Price of Paradise

- [Announcer] Major funding for this program was made possible by Kay Creath, the Sadler Trust, and by Farms.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) - [Interviewer] What's your name?

- That's a hard question to answer because I really can't answer that.

I'm puzzled.

Lindamae Lawelawe Carillo Maldonado.

It's hard to say which is my last name, 'cause I really don't know.

You know, I didn't find out my true name 'til I was 55 years old.

Okay, this is a collage of my daughter, my oldest daughter, which I live with.

She has three children, she has two girls and a boy.

This is my great-granddaughter.

My first born great-grandchild.

Unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to meet my dad, neither can I, and they never knew who their grandfather was.

By the time I found my family, they were a lot older, so they didn't have the opportunity to know their grandpa.

This is my room and this is my owl collection.

I collect owls.

This is a picture of my mom and my half sister on my mom's side.

This is a picture of my dad right here with his first wife and my two stepbrothers.

This is my brother Doug, my brother Mel, and my two half sisters, Maureen and Edwina.

This is also gonna be starting off a collage of all my great grandkids.

I only got my daughter's kids up here because everybody else is trying to compose pictures of their kids, so I can start a collage.

It started when I was 12 years old.

My family was very Catholic.

My father, who I thought was my father, had just passed away.

When we got home from the funeral, my mom sat all five of us down and told us we're adopted.

I remember that day so clearly.

She went through every one of us and told us of our birth parents.

They said that my father owned a general store, my mother was a nurse, they did not have any other children, they had a career, so they decided to give me up.

I did not look for my birth parents for years because I hated them.

I hated them so much because they gave me up.

They didn't want me.

But I did not know the whole story why.

But after that, I just lived my life, married my husband, and had three children.

I have three children, nine grandchildren, and 20 great-grandchildren.

How embarrassing.

I have so many grandchildren.

I just lived a relatively normal life until I got that phone call.

(phone ringing) I get home, the telephone rings, and this is an unknown number.

I picked up the phone and I said hello, and this woman at the other end says, "Hi, may I speak to Lindamae?"

My heart just stopped.

I was actually shaking because no one calls me Lindamae.

I said, "Yes, this is Lindamae, who is this?"

She just started crying and crying and crying, and finally, she says, "Lindamae, I think I'm your aunt."

I'm completely silent and I'm shocked, and she said, "Listen, you're not gonna believe this, but you were adopted."

I go "No lady, I've known this for years."

Then she says that "Your birth mother is alive and she lives in Kalaupapa."

I was lost for words.

I didn't know, didn't understand, this couldn't be possible, and why?

After all these years?

And she has been searching for me for 45 years.

I dropped the phone.

Finally, I called her back, and she told me that my birth parents had leprosy.

They were sent to the colony of Kalaupapa, which is on the island of Molokai.

I was shocked because I thought leprosy was a biblical disease.

She told me there was a child separation policy in place that meant that children born to parents with leprosy were taken away, and I was one of those children.

- Kalaupapa is a peninsula on the island of Molokai, which is one of the Hawaiian island chain's smallest islands and probably one of the least known islands to the general public.

I've had the opportunity to visit maybe once or twice, but it's a completely different world from Honolulu.

And then you get to Kalaupapa and that's a completely different world from the rest of Molokai, so that just gives you a sense of how remote and unique a place it is, and it is the epitome of what I imagine Hawaii looked like pre-contact.

Beginning in the 1800s, the government would send people suspected of having leprosy to Kalaupapa.

Once a person was sent to Kalaupapa, they were not allowed to leave.

They were told that they had to basically create a new life for themselves and a new community for themselves amongst the other patients who were exiled to Kalaupapa.

Lindamae was never notified that she was born on Kalaupapa.

She grew up never knowing much about Kalaupapa, to be honest.

She knew, kind of like me, she knew that it was a leprosy colony at one point, but nothing else.

- So two weeks later I got on the plane and it's just so funny.

We walked out to the plane and I looked at my aunt and I said, "We're not doing this.

This plane is so tiny."

I think it only fit three or four people.

(plane rumbling) The tip of the plane almost went into the ocean.

I mean, the runway was, god, I think my hallway in the house was longer than the runway.

So we landed in Kalaupapa, and it must have been like 30 people.

I think the whole community was there at the airport, and I asked my aunt which one was my mother, and she pointed out to the woman that was in a wheelchair.

My aunt told her, "Ellie, this is your daughter, Lindamae.

Lindamae, this is your mother," and we both hug each other, we wouldn't let go, and then she looked at me, she says, "I'm so sorry."

I says, "Why are you sorry?"

She says, "I'm sorry for having given you away, but I had no choice."

Then I looked at her, I says, "No, anybody is to apologize, it's me," and she looked at me just wondering why, and I says, "I didn't look for you, my birth parents, because I hated you guys for all these years.

I was growing up and getting into my marriage.

My ex-husband begged me to try and find them, and I refused to look for them.

I didn't think they should have the opportunity to know me when they gave me up.

I met my birth mother for the first time when I was 55.

I was 55 years old.

It was very strange because when I hugged her, it was just a hug.

It wasn't what I expected.

I think when I hugged my aunt for the first time, it was more of a attachment there than it was with my mother.

I didn't understand it then, you know?

But I stayed in Kalaupapa for three weeks, and I would go to the beach every day and just think, and I finally figured out why she was that way because I found out that she had two daughters.

I had an older sister that was five years older and her not having the opportunity to hold us, I think that's why her embrace was cold 'cause she didn't know how to be a mom, so there wasn't that mother instinct hug.

- That relationship with her mother, which I think initially she had assumed would be sort of this very loving, euphoric reunion, and the realization that it wasn't quite that made this whole process and this whole revelation that much harder for her.

I think her mother was just so traumatized and as a sort of defense mechanism had created this distance between her and Lindamae.

- I sat down and talked to my mom about my birth father because I needed to know where and who he was.

All my mother told me was that she knows he went back to Maui and he's probably deceased, and that was it.

Finally, my aunt told me that my father's name was Tio Filo Carillo, and he lived in Maui.

I decided to go and track him down.

We left Kalaupapa, went to Maui.

My aunt told me to go and look the name up in the phone book.

I was told my name was spelled with two Rs, C-A-R-R-I-L-L-O, and I couldn't find not one, but there was one missing for a Carillo, but it only had one R, so I picked up the phone and dialed a number.

A woman answered the phone and she said, "Who is this?"

and I asked her if there was a Tio Filo Carillo living there.

She paused and she said, "Tio Filo was my grandfather, but he died.

You might wanna speak to my father."

My heart dropped.

She put her dad on the phone and he must have overheard the conversation, and he just started crying.

He says, "Lindamae, is this really you?"

and when I heard him say Lindamae, I knew that he was related.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) - [Douglas] My name is Douglas Carillo.

- I'm Alice Carillo.

Do we like each other, dear?

- [Interviewer] Pretend.

- Well, we've been married 60...?

- No, no, no.

- 50?

How many, 50?

- 59.

You don't move 60 'til November.

- Oh, excuse me.

I know it's been a long time.

- [Interviewer] So Doug, tell me about your family history.

- You know, it was such a long time ago, but as I can remember it, I was eight years old.

There was a knock on the door and my dad answered the door.

They said that my dad had leprosy.

The man who showed up just came in and took my dad away.

I didn't know at the time that I wouldn't see him for six years.

- The vast majority of the people who were exiled to Kalaupapa were people of color, primarily native Hawaiian, but also Filipino, different Asian ethnicities, and so I think it was a lot easier for the government at the time to justify exiling Hawaiian people.

- I mean, at this point in time in history, it's a place of great suffering.

Kalaupapa is an excellent example of what institutions want to see and do in Hawaii.

Hawaii is definitely the place where the community takes care of their elders, of their sick, so to think that the community supported the work of the Department of Health in separating these families, it was very polarizing.

- My mom was a single parent raising four children.

I knew he got married after maybe a year and a half or so, but I still couldn't see him.

I couldn't visit him on on the Molokai, Kalaupapa.

My dad was finally from Kalaupapa because he was cured from leprosy and he had some problem with his second wife.

In fact, they got separated, I believe, and he called my mom saying that he wanted to come back home to Maui to come live with his family again.

Dad later on told us that he had a baby girl and they named the girl Lindamae.

Always knew I had a baby sister, but I just didn't know how we could find her.

No news came out and say that she was set out for adoption.

We just knew that she was given away.

No adoption was mentioned.

So one day we got a call, she was on Maui, and she wanted to meet me, our family.

- Our family.

- I was nervous 'cause this is the first time I'm gonna meet him and he's over 70 years old, and I didn't know how I was gonna be accepted to the family 'cause he was the very first one I was to meet on the Carillo side, my dad's side.

- But she was always looking for her family on the two Rs, C-A-R-R-I-L-L-O, and she couldn't find nobody.

(dramatic music continues) - [Alice] 55 years she was looking for us.

55 years.

- She came up and she drove right into the driveway, coming right in, straight in.

Then she parked the car, she opened the door, and I was standing right here and looking out the door, and she started to come out of the car, and she walked up and I went out and greet her, I said, "Oh, wow, you look just like Dad!"

- I remember getting outta the car and he was coming down his ramp and he just started crying, and he says, "God, you look so much like daddy."

It touched my heart because I never knew how my dad looked like, and to find out that I really looked like my dad, I would cherish that for the rest of my life 'cause I haven't met my dad.

I didn't have the opportunity to meet him.

- [Douglas] This is something that was missing in the Carillo life.

- I felt like she never left.

She was always in the family.

That's the way I felt.

As an outsider, I felt that strongly.

I felt that she always had her heart for her siblings that she never knew.

- When my dad came home from Kalaupapa, he had a goat, a pet goat, and the pet goat's name was Lindamae, so I guess somehow he brought this goat home, thinking of his daughter that he never met.

Lindamae was gonna be brought home with him.

- You know, I only met them within 10 years, and they come every year, sometimes three or four times a year.

- [Interviewer] What do you like to do when she's here?

- Play cards.

- Play cards, we play rummy, gin rummy, oh yeah.

- I don't wanna talk.

My sister-in-law is funny.

Sometimes I wanna hit her because she is so, how would I say it?

She's blunt.

- 15.

Well, she beats my ass out like nona, but that's okay.

You can take that out of the edit.

We got a bunch.

(Lindamae counting up points) - We really have a great time.

We look forward to having card games.

Anytime of day we'd be sitting down playing cards and he'd be going crazy over here like, "Don't they ever know when to stop?"

But you know, we continue, but we just have a great time.

Yeah.

- These slots.

God, I wish I'd lived here, but you know what?

It's okay.

- That's true, that's true.

- [Douglas] You had met your sisters, all the kids.

- But the most important would've been my daddy.

It's gonna be long.

- Linda, you ready for the front gate?

- I told you, it's gonna be a long night tonight.

- We can take nap.

(people chattering) (dramatic music continues) Look at how these pretty trees.

It's just covered with it.

- [Alice] It's pretty.

- What are they?

- [Alice] Trees.

- Yeah, but what kind of tree?

Sister, I know they're tree, but what kind of tree?

- [Alice] Well, honey, I'm not a botanist.

- They're bamboos, sister, they're all bamboos.

Look, they're bamboos, bamboos.

Bamboos, see, bamboos!

- [Alice] See I never had to tell you, you found out.

- I saw the bamboos.

Oh, this is a shower tree, yeah sister.

No shower tree?

Monkey pod?

- [Alice] No.

- No, what is it?

- [Alice] A wild tree.

- Oh my god, do I have no name?

- [Alice] No name.

- Oh geez.

- [Alice] According to me.

- They have to have a name.

- I cannot say enough.

The life with Linda is just so colorful.

(upbeat music) - [Douglas] I took her to the bowling gallery with me and just introduced her to my friends.

(upbeat music continues) (people chattering) (people laughing) - Oh my god, sister!

- [Alice] Take your time, honey bunch.

(upbeat music continues) (people laughing) (people chattering) - [Douglas] I say, "This is my younger half sister.

She's the baby of our family."

- I can't explain that feeling, 'cause it's very hard, it's very painful.

Yeah, I had an adopted family that I was raised with for 54 years, but to find my biological blood brothers and sisters, I was hurt 'cause I'd never had the opportunity to be that little sister that they wanted.

I missed having an older brother, having him being at my graduation, having him be in my wedding, maybe walking me to the altar.

It's a real hard and painful thing to talk about because the hurt will never go away because I had missed it, and I can't bring that back 'cause it's gone, and I'm 54 years old and I never had the opportunity as a little girl to grow up with my blood brothers and sisters.

I lost 55 years of knowing my true identity, and I don't think it's right.

I'm a human being.

I'm not a piece of trash.

- Laws of the territory of Hawaii, passed by the 16th legislature, regular session, 1931.

An act relating to the care, custody, and control of non-leprous children born to parents, one or both of whom are leprous.

All non-leprous children born to parents, one or both of whom are leprous, are hereby declared wards of the Territory of Hawaii and placed in the care, custody, and control of the board of health during minority.

Approved this 29th day of April, A.D.

1931.

Some people have asked whether in addition to exile, whether the policy to remove babies from their parents who may one or the other have the disease there on the peninsula, whether that was at all necessary.

Could children be raised at least on the peninsula in a kind of orphanage, if you will, but within the purview of their biological parents?

That was probably more a board of health decision and whether or not they were being humane there, I don't have the answer to that question.

- From my understanding, there was no clear policy as to what should happen next.

In some cases, the children, the babies were hanaied by relatives, and hanai in Hawaiian basically means you are adopted sort of casually as sort of a member of the family, and so a lot of them, they were taken in by relatives.

In Lindamae's case, she was adopted by a family.

- I wanted to understand why did this happen?

Why wasn't I raised with them?

Because I know I had two brothers and two sisters, and why was I not in their family?

Why was I taken away and raised by someone else?

That was really, really puzzling to me because after researching everything, I found that the most percentage of the children that was taken away were placed in family members' home or close family members, and after finding out that I had two brothers and two sisters, I was wondering, well, why wasn't I placed with them?

I tried everywhere, you know, I wrote, I went online, and I contacted the governor, the mayor of Hawaii, several congressperson, the Board of Health.

I mean, I went all out and nobody wanted to help me.

Nobody wanted to hear my story.

All I was told that I need to stay away from it, just leave it alone, but I just couldn't.

In my heart, I couldn't.

I just couldn't, so I kept on going, I surfed on the internet and then I found Honolulu Civil Beat.

It was a new little private newspaper company that was starting up, so I went and I put a little message and tell 'em a little about my story.

I can always remember his name, his name was John Temple.

He was the editor of this Honolulu Civil Beat.

So a couple of days after, I get a phone call and it's Mr.

Temple.

So he said, "Well, I'll tell you what, you stop there.

I wanna send a journalist there so she can interview you and we can write up something and, you know, see what we're gonna do with it."

So he says, "Well, her name is Alia Wong.

She's a intern," and we made arrangements.

She came over, it was raining, and when I opened the door, it was this little short, she was the most sweetest little girl.

- I got started in journalism before I even graduated from college.

I would always come home to Hawaii over the summers and I would often do internships.

During the summer of 2011, I interned at Honolulu Civil Beat, and that is how I came across the story about Lindamae.

In my decade plus of reporting, this story has continued to stick with me.

It's by far the craziest story I've ever worked on, and it just has so many questions that remain unanswered.

She was, you know, extremely passionate, but also I could just sense and see in her voice how genuinely betrayed she felt and how mixed her emotions were, and I was just immediately swept up by her story, just the emotional aspects, the government actions, the role of racism and discrimination.

- Then she called me in a couple of weeks.

She goes, "Well, we decided we wanna tell your story.

It's gonna be posted on the internet."

So she told me the website, I went on it, and I cried and I cried.

She felt every pain and every heartache that I went through, and she put it there.

She wrote it down and put it where people can read it.

- After I wrote that story, I continued to stay in touch with Lindamae.

I think it was maybe two years later, I did a follow up story on her, and that's when I was able to meet her, one of her half brothers.

- Two years after my brother Mel came to Hawaii and she came over and interviewed him.

His name is Melvin, and he's 10 years older than me.

He voiced his opinion to Alia about what had happened.

All these years, he never had the opportunity to be my big brother.

That was taken away from him, and he was so angry not knowing who was responsible for this and why now there's no apology or admitting that this happened.

He was very, very angry.

- I think in many cases, the people were indeed acting in what they thought was the children's best interest.

For example, Lindamae's adoptive parents never told her that they adopted her from Kalaupapa.

They were trying to protect her.

At the time, the stigma of leprosy was just so great, so I do sympathize with that rationale, but in retrospect, it just seems so inhumane.

- You know, now, this cancer on my father's side, and I just found out that I had breast cancer.

My daughters have to go twice a year for mammograms.

Both of them had cysts three times, three or four times, and had it removed.

And these are things that's important because that's part of your life.

You need to know what's wrong with you, and if that is kept away, that's cruel.

That's very, very cruel.

Everybody needs to know their identity, their roots, where they come from, what their medical background is.

You need to know that.

- To my knowledge, there aren't many, if any, records that would confirm that these babies were born on Kalaupapa, and that was intentional.

A Department of Health spokesperson even told me they did that to protect the children from the stigma of leprosy.

They didn't want the children to know that they were born to people who had this, at the time, what was considered to be this highly contagious, really stigmatized disease, so there was a really deliberate effort to erase those ties, and any records that are available tend to show, for example, the adoptive parents' names.

(dramatic music) The people who were making the decisions to send people to Kalaupapa were largely members of what was essentially a colonial government.

Hawaii has long been subjected to powerful people who have come to the islands for geopolitical reasons or because of its agricultural resources, not to mention the fact that it's paradise, and so it wasn't necessarily the kingdom of Hawaii who were making these decisions.

- So you ask about St.

Damien, who back in the day was known as Father Damien, Damien De Veuster from Belgium, who as a young man decides that he's going to spend the rest of his life sharing the gospel and serving humanity.

He ends up in the Hawaiian Islands.

Ultimately, when he hears the call for volunteers, volunteers for Kalaupapa, and originally the Catholic Church thought they would be rotating these volunteers out maybe every six months or so, but he said no.

After a while, he said, "I just want to stay here.

This is my place," and so once he made that decision that not only was this his place, but these were his people, he did everything possible to in a patriarchal way to bring in every possible resource that he could that might lift their lives.

He would make periodic trips by boat to Honolulu to plead with those that be in power for additional resources, whether it be food or whether it be building supplies or school supplies, and he just worked tirelessly and fearlessly.

He would be in constant contact personally with these patients, dressing their wounds and so on, and one might assume that's how he ultimately contracted Hansen's disease himself.

- [Lindamae] Oh my god, what a mess.

Look at all of this.

This is all what I've been doing for 20 years.

- [Alia] Oh my God.

- This is Sister Maryanne Cope, and I remember, this is the church that my mom and I went to mass services every morning at five o'clock, and this is part of Kalaupapa and this is the bishop home - That's the big five, right?

These major, powerful people took over each island, and for Molokai, it was Meyer, right?

- Right.

- So you have Meyer who kind of basically buys Kalaupapa, takes over that land, and then you have Father Damien, - You have two haoles, I don't know.

- Two haoles who don't speak any Hawaiian.

and they're the people essentially running the place.

- And they have all these little children that they have in this bishop home.

- I mean a lot of them are young, and a lot of them are girls.

- Yeah, a lot of girls.

- [Alia] And they don't speak any English.

- And it's so sad 'cause you just sit and you wonder what went on.

- Yeah, it doesn't sit right with me.

- It doesn't, it doesn't, and you're talking about Father Damien who's a priest.

- And he adopted a lot of kids, right?

- [Lindamae] That's what I heard.

(dramatic music) - [Alia] I think people view Hawaii the same way they have for a long time, which is that picture perfect paradise where everyone's happy, where everything's beautiful, and everything's super chill, but that's not always the case.

It's a very complex and layered place.

(dramatic music continues) - The history of Hawaii is definitely a complex one.

It's not something that's like easy to understand, let alone even learn about, and even in Hawaii, it is not taught to the extent that it should be, like our own people are not learning the extensive history of Hawaii, all the events that have happened, the way that those things are tied directly towards things that are still going on right now.

You have to like really seek out those specific like classes or information or teachers to learn this information, but it's not given to you.

And like in the history books, it's usually like a one little like two liner of like Hawaii's the 50th state.

That's it.

Hawaii has a history, a long history of foreign interaction, of colonization, of foreign religion being brought to Hawaii.

Once the first foreign sailors had discovered Hawaii and our people here, they kind of just kept coming, 'cause you know, once one finds it, they're gonna tell all their friends, and then everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, what are these like cool islands that you found?

Like what are these people in these like place?"

So naturally, once one kind of lands and finds their place here, others will come, and they've all kind of brought their own aspects, which then turn later into issues usually for our people, whether it's foreign mindsets, foreign religions, foreign diseases, all of those things that you can think of were all brought to Hawaii.

It took away the culture, it took away the religion, it took away the mindset, it took away what people knew, their beliefs.

It took away everything that they knew and left them in like a vulnerable state, and that was kind of when Christianity was able to come full force and be like, "Okay, here's a people who's kind of in the middle of a transition.

They don't have a secure religion culture anymore because of how it was broken.

This is a perfect time for us to come in and bring our Christianity here and try to conform the people, change the people, make them like us."

And you kind of just saw the slow modernization of Hawaii with even the types of buildings they would build, the outfits that they would make people wear, and then it went a step further of how they would treat people.

(dramatic music continues) (people chattering) - And so this Sanford Dole, you might recognize the the name Dole, is the founder of the Dole Pineapple Company, which dominates most of the landscape up in the middle of the island of Oahu, and interestingly, he, along with several of the other businessmen, were either children or grandchildren of the original Protestant missionaries from the American Board of Foreign Missions who brought Christianity in 1820.

These children and grandchildren sort of married into upper class Hawaiian families, obtained huge tracts of land, which gave them the resources they need to become outsized influencers over the royal family and over life in Hawaii in general, and ultimately their interests became more and more selfish to the point where they felt like they wanted to simply throw the royal family out.

- By the time Lili'uokalani was queen, there was already foreign entities that were in the government of Hawaii that had made their way in, so there was already foreign people advising her, foreign people in the government around her that were not on her side and not in her best interest, not in Hawaii's best interests.

So back then, the sugar plantation got a lease and they were able to divert just like two small areas up mauka from the river, but it was after that, they started to divert more, and so the more that they diverted above, the less water there was to the point where there was no water 'cause there's many factors why the US wanted Hawaii, but the main pushing point was sugar, and it was because there was a sugar fee of importing sugar to the US, so if they made Hawaii a part of the US, they wouldn't have that sugar fee.

Once they realized, "Wow, the sugar plantations, we could really make this a booming business here, and then if we annex Hawaii to the US, we can do this for so much cheaper and make so much more money.

Let's try to do this right now."

They had troops ready outside of the palace pointing at her.

It was full like you either sign this or these troops outside your window are coming for the people.

These troops are gonna kill everyone or kill anyone who stands in our way unless you hand it over, and so they kept her prisoner.

For her, her biggest thing was she did not want more war.

She did not want more of her people to lose their lives.

She just wanted to protect her people as much as possible, which is why, in the end, when she was forced to hand over the government, that's the reason why she did sign that was because she did not want her people to have to go to war.

She said, "Okay, as long as you don't hurt my people, I guess you can take it because I have no choice.

You're literally pointing guns at me and my people.

What choice do I have?"

And that's kind of just how it started.

A group of Hawaiian people set up the Kkpetitions, which was basically our people's way of saying, "We do not agree with this.

We do not wanna be annexed to the US We would like to just be our own nation.

We are Hawaii, our own nation with our own queen."

So this group went to all the islands, accumulated like thousands of signatures from people, kids all the way to elders saying, "No, we do not agree to this annexation.

We do not wanna be a part of this at all."

Those Kk' petitions were taken to Washington DC and presented all of this to the US government, and that is the reason that there's no treaty of annexation.

Our people did actually make a difference.

Maybe not the result they wanted, to like actually like fully stop the annexation, but they were able to at least stop the legal record, which then made the US have to own up to it.

There's proof that there's no annexation treaty because of this.

- These are like the last bits of the actual diplomacy between the United States and the kingdom of Hawaii is the executive order signed between Grover Cleveland and Queen Lili'uokalani.

Yeah, President Grover Cleveland described the acts as "an act of war committed without the authority of Congress."

Grover Cleveland, he has this executive order restoring the kingdom.

It's very clear.

Stanford B. Dole turns around and tells Grover Cleveland, "I am not an American.

You can't tell me what to do."

So without any election, right?

With specifically the help from the US armed forces, he appoints himself to be the president of the republic, he then holds a trial, and holds the queen under treason.

- They still illegally annexed because they wanted the profits, they wanted the money, and so after they did that, that's when they were able to continue to divert and add more diversions and dams and all those things which then just cut off the water that naturally would've flowed in that area of Maui.

It has made Lahaina and other parts of Maui and other parts of the islands just way more susceptible to things like fires, to things like natural disasters, because the environment is just drastically different from what it used to be.

- Redistribution of water for plantations, followed by leprosy and smallpox impacting the community that basically lost the water to growing their major staple food crops.

We're looking at, you know, at least 500 to a thousand years of pretty much unbroken abundance crashing.

- We're such a profitable place for the US that that is always their priority, and it has been from back then.

A big issue also regarding water in all of the islands really is what it's used for, and golf courses are one of the main things that water is used for on all of our islands.

Even during the Red Hill water crisis, that was one of like the main points people were saying is like hotels, tourist amenities, golf courses, were all allowed to just normally use water while the local people were put on heavy restrictions of water use.

Currently there are more than 70 golf courses across all of the Hawaiian islands, and a lot of these golf courses also are built on sacred sites.

They are usually the main places that get destroyed.

There are burial caves that people wanna build golf courses on, or they wanna expand the hotel onto.

Hey, like this is like a sacred site.

Not even just like a sacred site, some of these are sacred burials.

There are literal bones in these places.

Like, can you just respect this place and not build this?

'Cause if this was a different culture or a different religion, the respect might be different.

- Welcome to the News Hour.

They are still fighting fires tonight on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

- [Clint] Deadliest wildfires in the United States in over a century.

- Since the fires on Maui in Lahaina, and just that area in general, a lot of concerns and fears have come out from people, especially those who live there and were affected, of foreign entities or just people who have a lot of money, a lot of rich money that they can just spend, coming in and possibly trying to buy land during this time.

- [Reporter] Now, on top of recovery efforts there, Hawaii officials are trying to protect residents from predatory land developers offering easy money for those scorched plots.

- That is one of their biggest fears right now is that while they're trying to deal with this disaster, while they're trying to rebuild their community, rebuild their lives, that people are just gonna come in and grab the land while they're doing so.

With a lot of eyes on Maui, it will make it harder to do that, but because of the history of Hawaii and how we know that that's what people want to do, they wanna live here, they wanna grab land, they wanna have land here, that's always a goal for people, that we know with something like this, that there's always that underlying possibility.

But I think what we've also seen with the Maui fires and especially the aftermath, is the strength of the community, and that this is the time where our community is coming together and being like, "We are gonna rebuild this place how we see fit.

We are going to rebuild Lahaina how the people of Lahaina want it to be rebuilt, how the people of Hawaii, the people of this place who have genealogical connections to this place, to this land, that they are the ones who get to lead this rebuilding.

They're the ones who get a say, and there are always gonna be private foreign entities who want to grab land for money, who wanna make profit, who always just see priority, even in disaster, the strength of our community is definitely stronger, and I think it was very much seen during this aftermath of how fast and how strong our community throughout the islands were able to mobilize and come together, that this is kind of gonna be an opportunity to hopefully create an environment that's closer to what it used to be like.

A place where our Hawaiian native families can cultivate, they can be Hawaiian, they can be a part of their culture, how they used to be connected to the land, hands on, and hopefully able to heal, not just the land, but each other through all of this.

- When I was in my young twenties, I got to kayak backside Molokai with my grandfather and stay in Kalaupapa for a week.

Despite all of these atrocities, despite the separation of families, you'd never see your family again.

The hard truth is that Hawaiians have really figured out how to make the best with whatever terrible situation that they're in.

- It's really up in the air what will happen to Kalaupapa next.

It is still a very kind of isolated place, and there are still maybe half a dozen patients who live there.

That number is dwindling as they age.

The Catholic diocese has a huge presence there because of Father Damien, and there are some tentative plans to maybe create out of Kalaupapa sort of tourist destination for Catholics.

But there's a lot of disagreement too, because a lot of people say, we should come up with a better way to honor the legacy and honor the patients who were banned here without a choice.

I feel like telling Lindamae's story is so important because it's a part of Hawaiian history that virtually no one knows about.

- I'm still wondering why nobody wants to reach out.

It's easy to say, yeah, we're sorry, everybody makes mistakes, government may make mistake, but why do they still keep this hidden?

- [Interviewer] What does resolution look like for you?

- That she finds and receives what she's looking for, what happened to her and the others, and to be able to be comfortable in her skin about it all.

- It's not fair to the parents and the children that was involved, plus the family that were looking for these kids.

To say, that's not how to treat human beings.

We're people.

We're like everybody else.

We should have a record of a human life.

- But I will say that my sister is a lot happier now than she ever had been.

- Yeah, I'm still, I'm stunned, I'm amazed.

You know, all these years, for 20, and this started in 2003 now, and this is now 2022.

Took 20 years, almost 20 years.

All of a sudden my book is published.

(dramatic music) (people chattering) They set up a little chair and a desk and they had all the books on the side and then my nieces were there, my grandnieces were there on both side, adopted and biological, 'cause I had a lot adopted relatives in Maui too.

It was so beautiful because there was a big poster, well, with my story, you know, "The Lost Children of Kalaupapa," with the book cover of my book, which my granddaughter did.

I had to put that in.

(dramatic music continues) And then all of a sudden I turned my head and I swear, I saw somebody peeking out of this bookcase and I looked and I couldn't believe it.

(people chattering excitedly) Alia Wong was there!

I thought I was gonna have a heart attack.

(dramatic music continues) (people chattering) I was so lost for words.

I haven't seen her in about 11 years.

I was just crying and cried, 'cause she was like my little daughter, you know?

And we cried, we held each other, we cried, cried, cried.

I - I've been trying to contact you for your birthday.

- I wish you happy birthday.

- You did?

- Thank you.

- I was trying to tell you about my book.

I didn't know you knew my birthday.

Finally, we composed ourself and then she sat with me through the whole book signing.

(dramatic music continues) - It's very rare that a source or an interview subject of mine becomes a friend, but Lindamae absolutely has transcended that boundary that we often like to keep in journalism.

I've felt more invested in this story than I have in most, if not all of the reporting I've done, and it feels like an ongoing story.

- I just hope everybody reads it and understand the journey that I have been through for the last 18 years, and I thank you guys for.

(dramatic music continues) - It was one of my best days of my life.

It was, and to see all the people there for my book signing to have all these surprises, you know, it was unbelievable.

It's hard to explain, hard to explain.

It makes me feel good when I talk about it.

- Anyone I talk to about Lindamae is just, first, they're incredulous that this is something that happened.

A lot of people may have thought that the problem wasn't as large in scope as it was.

A Department of Health official told me that it is believed that a majority, if not a vast majority of the women who were patients on Kalaupapa at some point were pregnant there.

At its peak, 900 people living on Kalaupapa at one time, that just goes to show how far this problem really goes.

There could be thousands of children who are born on Kalaupapa who don't or didn't know.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (singer singing in patois) - [Announcer] Major funding for this progr was made possible by Kay Creath, the Sadler Trust, and by Farms.

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