patients to discreetly spit without having to step outside during Mass.
Outside St. Philomena lies the gravesites of Father Damien as well as of Joseph Dutton, the layperson who helped Father Damien and remained in Kalaupapa for decades after Father Damien’s death. Priests who have served in Kalaupapa are also buried outside the church.
Across from the church lies the former site of the Baldwin Home for Boys, now vacant but planned as the future home for the Kalaupapa Memorial. The long-delayed project finally has funding but remains years from completion.
The group paused for lunch at Judd Park, built by Kalaupapa’s Lions Club (which constructed many of the settlement’s public buildings and meeting sites) and still used by residents and workers as a place to gather and relax. The journalists were joined by Sister Lau, Sister Wajda and Holman; after the meal concluded with wishes of “Happy Birthday!” for Sister Wajda, the tour continued, following the same road back toward town.
In Kalaupapa town stand two memorials to the settlement’s saints: Mother Marianne Cope, top, and Father Damien de Veuster, above.
Hope for the future
Back on the Kalaupapa town side, among the group’s stops was the bookstore run by the National Park Service — open again after being forced to close when public tours ceased five years ago. The journalists also visited memorials to Father Damien and Mother Marianne as well as St. Francis Church, where Sacred Hearts Father Pat Killilea resides.
The tour ended at Paschoal Hall, another main gathering place for the Kalaupapa community whose design reflects old health fears: The stadium-style seating was aimed at separating patients from those in the settlement unafflicted by Hansen’s disease.
King of Seawind Tours, Watanuki and her grand-niece Rosa Key, Holman and Sister Lau sat for a press conference in which Watanuki led the answering of questions submitted in advance of the media tour.
She emphasized the need for visitors on the Kalaupapa Saints Tour to be respectful of the settlement and the people who live there, past and present. At the same time, her enthusiasm for welcoming people to experience Kalaupapa was evident.
King and Holman both described the state and federal capacity limits placed on outside visitors, with King expressing hope that the tours could gradually be scaled up.
At the same time, he said, the focus must still be on respecting the sacred space and remembering the saints who ministered there as well as the people who lived and continue to live there.
Regarding the future of Kalaupapa, Watanuki said she prays to St. Damien and St. Marianne and wants it to “become a holy place … no more noise, no more fighting, no more arguments.”
Despite her enthusiasm for her tour company, Watanuki also said she did not want to see the settlement open up completely to “everyone.”
Holman admitted that the future is a difficult topic to discuss. An NPS planning document prepared in 2021 attempted to lay out a 10-year plan for what access would look like, she said.
“I love this place, this blessed place,” Watanuki said.
Reflections from the first public tour
Kalaupapa Saints Tour’s first official outing took place Sept. 24.
Camryn Kunioka, a group travel coordinator for Seawind Tours, accompanied the first group of visitors on the inaugural public trip.
“Everything was special,” she recalled. “We came in with only excitement and without expectations, which allowed us to fully appreciate all the community, their residents and (the) sisters had to offer.”
Though she is fairly new to Seawind Tours, Kunioka said that working with the Kalaupapa community “feels like you’ve known each other for years from just how encouraging and welcoming they all are. Their enthusiasm and passion for sharing the history and stories of those who have lived in Kalaupapa is inspiring.”
She said at the end of the tour, the participants were invited to talk among themselves and share their reflections on the day: “Everyone was just thrilled to get the chance to visit a place that felt forgotten by time and learn about the history that is so important to our islands’ and state’s history.
“The day felt like we stepped into a postcard and made it feel like a fantasy,” Kunioka added. “The history and stories of the people, however, offered the balance it needed to remember that these were true events that happened to real people who did nothing wrong.”
She said she was “beyond grateful and blessed to have had this opportunity that I never thought imaginable.”
The tours are currently sold out through the end of the year, but plans are in the works to add more. Visit www.seawindtours.com/kalaupapa/saintstour for more information.