Kalaupapa Barge Day

By Jack Kiyonaga | Editor 

Photo courtesy of Young Brothers.

Each year, Christmas comes early for the residents of Kalaupapa. In unique tradition, members of the smallest county in the U.S. patiently await the annual arrival of new kitchen appliances, recliner chairs, gasoline, gravel for road repairs, trucks, non-perishable foods, and everything in-between via the Young Brothers barge. 

“It’s a big day,” explained National Park Service Community Engagement Specialist Mikiala Pescaia. 

Taking place on Saturday, Aug. 31, this year’s barge was loaded with “anything that doesn’t fit on a Kamaka airplane,” explained Pescaia. The barge also allows for Kalauapapa residents to ship out larger items, including remnants from former patients’ estates, as well as pump out their septic tanks. 

Additionally, while there is a weekly airfreight which picks up trash, Kalaupapa does not have a landfill. Most of the larger or recyclable items need to be cleaned, stored for the year, and then placed on the out-going barge. 

Although as many as 1,200 Hansen’s disease patients once lived in Kalaupapa, that number has dwindled to just five patient residents and 70 others, comprised of workers from the National Park Service, Dept. of Health, Catholic Church and more. 

There’s a long history to the excitement and activities surrounding barge day, explained Pescaia. In the past, as the new supplies came in, the patients would throw parties for the dock workers to use up the remains of last year’s food and beer. 

“It was like Christmas,” she said. 

Photos courtesy of Mikiala Pescaia.

Access to Kalaupapa has been limited since tours of the settlement shut down in March 2020 in response to COVID. Pescaia explained that while Kalaupapa has never been fully open to visitors, prior to 2020 patient residents were allowed to conduct income-generating activities by running their own tour companies. 

“We know that the general public really wants to be able to visit,” she said. 

Now, Pescaia says that tour operations will resume “in the near future,” but that the primary concern of the National Park Service is that Kalaupapa is “respected as [the patient residents’] home first and foremost.”