Monument to Hansen's disease patients proposed in Hawaii

Published: 2006-11-10

HONOLULU (CNS) -- The hundreds of leaning, weathered gravestones all over Kalaupapa on the Hawaiian island of Molokai are the only public markers left to identify the people who lived and died in that isolated place. But those graves, numbering perhaps 1,300, represent only a fraction of the more than 8,000 people exiled there over the peninsula's 140-year history as the compulsory destination for Hawaiian patients with Hansen's disease, formerly known as leprosy. The rest of the sites have been lost to the ravages of time and nature. One of the first proposals of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, a group of Kalaupapa patients, family members and friends formed three years ago, was to create a monument that would display the names of all 8,000-plus patients who were sent there from 1866 to 1969. That group includes two relatives of Honolulu Bishop Larry Silva -- his great-grandfather, Joao Santos, who died in 1921, and Santos' daughter, Minnie Santos Aruda, who died in 1943. "I would like to add my voice to those who are endorsing the project," the bishop wrote in October to Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., chairman of the House Resources Committee's Subcommittee on National Parks.

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