Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 9, Number 3, 1 March 1992 — Father Oamien remembered as hero [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Father Oamien remembered as hero

"If Father Damien were alive today, I believe with all my heart that he would be in the middle of the AIDS situation," says Honolulu actor Terrence Knapp in "Simple Courage," a onehour TV documentary that retells the story of Hawaii's tragic leprosy epidemic in the iate 1890s and Damien's heroism in caring for patients at Kalaupapa. This historical portrait provides a context for our response to the age of AIDS. The documentary premieres Wednesday March 18 at 8 p.m. on KHET-Channel 11 and will be rebroadcast Monday March 23, at 9 p.m. A benefit premiere is scheduled for Thursday March 5, at Mamiya Theatre. For tickets, eall Ann deMeurers at 955-7878. In 1988 former Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Stephanie Castillo, the project's writer and producer, made the leap connecting the experiences of Hansen's Disease and AIDS patients while covering stories on Kalaupapa and AIDS-related issues. "People with AIDS were saying they felt like they were being treated like they had leprosy," Castillo said, "and people who had lived with leprosy and had been sent to Kalaupapa on Moloka'i feared for people with AIDS because 'they were being treated just like they treated us.' " Others reminded Castillo of Father Damien de Veuster's legacy of compassion, saying he undoubtedly would be working with AIDS patients if he were alive today. "That's where I began — fleshing out and marrying these three ideas," explained Castillo. The "Simple Courage" video opens in 1893 with Ameiiean Provisional Government troops pursuing Koolau, labelled a renegade on Kaua'i for shooting a sheriff and resisting banishment to Kalaupapa, a violent low point in the Hawaiian monarchy's attempt to isolate leprosy, thereby separating families. Dr. David Scollard, UH-Manoa medical researcher, explains King Lot's dilemma: "Hawaiians were mueh more susceptible to this disease (having no immunity) and it was spreading among them in great numbers. The colonists ... were terrified ... and were advising him to send people away for life, whieh is eontrary, I'm sure, to his own instincts, but he also had to consider preserving his people from disease." In the video, Scollard also talks about the eollision of science and medicine in Damien's time with the biblical and cultural notions about disease and illness: "There were Biblical refer-

ences. The disease was presumed to be a divine curse because they had no other explanahon." Norwegian physician and sci<?ntist Amlauer Hansen in the 1870s uncovered the Mycrobacterillm leprae germ, thus pinpointing a biological cause. But in the absence of a cure, says Scollard, the stigma persisted and the only remedy was quarantine. "They (Hawaiians) weren't thought of as sick people but rather as criminals," says Anwei Skinses Law, author and Kalaupapa expert. King Lot's edict meant arresting people as leprosy suspects, turning them over to the law rather than to physicians and rounding them up for quarantine on Moloka'i. Enter Father Damien, "the most ordinary of men," according to Honolulu author Gavan Daws. The Belgian missionary priest, who spent his last 16 years at Kalaupapa, overcomes his own preoccupations. "It's just the jump that he ean make somehow in his life from being the most ordinary of men to doing the most extraordinary of things." "He asks the ultimate questions: 'Who is my brother and am I my brother's keeper and if I

am . . . what does that mean?' Must I reach out of my own limitations . . . my own hesitancies? Must I reach across and touch somebody else even if I get my hands dirty ... put myself at risk?' And Damien's answer is "yes,"' adds Daws, author of a Damien biography, "Holy Man." Castillo videotaped Dr. Ronald Bayer, a medieal ethicist from Columbia University's School of Public Health, for the AIDS tie-in. He likens the heroism of doctors treating AIDS patients to that of Damien's and comments on Cuba's current policy of isolating people with AIDS. As a Hawaiian story, "Simple Courage" tells how separation of families was more devastating than the illness itself. "We are native people of lohana, family people," explains Hawaiian physician Kekuni Blaisdell. Leprosy and isolation "contributed to the disruption of our own culture ... It was so abhorrent that we weren't permitted to talk about it. And so it's only now that we are able to talk about it and need to talk about it." "Hawaiians still whisper about family members who had leprosy," Castillo found while doing research. "It's time to lift the veil and the stigma. Hawaiians should be proud of their response to this epidemic. Many uninfected helpers called kokua went to Kalaupapa to help care for family members." The Kalaupapa story wouldn't be complete without the personal vignettes of residents Richard Marks, 01ivia Breitha, Henry Nalaielua, Hyman Fujinaga and Makia Malo. Breitha recounts her anger at a photographer prompting her to smile for her quarantine photo. A health worker suggests Marks change his name to avoid the leprosy stigma. He refuses. Fujinaga says he had no thoughts of marriage of having a family. "Father Damien provides us with a model response to the way in whieh people with disease want to be treated," added Castillo. "We are not telling our audience what to think. We are not preaching. I believe this documentary will provoke and challenge us into thinking about how we treat our fellow human beings and about the way our present-day history with AIDS is evolving." "Simple Courage," co-produced with KHETChannel 11, received funds through all appropriation from the 1990 Hawai'i State Legislature, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Hawai'i Committee for the Humanities and other corporate and private * donors.

Stephanie Castiilo Photo by Franco Salmoiraghi