♪♪ [singing in Hawaiian] ♪♪ Woman 1: In the dictionary, kapuna is grandparent, elder, the wiser older guys.

That's the kapuna and the kapuna is a great place to be because they kind of look to you for answers and even if you don't have it quite right you look like you know what you're talking about.

♪♪ Lise: Maile Mossman, a mother of seven, and grandmother of 18 is a Hawaiian from the island of Maui.

As a kapuna at the Pukalani elementary school, she teaches Hawaiian culture and values through traditional music and dance.

Maile: To teach my grandchildren the stories, the songs, the life's lessons is so important to me and I find it’s necessary to continue to live today, in this day and age, knowing that the value lessons taught from the past.

Lise: Through her teaching, Maile passes along oral traditions not only about Hawaiian history but also about her own family history.

And there is one family story that she's always felt emotionally drawn to, but has never been able to confirm.

Maile: My great-grandmother, Emma Lyons, had an illegitimate child.

It kind of like was a quiet thing, but not quiet in our family's passing it down, and then she contracted leprosy and she was sent off to Kalaupapa.

She remained there, married, had five children, and they were sent out when they were a year.

Sorry.

I hate to look like I’m crying though.

I just think I might be one of the very few, if not the only one, that has always wanted to know more about her, um, and not only because she got leprosy and the sadness of that, because she had children and giving up her children at one years old, five times, I don't think I could be as strong as that.

Thus I feel good about her.

♪♪ Lise: Oral traditions are part of everyone's family history.

And though they may be filled with more fiction than fact, it's these stories that can give us pride in our family tree and even shape our family's identity.

From the studios of BYU Television in Provo, Utah, this is The Generations Project.

♪♪ - Hello everyone, I’m Lise Sims, and each week on our program we bring you the story of someone who wants to connect with an ancestor or an entire generation of their family tree, and we help them do just that.

We're an ongoing project connecting people across generations, and today that person is Maile Mossman.

I’m so glad you're here.

- Thank you.

It's wonderful to be here.

- Good.

I’m very intrigued by your speaking about your great-grandmother's strength.

It seemed to have so much emotional meaning for you.

Why does her strength resonate so deeply with you Maile?

Was there a time in your life you needed that kind of strength?

Maile: Indeed.

I’ve always known her story, but I never really took a bond with her until I thought about it after I had my breast cancer.

I am a survivor.

Lise: Yes, you are.

- And I look at my great-grandmother as having gone through probably the same things I did from the diagnosis on, and to be diagnosed with something pretty bad, you're not going to shout up for joy, you're going to say, Yeah, I’ll see how I do with this challenge in my life, but I did not shout for joy, and I don't think she did.

For her it would have been worse, so I think compared to my diagnosis.

Lise: That's fascinating.

It's fascinating that your cancer brought it to life for you in a different way.

I think that may not be uncommon.

I want to tell a little bit more about your story to our viewers, because they just got a snippet there.

You've been told that your great-grandmother had an illegitimate child by who?

Did you know?

Maile: By a Doctor Charles Bryant Cooper.

Lise: So there was a name.

- There was a name.

Lise: And what did you know about him?

- All I knew about him, which is what was passed down to us from grandma to mother to mother to daughter on to my grandchildren, is that he was a very prominent doctor in Honolulu, and this great-grandma of ours had met him and had an affair with him, and then she had a child, and I guess in all cultures that was a hush hush thing.

You do not come out and blare out to everybody this and that.

- He was married?

- He was married from what I’ve been told.

He was married.

And-and-- Lise: Was he Hawaiian?

- No, he was from New York.

Lise: Oh-- - Babylon, New York, have that in my records at home.

- So that too may not have been uncommon, but it wasn't acceptable either.

The fact that he would have been a prominent white man, a doctor.

She was a native Hawaiian woman.

He was married, and they have this child, and that's all you know of the story.

- That's all I know, I wish I knew more.

- And this is where we begin.

So then the story that you do know is that Emma, your great-grandmother, got leprosy and you say she was sent to, and correct me if do not say this correctly, Kalaupapa.

Maile: Perfect.

- Thank you.

Explain to my viewers what Kalaupapa is.

- Kalaupapa is a, a leprosy settlement, leper settlement on the island of Molokai.

It's where the cliffs are, where all the fear they had about this disease.

They're like away from everybody else and they're brought in by boat, and so Kalaupapa, when you say that word, especially then, it denotes fear and death.

Lise: Isn't that interesting?

- But to me it was just something that I thought, Wow I’d sure like to know more about that and see how she survived at a place like that, so.

Lise: Oh, that's fascinating.

The other part of the story is that Emma gave up her children.

Do you know— Maile: Her child.

- Her child, she gave up her child.

Having seven children.

- Mm-hm.

That seemed to really hit something for you.

- Oh my goodness, I wouldn't be able to do that.

I just figured she had such character.

What strength and character she had I-I-I would hope I would be like that in any adverse situation.

Never met her.

I would like to know what she was all about.

Did she laugh a lot, was she funny, she had to have had this great character to be able to just go.

Most people went into hiding and didn't ever want to leave so-- their family.

- How-- is it difficult to find, just explain to me why it’s difficult to find documentation in Hawai’i.

- The main reason and maybe for all of the ethnic groups, but for the Hawaiians especially, is everything is oral history.

It comes down through chance, through stories.

I knew this story of my grandmother going to Kalaupapa, and this story is 115 years old.

- My word and you knew it.

- Because she's my great-grandmother, and so I did the math on it, and that was a long time ago, and so what came down and came down and came down to me in this day and age, is something that I didn't say Huh, are you sure, do you have proof?

We didn’t, didn’t-- didn't do that.

It was sort of- Lise: Because the oral history was the truth.

- We trusted it, it felt good and safe and we just,- - That's interesting.

- Oh, that's how it was.

- I want to just briefly touch on what makes— what makes it so important to know your Hawaiian ancestry?

How do Hawaiians regard their ancestry?

Is it important?

Maile: With great sacredness.

Lise: With great sacredness.

- Oh my gosh.

- Powerful words.

- Our ancestors mean so much to us.

The Hawaiians of old and even today believe that they help us, they guide us, they give us the knowledge they had, and they're hoping we don't forget them.

Lise: [laughs] And here you are trying to get to know them better, particularly Emma your great-grandmother, and you want initially to discover if she really had leprosy.

You want to confirm this oral history as you know it, maybe with some documentation, so that's where the journey begins, and I think we should take a look.

Maile: Wonderful.

- Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lise: Maile's great-grandmother, Emma Lyons, was born in 1872, and just like Maile, she was hapa haole.

Half Hawaiian, and half white.

Emma's mother was a native Hawaiian from the island of Maui, and her father was from Massachusetts.

By the age of 19, Emma was living in Honolulu on the island of Oahu.

♪♪ Maile is following her great-grandmother's trail to Honolulu.

At the state archives, she hopes to find any documentation that could confirm her family's story that Emma Lyons did in fact, have leprosy.

♪♪ Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease as it would later be called, is believed to have been introduced to Hawai’i with the arrival of Chinese indentured agricultural workers in the early 1800s.

The disease spread rapidly and by 1865, there were almost 3,000 confirmed cases which caused King Kamehameha the fifth to enact legislation setting apart land on the remote peninsula of Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka’i to isolate and treat leprosy patients.

The legislation further called for the detention and examination of any person even suspected of having the disease.

That same year, the Kalihi leprosy hospital and detention station opened its doors in Honolulu.

There, patients would be detained for examination and then either released, or sent to the colony on Kalaupapa.

Maile has found her great-grandmother's records of examination at the Kalihi detention station.

Multiple entries classify Emma Lyons as being suspected of having leprosy.

But in November 1894, Emma Lyons is finally classified as leper.

She was subsequently sent to the leper colony on Christmas Day, 1894.

This is the first time Maile has seen these facts in writing.

♪♪ ♪♪ Maile: I never expected to see this here.

I never thought I’d see it in writing-- somebody's handwriting and then over here had other lepers, lepers, lepers, lepers, but hers was just suspect, suspicious, and so you always have hope that maybe it's not-- diagnoses are something else, but it is final December 25th.

Lepers received at the settlement on Moloka’i.

She went there on Christmas Day according to this booklet.

My people said Christmas Eve but Christmas Day.

Emma Lyons, age 24, half-Hawaiian from Oahu.

So, she didn't live in Maui, her parents are on Maui.

No remarks that I can see, but it’s final.

That was it, yep.

I can imagine how that must have felt.

So she can't stay out anymore.

She has to go.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lise: Maile is taking the documents she found at the state archives to meet with researcher Kendall Wilcox who has investigated the details of Maile's family story regarding the affair between Emma Lyons and Dr. Charles Cooper.

- Be happy to.

I’ve been told all my life that my great-grandma, Emma Lyons, was a beautiful hapa haole girl and she had an affair with a very prominent doctor, Charles Bryant Cooper, who was married, and I believe had a family and that's all I know there.

And then she had a baby, and that baby was born, and is my mom's mom, my grandmother named Emma Lyons as well, not Emma Cooper, Emma Lyons.

And then what I’ve been told is, fast forward a bit, when she was seventeen, grandma, my grandma walked her mother Emma Lyons down the trail to Kalaupapa because she had, even from what this says, she got leprosy, and so she walked her down, and we've been told she bid her goodbye at age 17 and never saw her mother again.

Kendall: So, let’s go through.

What I’ve got done here for you is kind of created a timeline for Charles Bryant Cooper and Emma Lyons.

Maile: Okay.

Kendall: Kind of to help you understand where they are according to whatever documents we were able to find, and that you were able to find at the archive to place them at different times along a timeline to see where their paths could have crossed, and how they would have crossed, and kind of verify or disprove some of the, the-- the components of the story that you've been told, yeah.

♪♪ - Kendall has found that Dr. Charles Bryant Cooper was born to a prominent family in New York in 1864.

After graduating medical school, he worked for a time in Montana, eventually moving to Hawai’i in 1891 where he immediately accepted an assignment on the Big Island.

♪♪ The documents go on to show that Dr. Cooper finished his work on the Big Island, and moved to Oahu to open a medical practice in April of 1893.

Meanwhile, Emma Lyons was examined and released from the leprosy hospital on Oahu several times between 1892 and 1893.

By comparing these documents with Emma's daughter's birth records, Kendall has found that there is only a slim period of time in which Emma and Dr. Cooper could have met and conceived a child.

- The idea that Dr. Cooper and your great-grandmother could have met and had a baby, the time frame puts it within about two weeks.

Two weeks in April of '93.

- There's this little moment sliver.

Well now who in the world would the father be?

- Good question, you got to find out.

- Hm.

I think after what you've done, I don't know how I’ll ever find out.

This to me is it.

Kendall: Never know.

- Maile.

Suddenly the story has a lot of changes.

It's not as accurate maybe as you thought.

How does this impact you when you first hear this from the researcher?

- It actually, I was disappointed to tell you the truth, because I had known this story like your favorite nursery rhyme, and all of a sudden you see it wasn't the little pig or something else, so it had a little degree of disappointment, but then immediately I really wanted to know.

- You say, so who was the father?

How do I find this out.

- I know, could it have been somebody else named Charles Cooper or who else?

- Which is an interesting question.

Could it have been a Hawaiian?

Would that have-- if it had been a Hawaiian versus a white man, how does that change your lineage?

Because it’s very important to Hawaiians how Hawaiian they are, is it not?

Maile: Yeah, instead of one half, I may very well be closer to a quarter.

I mean 3 quarters.

Lise: And would that be valuable to you in some way?

- Not really except for getting Hawaiian homelands.

You have to have a certain degree of Hawaiian, but I’m okay with the Hawaiian I have, because it's so strong in my blood.

Lise: It is.

Half Hawaiian is big in this day and age.

Um, as you know we ran the test to find out.

Both your family and yourself were very willing, obviously had great interest in finding out whether Doctor Cooper could have been the father, and the Cooper side of the family who had never heard this story, volunteered as well.

And they were very curious about how this genetic test would turn out.

So this is the envelope.

- [laughter] - Maybe it's thrilling, maybe it’s disappointing.

Would you like to open it and read it here?

Maile: I would love to, but before I open it may I say this?

- Please.

- It will not be disappointing, because I feel that nobody should go for 115 years being told he's the father of a child if he isn't.

It's not fair to him or his family.

Lise: That's interesting, that's beautiful.

- And so that's the only reason I would like to— the disappointment just fell away really fast.

- That's good.

- It's just I would like to know because-- - Are you nervous, excited?

- I’m excited.

- Me too.

- I’m excited.

Lise: And this is the genetic test to prove whether or not Dr. Cooper was the father of the illegitimate child of your great-grandmother Emma.

- Exactly.

Lise: Okay.

- “Dear Mrs. Mossman,” do I read it or just?

Lise: Yes, please, would you?

- Okay.

“Dear Mrs. Mossman, concerning the consultation done on your behalf, we have obtained the following results.

There is an extremely low statistical probability, less than five percent, that the descendants of Emma Lyons share any genetic relation with the descendants of Charles Bryant Cooper.” He's not alive to say yes or no, so this is for him.

Lise: Oh, that's so beautiful.

- “The result is based on the lab,” then has a whole bunch of wordings.

Lise: It's up to you.

It's yours to share or not.

Actually I think what you told us is, explains it.

- It's in big print and that's important.

- Well we knew there was, the researcher Kendall had told you there was like a two-week window for these two parties to cross paths.

So did you have an inkling that, that it might turn out this way?

Maile: I still had an inkling.

Maybe because I didn't want to turn stones over and I didn't want to have to go back to all my little-- all our cousins.

All of us believe this same story, so this is very important for the whole ohana.

Lise: Uh, ohana meaning?

- Family.

- Family.

- Not just my immediate family, all cousins or everybody that did the test and so forth.

This is very important.

It took long enough to get the truth out.

Lise: And you were the one who made it happen.

Maile: I’m glad.

- Your curiosity to connect with the strength of this great-grandmother is the one that took it to this point.

Maile: Yes.

- Well, there's more that you know about what happened to Emma after she arrived at Kalaupapa, and I want to share that with our viewers as well.

She met and married someone in Kalaupapa?

Maile: Mm-hm.

- And who was that gentleman?

- That was a Charles— John-- I’m getting mixed up with the two men.

Lise: I can help you, John K. - John K. Waiamau.

- And you had this information.

This was part of the family lore.

Maile: Yes.

- And there was an understanding that John didn't have leprosy.

Maile: Yes.

And it came from her child, Annie Self, in a letter that I had in 1988.

One of the children that she had in Kalaupapa, and she stated that he had no leprosy.

So it made me fall in love with this man more.

Why would he marry a woman with leprosy?

- That's fascinating.

There's so much more of this story to tell.

And they had children together.

Five children.

Maile: Five children.

- And this is where the story really touched you.

They had to give these children away.

This was common practice in the leprosy colony.

Maile: Yes, from the board of health.

- The board of health because there was no- - Immune.

After one year, the immune system would probably catch it, the leprosy disease.

Lise: So I quickly want to clarify that when we say leprosy, instead of the current term understanding of the disease, Hansen’s disease.

We want to be respectful of everyone, but we also want people to understand what we're talking about, and that was the common term at this time in our history.

So that's why we're referring to this Hansen’s disease as leprosy.

Um, alright, at this point in the journey we have to move forward.

You're about to experience something very special.

You are going to go to the leprosy colony where your great-grandmother Emma lived until she died.

Maile: Mm-hm.

I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for you.

Maile: Mm-hm.

She was age 24 when she went.

I remember being 24 and taking care of myself and looking young and good.

I just couldn't imagine her thinking what's going to happen to her.

Lise: Well and it's quite a feat that we were even allowed to go ourselves.

Maile: Absolutely, with cameras.

- With cameras.

This is highly unusual that they would let us come in and honor us with this telling of the story of this colony.

So I would love to watch that with you.

Maile: Thank you.

♪♪ Lise: In the years following 1865, thousands of leprosy patients would follow the same path, including Maile's great-grandmother, Emma Lyons.

From the Kalihi leprosy hospital to the Honolulu Harbor, board a ship, and sail to the leper colony at Kalaupapa.

Maile is visiting the Honolulu harbor to imagine what her great-grandmother may have felt as she boarded the ship on Christmas Eve 1894.

♪♪ Maile: I know that the day to be shipped out on a boat, in that era, would have been a day of sadness, mourning, definitely not waving happily.

It’s not a joyous boat ride, because you know this is your last ride, and you're still in good shape, except you know in your body is the disease of leprosy.

[waves crashing] Now that I know what I know today after today's work I am even more excited and anxious to go to Kalaupapa.

I can't wait to get there to learn more about this woman, and to think about all the other people that were there from children to oldsters and get a feel of it just through walking on the 'aina.

'aina is land, and just to walk where they walked.

I can at least learn more of the story I have about her marrying, falling in love with this man, Hawaiian man John Kiana Waiamau, having children, sending them out.

I can at least know that that's what she did in Kalaupapa.

♪♪ Lise: Maile is on her way to Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka'i.

♪♪ ♪♪ Over the 100 years between 1866 and the 1960s, the Hawaiian, and later the American government, removed thousands of leprosy patients to the colony at Kalaupapa.

At its peak, the colony housed as many as eight thousand patients and became one of the 19th century's most dramatic episodes of human experimentation.

Maile's great-grandmother, Emma Lyons, experienced firsthand the early days of the growth and development of the colony.

A period that was punctuated by fear and ignorance of this new disease.

To better understand what the process of arriving at the leper colony would have been like for her great-grandmother, Maile is meeting with tour guide Norman Suarez.

Norman: They were dropped off here and they were put in boats, brought to shore.

Sometimes patients dropped off in the water, but that usually was because of bad weather.

But most of the patients were brought to shore by boats.

Maile: I'm glad to hear that because I always thought they were just dumped and swim for your life.

- No it's just usually bad weather and they were brought to shore and each of the patients were given one set of clothing and one week's worth of food.

After that they were on their own.

So, your great-grandmother Emma Lyons was brought more than likely here, and taken usually by horse and carriage over to the Bishop Home.

That's where the girls and women patients lived there, where living conditions were much better.

They had the hospital right there.

The sisters were loving, caring people for the girls and women patients.

Also besides helping them physically, also helping them spiritually, which was very important.

Here in Kalawao, as well as Kalaupapa, church was a very important part of life.

That was sort of like the glue that held everyone together.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lise: Because of the fear and ignorance of the spread of leprosy, the government adopted extreme measures to guarantee the isolation of the patients.

One of these measures was to avoid any physical contact with non-lepers.

All visits to the colony, including those of family members, were restricted to what was known as the Caller House.

Norman: Before 1946, there was a fence that was right on top of the countertop here to the ceiling.

Visitors who came to visit like your great-grandmother, would enter from this side of the door.

You see the doors on this side?

There would be a fence also going around the visitor's quarters here.

This is the visitor's quarters.

- I see.

- So, the visitors would enter from this side.

Your grandmother-- great-grandmother, excuse me, would enter from this side, and this is a close as physical contact that they could have with one another because no hugging, no touching, no kissing was aloud.

So Maile we could put ourselves here in this place today by going back to your great-grandmother's time and when she would see a loved one here, someone she hasn't seen for many years, someone very special to her this is as close as they could have.

Sad, very sad.

Lise: To learn more about leprosy and the process of diagnosis her great-grandmother would have undergone, Maile is meeting with Dr. Martina Kamaka, one of the handful of doctors who treats the few remaining patients in the colony.

Martina: They were so paranoid about leprosy in those days it was-- they were so frightened of it that anything that remotely looked like it would be turned in.

So I think that there were patients that were misdiagnosed back then, and I think the fact that she may of had something that wasn't even the leprosy at the time, but it might have been something else that piqued their interest, and then what they would do is they would just keep checking and checking and checking, and that's probably what happened to her is that they weren't really sure, they couldn't really be sure so they kept bringing her back, but if they even suspected a little bit they didn't like to let these people go.

They kept an eye on them and they even would do it to a whole family.

I think sometimes whole families were terrorized because they were sending these board of health people out that were chasing family members down and just kind of showing up at their houses unexpected.

They knew that once you got it, it was like a death sentence.

It was hitting particularly our native Hawaiian population so hard.

We lived for 2000 years in isolation so without those kinds of infectious diseases, so we had absolutely no immunity to it and we know now that Pacific Island peoples are susceptible.

There's quite a bit of leprosy in Micronesia.

We have it in Southeast Asia and Africa, so we do know that there's certain populations that are more susceptible and the Hawaiian's just were.

- Caught everything.

- Very, yeah.

I mean, when you think about it, I think when Cook landed, we had somewhere about was that 1778 we had somewhere about 600,000 to 800,000 native Hawaiians and by 1900 we were down to 30,000 something.

I mean that's a tremendous drop in population, and it was a series of infections.

Maile: Is it possible you could have it, come here around the 1890s, 94ish around there and be treated here and be able to leave?

- You know we didn't at that time, we didn't really have any treatments that cured.

Now there were people there, people with leprosy depending on the kind there's two main kinds of leprosy.

There's the kind, the tuberculoid where it's-- they get kind of just sort of lesions kind of scattered, but it's not as severe an infection as the lepromatous one and that's the one where it's all over.

It has to do with your immune system and so they got sicker, they died faster, they had complications faster where the other ones could live quite a long time, and then you had kind of this in between, and I don't know if these were maybe not even real cases or maybe they were sort of like an indeterminate kind of thing that they actually turned out to be cured.

We as the medical profession at that time didn't have any cures.

Maile: There's so many maybes in this story because it was suspicious, suspicious, and sort of nothing happening, then all of the sudden leper, December 25th, gone and so I said I don't know if I said it or she said it, maybe she didn't even have the disease.

♪♪ Because she was suspicious, was she not in that intern center but more out?

When they came here, did she meet this young man John Waiamau before coming here?

I have no idea how they met, and so it's perplexing to me that they got together.

Lise: In order to find out how her great-grandmother could have met and developed a relationship with John K. Waiamau, Maile is meeting again with Norman at the woman's residence called the Bishop's House.

During the first few decades of the colony, the men and women were housed separately on opposite sides of the peninsula.

Maile: I don't know if my grandma knew, great-grandma knew John Waiamau before, or here, or where?

- Well one definite possibility is they met right here.

You see that concrete structure in front of us?

- Yes, I do.

- This is a lower portion of a two-story building that was called the social hall.

The social hall was one of the places here in Kalaupapa where the girls and women patients and the boys and men patients could come together.

Maile: They did get together and got married.

So there were marriages done here.

Um, and who performed the marriages?

- It would be the priest here, the resident because they did have resident priests here.

- Uh-huh, so you think no living together style?

- That's the culture and lifestyle of the native Hawaiian people.

- It was.

And then the missionaires- - But the Christian influences changed that.

Now we have to keep in mind that here in Kalaupapa, as well as Kalawao there are three Christian churches.

- That's right.

- They had the Congregational church that was here first, Catholic church was second, Mormon church came last.

♪♪ Lise: Emma Lyons eventually met John K. Waiamau in Kalaupapa and married in 1897.

Following the board of health policy regarding children born to lepers, each of Emma and John's children were taken away quickly after they were born and were sent to live with family members on other islands.

Emma never saw her children again.

Maile is speaking with Sister Francis, the last volunteer nurse in Kalaupapa to learn more about this process of removal of the children.

Sister Francis: Over here it doesn't matter what religion you are because we're kind of put in this situation where we have to help each other.

Religion doesn't matter.

- It's a survival and trying to find joy with one another.

Sister Francis: Yes, and that's what they did.

- My great-grandma gave birth to five children and then they were sent out.

- Yeah, the children as soon as they were born, they were taken by the sisters, and they kept them and then the next-- whatever time available they would take the babies out and they took them to Kapi'olani girls home or to family where were going to hanai the children so, um, you know, that probably was a sad time.

- Yes.

- A very sad time.

And I remember a sister telling us they brought the children here one time, and all the mothers got to see their children for the first time, but they couldn't touch them.

- Couldn't touch them.

- So that was probably very, very sad.

I mean, wow.

♪♪ ♪♪ Lise: Maile is meeting again with researcher Kendall Wilcox.

She hopes to find out more information about the relationship between Emma Lyons and John K. Waiamau.

First, she's sharing what her family has told her about their life together at Kalaupapa.

Maile: ...you never know, but this came from a letter from her daughter Annie who lived to her 90s.

She gave my mother this letter in 1988, and I've kept it and read it and underlined and yellowed it out because I trust it.

It's comfortable, it's a sweet story and I trust it.

And it did say that she came here, and it said your great-grandma Emma fell in love with a man named John Keanu Waiamau.

It did say he was an architect.

Did not have leprosy, and they did get married because then her name became Waiamau it no longer remained Lyons, and they had five children, and so they were sent to-- farmed out to relatives.

On Kaua'i, possibly Honolulu, Oahu, um, but that-- there in is the story part that just intrigues me.

Kendall: That's a good story, it's good.

Not to burst the bubble of the family story that you've been told, but we actually have found some facts that kind of change the story.

- Oh my goodness.

- So if we look here, we're looking here at the.

- He was her husband.

- He was.

- Okay, okay, okay.

- I won't burst that bubble.

- But what we're looking at here, it's the list of inmates over at the station in Kalihi.

If you remember that was the station at the hospital in Kalihi.

- I remember that one.

- The hospital for people with Hansen's disease then.

Exactly.

And if we look here, if we look down and see here's this name John Waiamau.

Yes, and if you scan across here, you see it says he was found to be a leper.

Maile: A leper.

Kendall: Exactly.

Maile: Oh my.

- So that was in June of 1894, we see here.

So that's June 1894 he's examined and found to be a leper, and so he's actually sent over here and arrives here in Kalaupapa in June of 1894.

- She came- - And then she came, right, December 1894 so he came just a few months before her.

- How come I didn't see that on that ledger yesterday?

- I don't know.

It was a different page, different page.

- That's right June.

I was more in November.

- Yeah, but then if we look here at this record, we see this is the record of treatment of patients here at Kalaupapa, and if we scan over here and down, we see that he was examined and treated, and here it says discharged.

Maile: So he- Kendall: And the date here is 1908.

So in 1908 he had been treated.

- And the medicine worked.

- The medicine took, it worked, and by 1908 here it says he was discharged.

So he was actually free to go in 1908, and in here see it says that he didn't establish his architectural practice over on Oahu until 1917.

- How old was he then?

- Which was the same year- - That she died.

- that she died.

And so from that we determined that he did in fact stay here with her after 1908, after he was discharged, free to go, he could have left, but he stayed and lived with her until she passed away in 1917, and then he did go to Oahu and joined the children.

So he did stay and take care of his beloved wife until she passed away.

So it is a true, a love story.

- It is a love story.

It's amazing how you discovered all of this number one-- two, which I'm so thankful for, and then he did stay, he was cured and then he stayed with her and bid her goodbye.

She had done enough goodbying- - Mm.

- and then left.

- To join his children.

- A gentleman and a scholar.

- Mm-hm, mm-hm.

- I like him.

I-I, He's admirable to me.

He made her life wonderful, and she probably did the same to him or he would have gone when he got cured.

[wind rustling] I think it's the land, it's the area and the explanations of her coming in.

It's a buildup of the details and data I've learned and then put it together with the little bit I already know of her.

It's a hundred and fifteen years ago, but time means nothing.

Family and-- families are forever, so time means nothing, and so that's why it affects me.

But in a good way.

I'm not weeping for her suffering, I'm kind of weeping for her good life.

Good life.

In spite of leprosy.

♪♪ Lise: After Emma passed away, John Waiamau went to the island of Kaua'i to reunite with his children.

He eventually remarried and had two more sons.

♪♪ Maile's always wanted to meet John's descendants, but has never had the opportunity.

She's on her way to Kaua'i to meet, for the first time, two grandchildren of John's second marriage.

She hopes to learn what became of Emma and John's children, and what John's life was like after Kalaupapa.

[knocking] Man 1: Hello.

Come inside.

Aloha.

Maile: Thank you.

Aloha.

Woman 1: Good morning, how are you.

- Good morning.

I have a grandma named Emma Lyons, and I've been learning, and knew about her in Kalaupapa, and I also know that she married John Keanu Waiamau.

And they had children, he remained with her until she died, and I know nothing else.

I'd like to know more, and what do you have to share with me?

- Well John Waiamau is our grandfather.

He married our grandmother, Abigail.

- Abigail.

- Yes.

So welcome to our family.

- Oh.

Woman 1: Aloha.

- Aloha.

Oh.

Man 1: So we have some information to share with you, so why don't we sit down?

- I'm okay, the thing is, I've learned so much about what they went through in Kalaupapa, so greeting relatives would normally be joyful, joyful constant joy.

But it just, the wave comes over me as to what they went through and I'm learning a lot about that and so I have such a happy, teary feeling.

- This is another picture of our grandfather.

- And your grandfather is John Waiamau.

- Yes.

Maile: Hawaiian or mixture?

Man 1: Hawaiian.

Maile: I thought so.

The picture I saw of him in the who's who for the men of Hawai'i.

Hawaiian.

I have that, I got that.

Good man?

You know anything about him?

I think he's a fabulous man for what he did.

Woman 1: One thing we do know about our grandpa John Keanu Waiamau is that he was an architect, and although we haven't been able to find any records, he's said to have built a school in Hanalei.

Well, not built a school, but designed a school in Hanalei.

There's also a story about a bridge in Hanalei that he designed, and the county building here in Lihue that he may have worked for a company that also designed.

- Oh my goodness.

Man 1: So when they're on Kalaupapa they had six children.

Maile: Six children.

Man 1: Yes.

Two died when they were very young.

Maile: In Kalaupapa or at birth or?

Man 1: I believe it was in Kalaupapa.

Maile: Okay.

What do you know about these children, and you know what I notice?

Benjamin, Timothy, Thomas, Annie, all from the generation above them.

That's all Lyon's names.

Man 1: We didn't really get to meet most of them but from what we've heard I know that John was a, I believe he was like a merchant marine and he did a lot of traveling.

Maile: Yes.

- Benjamin was a coach.

He coached a team called the Kali'i Thundering Herd back in I guess the old days.

- Yes.

- When they had, I don't know if it was called semi-pro football.

- Oh, wow.

- In Kali'I, and from what I heard he was a very, very good coach and Uncle Timmy, although he had contracted leprosy, and his fingers were somewhat deformed, but he could play the piano very well- - Oh, my.

- and the same thing with Auntie Annie.

I mean she didn't have any leprosy, but she could really play the piano well.

- She was a talented lady.

- Actually, the only one that we got to see quite a bit- - Uh-huh.

- because she lived right here.

♪♪ [rushing waves] Maile: The oral history is not only Hawaiian.

I think every nationality, everyone in the world has an oral history.

We trust it, and we go with what we have been told.

And so like a puzzle, everybody's little stories, little oral history kind of comes together in a large family tree story.

♪♪ I have it summed in one word, and that word is service.

And the reason I say that I have watched all the work that has been done for me from researchers.

Paper after paper, pamphlets after pamphlets presented to me.

That was an act of service for me.

The service I need to pay back is to not let this just sit on a shelf and collect dust.

♪♪ Someday when somebody comes to my home and I'm older, Can you tell me please about this lady and that lady?

I would love to bring out the things that I have tried to work and be able to serve them and my children as well.

♪♪ Lise: I love your use of the word service.

Have you put that into action in your life since this happened?

Maile: Since this happened, yes.

I've always liked that word, service.

Teaching, helping others as much as I possibly can.

I'm so busy that sometimes the guilt trip comes over me that I cannot be of greater service, but as time moves on in my life, I'm able to be of more service to others.

But this genealogy is a service of love.

Our ancestors are waiting up there.

They just don't want us to forget them.

Lise: Mm.

- I chose this ancestor for a purpose, because of the bond I had with her with our diagnoses and so forth.

I just love her.

I just can't-- I would love to know more about her.

I could have chosen another one, so they're all kind of waiting around, wondering what we're doing here with our time, and if we can at least devote some time in a busy day to learning more, writing music about them, doing whatever we can and not have their story that can fit only on a three by five card which this other great-grandma I have, which is just as interesting, I only know three by five card worth of information.

Lise: Well that's your next process.

While you were watching this, I know you had a lot of emotion here in the studio.

What was happening for you as you watched your story being told?

- I think the emotion for me is gratitude.

I'm very grateful for this opportunity.

This is an opportunity of a lifetime to have people search for me and come up with data that I never had.

I just had that letter, her picture, and the dialogue from years down.

That's all I had, so I'm grateful.

And then my love for great grandma and John Keanu Waiamau.

Lise: You got your love story.

- That's my love story.

- And you love a love story.

- I love love stories.

- Who doesn't?

I saw you look at the researcher like, You are not going to tell me that this- Maile: Oh please.

- You were so clear.

He stayed with her till the end.

He was released and he chose not to go.

What a character.

What a sense of character and love.

Clearly, he must have loved her so deeply.

- I think so.

- Did it make you feel good that you found-- he joined their six children we discovered there was another child.

- Yeah.

What happened was two died.

You get all these different things- Lise: Right.

- but I believe two died, and the other four-- that's also in my letter, three boys and the girl went up.

Lise: And you hear that he, after your great-grandmother Emma dies, he goes to rejoin their children.

Maile: Yes.

- Is that a comfort in any way?

- It is.

Because they never saw their mother or their father, and so this girl was already in high school, and he joined and stayed with her and continued on.

Lise: Has this trip affected your life, your current life in any way?

- It has, it has.

There's a, I have more reverence for family.

Always have, but I now have more reverence for the extended family farther on back.

My children from the beginning, and grandchildren, they just bring me great joy but now my joy is spreading out farther and it will continue to do so.

Lise: Oh, that is a beautiful image.

Maile: I've made myself a goal because I have genealogy, I've done some work at home, but not extensive.

I'm going to try.

Lise: This part of you is the kupuna part.

Maile: Kupuna.

- It's in your genes, it's in the nature of who you are.

- Caring and trying to keep everybody on track.

Lise: What a beautiful position to be in.

- Have you told your family what you've learned after putting together the oral history-- well in fact I know you've created something for us to share with us here.

Maile: Yes, I did.

Lise: Will you tell me about this song that you wrote?

- I would love to tell you about this song.

I’m gonna give my brother a copy of this today.

We're gonna visit him here in Utah, and this is a song it's called Vehini O Kalaupapa.

Woman of Kalaupapa, and it's in Hawaiian.

Two verses, I did the first verse already.

This first verse here it says, “This is a song about my beloved ancestor.

"A life of sorrow, also of happiness.

"Indeed she married a good man.

"Grant me closeness, Woman of Kalaupapa "like an unforgettable lei forever and ever.” Lise: I would love if you would play that for us.

We're wrapping this up.

Maile: Sure.

- If you would play that first verse for us.

Maile: Sure.

- Then we'll say our goodbyes and then if you'd play the second verse as our viewers go about their day, that would mean a lot for me.

♪♪ [singing in Hawaiian] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ - Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Thank you, Maile for sharing your story with us.

- Thank you, Lise.

- And thank you.

Please join us next time on The Generations Project.

♪♪