The Colony: The Harrowing True Story Of The Exiles Of Molokai

To this day, the least populated county in the United States is a small valley on the island of Molokai that has, the last I knew, some twelve residents who are survivors of a long-lasting and deeply troublesome experiment in public health. If I have been critical of public health efforts in light of the efforts by many governments to treat healthy people like lepers during the time of Covid, there is also criticism about the way that the Hawaiian and then the United States government treated actual lepers (though some people consider the term to be offensive to those with Hansen’s disease) for a period of more than a century in the 19th and 20th centuries. This book is a poignant reminder of the humanity of those who suffered from dreadful diseases in often terrible conditions of isolation and privation in a remote valley under the rule of corrupt and abusive authorities who were always aiming to spend less money on care than would be suitable to provide for dignity as well as decent care for those suffering. This book is not without its flaws, to be sure, but the author manages to have done solid research on a compelling topic and that makes for a generally solid book.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit more than 300 pages long and it is divided into four parts. One of the striking aspect about the book’s unnumbered chapters is that it includes the known (or estimated) population of the colony at the time the chapter’s events take place, showing the growth, stasis, and gradual decline of the population of this most unusual of American counties. The first part of the book begins in the middle of the story, so to speak, with an effort on the part of a Hawaiian leper to avoid being brought to exile on Molokai, with the result that a lawman was shot dead (whose son later appears in the story), and then goes back to the beginning as to how the isolated valley was discovered and viewed as appropriate to deal with the rising concern of leprosy in Hawaii. The second part of the book concerns the growth of the colony, along with its expenses, and the way that the colony was ruled over in the interests of parsimony, with tragic results for those inside the near-prison. The third part of the book then looks at the decline of the colony in the face of improved treatment for Hansen’s disease, along with some continuing sad stories from those who were latecomers to the valley. The book then closes with chapters that deal with what happened after the colony was officially closed, but where many of its dwindling cohort of residents found themselves unsuitable or uninterested in returning “home” to those who had abandoned and forgotten them. The book then ends with notes, a selected bibliography, photo credits, acknowledgements, and an index.

Generally solid, though, does not mean perfect. One aspect of the book that is particularly irritating is what appears to be a strong anti-Protestant bias. While the author has some good things to say about the heathen Hawaiian views of various taboos and plenty of good things to say about Father Damien and those who followed him in the Catholic traditions, the author has little nice to say about Protestants in particular. Given the larger scale issues of leprosy and humanity, the author would have been better advised to keep his biases to himself and not let them infect a work where he was trying to build a broad case against the inhumanity done to people with Hansen’s disease, something that is hindered when one attacks large potential members of that reading audience. Besides that, the book is a bit rambling on occasion and the organization is a little bit sloppy and haphazard. These are not fatal flaws, but they certainly make the book less accomplished than it could have been in the hands of a more skilled writer and/or editor. Still, this book is good enough to get its point across and it is full of striking character studies of people who lived over the long period of time when the leper colony of Molokai was in operation, showing the political nature of public health and bringing the field, as it has been practiced, under some well-deserved scrutiny.