Guided tours will resume this month at Kalaupapa, a remote former leprosy settlement in Hawaii that has been closed to visitors since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, park and state health officials said Monday.
The closure had been imposed to protect the few remaining residents of the settlement, all of whom are over 80, from exposure to the coronavirus. Tours and religious pilgrimages have long drawn visitors to the isolated peninsula, which is cut off by 2,000-foot (600-meter) cliffs and has been reachable only by boat, small plane, mule ride or hourslong hike; park officials said travel to the area is currently limited to air access.
The peninsula was the site of a forcible exile policy that began in 1866 under the Hawaiian Kingdom, when people diagnosed with leprosy — now known as Hansen’s disease — were banished from their communities. More than 8,000 people died there over the course of the policy, most of them Native Hawaiian, officials and historical accounts say. The exile policy was formally ended in 1969.
Today the state Department of Health governs the settlement while the National Park Service operates Kalaupapa National Historical Park. Six former patients, all cured of Hansen’s disease, live at Kalaupapa now; their ages range from 84 to 101. Three live on the peninsula full time and three visit intermittently. Patients are free to leave but many have chosen to remain, saying the community has become their home. The state has pledged to keep the settlement open and continue care until the last resident dies.
Religious figures associated with Kalaupapa have drawn visitors and pilgrims for more than a century. Saint Damien, a Belgian Catholic priest who cared for patients in the late 19th century and later died there, was canonized in 2009. Saint Marianne, a German-born nun who served for decades and died of natural causes at Kalaupapa in 1918, was canonized in 2012.
Hansen’s disease is transmitted primarily by direct, person-to-person contact but is not easily spread, medical authorities say. The illness can cause skin lesions, deformities of fingers and toes, and blindness if untreated. It has been curable since the development of sulfone drugs in the 1940s, and people who have completed treatment are not considered contagious.
Tours to Kalaupapa are limited by the settlement’s remoteness and by the privacy of its residents; guided visits are the only permitted way for the public to travel there. Tours are offered through Kalaupapa Saints Tour, an operation founded by patient Meli Watanuki. Seawind Tours & Travel will operate tours on Watanuki’s behalf and will help facilitate Department of Health visitor permits, which are required for all visitors and only issued to people at least 16 years old, officials said.
Resuming tours has required overcoming logistical hurdles. Watanuki purchased a used van to transport visitors on the peninsula but had to wait for its arrival because a barge that carries vehicles to Kalaupapa calls only once a year. The van arrived Saturday, Seawind CEO Randy King said in the statement announcing the restart.
Kalaupapa’s reopening for guided visits comes as park and health officials balance public interest in the site’s history with the needs and privacy of its aging residents. The National Park Service and the state Department of Health will continue to manage access and visitor rules as the tours resume, officials said.