This is an appropriate day to launch this blog, because it was on this date exactly 140 years ago that nine men and three women were taken by armed guards and placed aboard a shabby schooner, sailed to an island 2,500 miles off the coast of California, and abandoned there to die. A year earlier, acting on the advice of Dr. William Hillebrand, a white physician at Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu, King Kamehameha V signed into law the “Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy” and determined that a semi-barren, naturally isolated peninsula on the northern side of the Hawaiian island of Molokai would be used as a prison. The law gave the government the right to arrest and imprison any person suspected of having the disease, regardless of nationality, and the rolls soon included not only Hawaiians and Americans, but citizens of Japan, Great Britain, Australia, China, France, and many others. Sheriffs and their deputies were instructed to comb the islands for suspects, and doctors, schoolteachers, neighbors, and even family members were encouraged to report cases. A bounty was offered. Because of the difficulty at the time of diagnosing the disease (leprosy has a years-long incubation period, and the disfigurement commonly associated with the disease doesn’t manifest itself in every instance), a significant number of healthy people were mistakenly exiled.

By criminalizing a disease, the law prompted what would prove to be one of the most extraordinary chapters in American history. It also marked the start of an almost unbelievable story of survival. I’ve attempted to tell that tale in The Colony. (But then, if you’ve found this site, you already know that.) In the coming days I’ll be posting additional details and episodes from the book, as well as historical documents, images, and anecdotes that I uncovered during my research—or have stumbled across more recently. Check back often.