In 1886, Ira Barnes Dutton, a Union Army veteran of the Civil War and a recovering alcoholic looking to atone for his “degenerate decade,” arrived at the Kalaupapa Settlement on Molokaʻi.
Dutton had come to help Father Damien de Veuster, a Belgian priest who had just contracted leprosy. Today, it is referred to as Hansen’s Disease, and it is curable. But in the 1800s and early- to mid-1900s it was an incurable, disfiguring disease that caused fear, social stigma and forced isolation in remote colonies.
Starting in 1866, about 8,000 men, women and children with leprosy — 90 percent of them Native Hawaiians — were taken from their families by the government and relocated to Kalaupapa to live out their lives.
A few people of faith also moved willingly to Kalaupapa to care for the patients and help them build better lives at a place where conditions were especially harsh in the early years. That included Dutton, who spent the remaining 44 years of his life in their service.
On Thursday, 140 years after Dutton’s arrival, Hawaiʻi Gov. Josh Green signed legislation that establishes April 27 each year as Brother Joseph Dutton Day.
“This is a celebration not of just him, but of the perseverance of the people of Kalaupapa,” Green said. “It is an extraordinary thing that occurred in Kalapaupa. It is extraordinary to imagine what they went through and the tales and stories of those people should be told. But this was one of our heroes, and so we’re going to celebrate it today.”
The State of Hawaiʻi already officially recognizes Saint Damien de Veuster Day every May 10; Saint Marianne Cope Day every Jan. 23 (she was a Catholic Mother from Germany who brought two sisters with her to open a home for “unprotected women and girls” at Kalaupapa); and Kalaupapa Month every January to “shine a light on the lives” of all the people who were forcibly taken there.
“The legislature believes that similar recognition should be accorded to Brother Joseph Dutton,” said Senate Bill 2256, which now is Act 4.
Support of the measure came from two of the remaining five patients who lived at Kalaupapa, a descendant of people who lived at the settlement, the Joseph Dutton Guild that was established in 2015 by the Diocese of Honolulu and is advocating for sainthood for Dutton, and the state Department of Accounting and General Services that oversees the State Archives.
“Not only are those souls who were exiled to the peninsula to live out the reminder of their lives worth remembering, but so too are those courageous volunteers to risk their own lives in order to bring comfort and care to the population of Kalaupapa,” said Keith A. Regan, comptroller of the Department of Accounting and General Services and former Maui County managing director, in written testimony. “The efforts of these caregivers was to bring a sense of humanity back to the residents of Kalaupapa.”
Brenda Duarte, a descendant of previous residents of Kalaupapa, noted in her written testimony in favor of the bill that in 1929, the Territorial House passed a resolution acknowledging Dutton’s work. It was two years before Dutton’s death.
The modern bill was first introduced in 2022.
“For many years, we’ve watched this bill get right to the edge, just to have to come back year after year,” said Hawaiʻi island state Rep. Jeanné Kapela, chair of the Culture & Arts Committee.
Kalaupapa residents Meli Watinuki, 91, and John Arruda, 102, said in written testimony in favor of the bill that they “would like to see timely approval.”
Valerie Monson, executive director of Ka ʻOhana O Kalaupapa, a nonprofit that was formed in 2003 at the request of the Kalaupapa community, said the organization works to ensure the names and stories of those who were forced to live there also are remembered.
“There are about 8,000 people who were taken from their families and sent to Kalaupapa who deserve to have their own day,” she said. “These people rose above all that they were facing, the loneliness, the uncertainties, possibly never seeing their families again, and the challenges of being affected by leprosy.”
Monson said she remembers interviewing a woman at Kalapapa many years ago. “I still remember her saying to me: ‘There’s a lot of saints in these graveyards.'”
Monson said many people sent to Kalaupapa did “remarkable things. And we want to remember as many of them as possible.”
They include Ambrose Hutchinson, a resident superintendent of Kalaupapa for 10 years and a leader of the community for much of his life. He was taken from his home in Hāna at age 22 and lived at Kalaupapa until his death at age 76.
His unpublished memoirs are now part of a new book, “Yours Faithfully: Ambrose Hutchison. Recollections of a Lifetime at Kalaupapa,” which was edited by Anwei S. Law, historian and award-winning author of “Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory.”
Only five people who lived at the settlement are still alive, with three remaining in Kalaupapa and two others living in Honolulu.
For more than 20 years, efforts have been underway for a Kalaupapa Memorial that would list all the names of the people who lived at the settlement.
In 2009, then President Barack Obama signed the Kalaupapa Memorial Act, which authorized Ka ʻOhana O Kalauapapa to establish a memorial at Kalaupapa National Historic Park.
In 2022, then-Gov. David Ige signed Senate Bill 3338 that provided $5 million in funding, or what is necessary for fiscal year 2022-2023 for the design, planning and construction of the Kalaupapa memorial. It said: “The sum appropriated shall be expended by the Department of Health for the purposes of this Act,” which shall take effect July 1, 2022.
“The memorial will also serve as a place of healing for families, where they can go and see their ancestors’ names,” Monson said.
It has been a complex process, working with the state and federal government. The organization also still is in the process of getting the money released, and is trying to raise $3 million more with prices having gone up over the past four years, she said.
AN UNLIKELY PATH TO KALAUPAPA
Dutton was born in Stowe, Vermont, on April 27, 1843.
Lynn Altadonna, from Dutton’s hometown, and Peter Skelly said in separate written testimony that Dutton showed a “pattern of community service” as a young boy and throughout his life.
According to their combined accounts, Dutton’s family moved to Janesville in the Wisconsin Territory when he was 4. At around age 10, he worked at Sutherland’s Bookstore. At age 14 he became interested in gymnastics and helped organize a gymnastics club. As he got older he joined a local volunteer fire unit.
“His next interest was a local militia unit: all state cities were required to have one,” Skelly wrote. “He helped form that with a good friend of his. Dutton became politically active when he joined a local Wide Awake group. These were young men who were supporting Abraham Lincoln in his campaign for the Presidency.”
Skelly added that Dutton’s organizational skills served him well as a quartermaster for the unit, eventually becoming district quartermaster for most of Northern Alabama by the war’s end.
Altadonna said: “As a youthful member of the Zouaves Corps (aka Boy Scouts) and a volunteer in the 13th Wisconsin Infantry in the Civil War, Dutton was forever invested in public service before he was old enough to vote.”
Duarte said following the Civil War, Dutton spent more than a year “in the psychologically difficult work of disinterring about 6,000 hastily buried Union soldiers for reburial in National Cemeteries.”
He got married in 1866, but when his wife left him a year later, he began to drink heavily and likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder during a period he later would call the “degenerate decade.”
In 1876, he quit drinking and became determined to do penance and atone for his “wild years,” according to an account by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
It led him to the Catholic Church in Tennessee. On April 27, 1883, he was received into the Catholic church through baptism and changed his name to Joseph, commemorating the beginning of his new life.
He learned about the good work of Father Damien while reading the 1885 book “The Lepers of Molokaʻi,” by Charles Warren Stoddard.
Dutton traveled to Kalaupapa in 1866.
“Imagine that, in the 1800s, traveling to Kalaupapa,” Green said. “It’s hard to get to Kalaupapa now.”
For three years he learned from Father Damien, who died in 1889.
“After Father Damien’s passing, he continued to care for residents because he loved them,” Green said. “He became an expert in wound care in a time when we didn’t have significant antibiotics, and we didn’t have treatment for disease. He devoted himself fully to them.”
He went on to manage the Baldwin Home for Boys at the settlement. He remained at Kalaupapa until he became sick at age 87 and went to St. Francis Hospital in Honolulu, where he died. Dutton was buried with military honors on Molokaʻi.
The effort to make Dutton a saint is still in process. In 2021, U.S. Bishops affirmed the advancement of the cause of beatification and canonization of the Servant of God Joseph Dutton, a layman, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In 2024, the local phase concluded with 2,000 pages of investigation sent for review to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in Rome, according to the National Catholic Register.
Eva Andrade, executive director of the Brother Joseph Dutton Guild, said in written testimony that the state bill “appropriately recognizes a man whose quiet, steadfast service helped shape one of
the most profound chapters of compassion in Hawai‘i’s history.”
The State Archives has a rich collection of more than 100 pages of correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings and personal journal entries from Brother Dutton. Regan said the archives is willing to digitize and place these items online to make them freely accessible from anywhere in the world.
The bill also states its purpose is to help raise awareness for Hansen’s disease, which damages skin, nerves, eyes and respiratory tracts. Now, about 200,000 people across the world are diagnosed with it, according to The Leprosy Mission.
Video of the bill signing can be seen here.
