LEO 'ELELE - TRUSTEE MESSAGES

Kalaupapa's Henry Nalaielua

Colette Y. Machado Trustee, Moloka'i and Lāna'i

This month's column is again dedicated to a Kalaupapa warrior who has recently passed on. The column is written by Valerie Monson, staunch advocate and board member of Ka 'Ohana O Kalaupapa. A close friend of the residents of Kalaupapa, Monson shares her aloha for Uncle Henry with all of us. Sadly, many of us will witness the end of a tumultuous era, as the transition is made from sanctuary to memorial.

Henry Nalaielua, who wrote about his accomplished life in the memoir No Footprints in the Sand, died early April 17, 2009, leaving the people of Kalaupapa to bid aloha to yet another great kupuna who left behind permanent footprints on the hearts of all who knew him.

"After hearing that Henry had died that morning, I noticed at sunset that there was no rain, just heavy clouds and deep crimson skies," said Dr. Emmett Aluli, a longtime friend and colleague of Nalaielua. "There was just all this crimson. It was like Henry was passing without commotion, without fanfare. He was being welcomed home by the ancestors."

Nalaielua was 84 years old. He was born Nov. 3, 1925, in the plantation village of Nīnole on the Big Island. When he was just 10 years old, his mother was forced to take him to Honolulu on a ship and leave him at Kalihi Hospital because he had been diagnosed with leprosy. Henry was the third child the Nalaielua 'ohana had to give up because of the disease.

Many years later, Nalaielua would still remember every detail of that childhood moment when the ship slipped away from the dock at dawn.

"My father was standing at the pier, crying," he recalled in an interview with this reporter in the early 1990s. "I'd never seen my father cry before. As the boat went away, as I could see him getting farther away, he was crying, crying, crying, crying. He knew he had lost one more child."

In 1941, when Nalaielua was 15, he was told he was being sent to Kalaupapa. It was a move he welcomed, so could be free of the barbed wire that ran along the top of the fence that surrounded Kalihi. He immediately relished the wide-open spaces of Kalaupapa that reminded him of home.

"There were all these things I was used to – 'ōpae, 'o'opu, ginger, watercress, mountain apple," he said. "All the things I grew up with."

There was no cure for leprosy at that time so Henry was told he had only a few years to live. Because of that, he saw no good reason for educating himself. Books were not a part of his life until a friend who was a strong Catholic gave him a book about Father Damien de Veuster. Henry was surprised to learn that he had the same disease that Damien had contracted generations earlier.

That book had life-changing implications for Nalaielua. He became devoted to Damien and would eventually visit Damien's hometown and attend beatification ceremonies in Brussels in 1995. He became friends with Damien's descendants who were as inspired by the life of Nalaielua as Nalaielua was of their ancestor.

There was also sadness for him at Kalaupapa. Soon after he arrived, Nalaielua was told that his two sisters who he knew had left home before him, had also been shipped to Kalaupapa. Both had died before he arrived. He spent years searching for their graves, a search that proved to be fruitless. It was one of the reasons he became a strong supporter of a monument on the Kalaupapa peninsula that would list the names of those who had been sent there because of leprosy. He not only wanted his name permanently engraved on the monument, but also the names of his sisters.

During his lifetime, Nalaielua had many jobs. At Kalaupapa, he was a police officer, carpenter and tour driver for Damien Tours. When he was able to leave Kalaupapa after testing negative for the disease in 1949 (drugs to cure leprosy were introduced to Kalaupapa in 1946), he worked for Hawaiian Electric and played music after hours. He later moved home to Kalaupapa, missing everything he held dear.

Although he eventually became an author when his autobiography was published in the fall of 2006, Nalaielua might best be remembered as a musician and artist. He produced so many paintings during his lifetime that he had a one-man show in Honolulu in 2003.

"He was a poet, a composer, a genealogist, a storyteller, an artist," said Aluli, "but what stands out for me about Henry is the scholarly and philosophical person that he was."

For years, Nalaielua served on the board of directors of Nā Pu'uwai Native Hawaiian Health Systems where he was the guiding force for Aluli and Billy Akutagawa, another good friend, and others. He also served on the Board of Health for the State of Hawai'i.

Burial was at Kalaupapa where his family and friends gathered together to celebrate a man whose life was a masterpiece.