Kalaupapa memorial should honor patients

THE ISSUE A bill before Congress would create a memorial to Kalaupapa's leprosy patients.

KALAUPAPA National Historical Park was established on Molokai more than 25 years ago, but it lacks a physical monument to honor and provide a permanent remembrance to the more than 8,000 leprosy patients who were banished to the peninsula over a period of more than a century. Legislation to create such a memorial is before Congress and should be enacted in the waning days of the current session or early next year.

A statue of Father Damien DeVeuster watches over Kalaupapa, but the only markers for the patients are gravestones. A memorial was suggested more than a decade ago, when Paul Harada, one of the last generation of island patients who contracted Hansen's Disease, called during a picnic on Damien's feast day for a marker equivalent to the eternal flame erected for veterans.

The memorial proposed by Rep. Ed Case, who district includes Molokai, would include the names of 5,000 patients who were exiled to the peninsula from 1866 to 1896 and the 3,000 who were taken there subsequently. The state ended the enforced isolation to the peninsula, cordoned by cliffs and the ocean, in 1969.

Congress established the park in 1980 to "preserve and interpret the Kalaupapa settlement for the education and inspiration of present and future generations." The memorial should properly be erected inside the four-acre park, administered by the National Park Service, to implement that purpose.

The House Resources national parks subcommittee heard testimony last week by Case and members of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, a group of resident-patients, relatives and friends, organized three years ago to promote the value and dignity of the exile victims.

No action was taken, and the chances of the bill being enacted this year are slim. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a cosponsor of the measure, and Case's successor should seek approval of the legislation in the next session of Congress.