A beloved member of the Kalaupapa community who loved to dance hula, never missed morning Mass and helped restart tours to the historic town last fall has died, leaving just two survivors of Hansen’s disease living full time on the isolated peninsula on Moloka‘i’s north coast.

Meli Watanuki, described by those who knew her as “one of the queens of Kalaupapa,” died on Sunday at age 91. She had been hospitalized a couple of days prior, according to Randy King of Seawind Tours, who knew Watanuki for more than 20 years and worked with her to run the Kalaupapa Saints Tour that allowed members of the public to visit for the first time since the pandemic.

“Kalaupapa will never be the same,” King told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative. “I know she’s up with the saints at this point in time.”

Watanuki was one of five remaining patients who battled Hansen’s disease. Two live full time at Kalaupapa and two others live on O‘ahu, although they still have homes at Kalaupapa, according to Sister Alicia Damien Lau, who also resides there full time. They range in age from 85 to 102.

King said it’s “very sad” to see the last few survivors growing older. But, he added, “there’s a lot of joy in it, too, in the fact that they stayed in Kalaupapa and made Kalaupapa their home.”

Watanuki’s family declined an interview. A memorial service is planned for her on O‘ahu this week.

Her death puts public access to Kalaupapa in question, as she owned and sponsored the only park-authorized commercial tour to the area. Tours are only operated by residents, and King doesn’t think there is anyone else who will take up the mantle. 

He said the company will keep running tours until the permit expires at the end of the year, but he’s not sure what will happen after that.

Watanuki restarted the tours, which had ended at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, because it was important to her that the stories of the people of Kalaupapa were told right, King said. For decades, the diagnosis and the stigma of Hansen’s disease, long known as leprosy, overshadowed the full lives they led long after they were sent to Kalaupapa.

“We need them more than they need us,” Valerie Monson, executive director of Ka ‘Ohana O Kalaupapa, said of the last few surviving residents.

One day, Monson said, a sad time will come when “we won’t have them physically with us anymore. So it’s up to us. It’s our duty to keep them alive.”

From 1866 to 1969, more than 8,000 people with Hansen’s disease were separated from their families and exiled to Kalaupapa. Watanuki was one of the last people to move there in 1969, Monson said.

Watanuki was born in 1934 and grew up in a Catholic family in American Samoa, she told PBS Hawai‘i’s “Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox” in a 2014 interview. Her family couldn’t afford to send her to school, so she dropped out around sixth grade and stayed home to help her sisters, nephew and nieces wash clothes and cook. 

In 1952 at age 18, Watanuki was diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, she told PBS. She remembered the moment she learned she might have to be hospitalized for an extended period of time and the sight of doctors taking off their shoes and cleaning their feet when dealing with patients. She said it scared her. It felt like “jail.”

By the 1940s, an effective treatment had been found for Hansen’s disease. A new residential treatment facility called Hale Mohalu opened in Pearl City on O‘ahu in 1949, allowing newly diagnosed people to be admitted, get treatment and go home instead of living in isolation, said Monson, a former Maui News reporter who has been studying Kalaupapa history for nearly 40 years.

In 1958, Watanuki was discharged, she told PBS. She got married, traveled to Hawai‘i and had a son, and was told to go to Hale Mohalu. She didn’t take her baby for fear he’d get sick. When her husband and baby came to visit, her husband took one look at the fence surrounding the facility, spoke to some of the people, left with their son and never came back. 

Watanuki later found out they had moved to the Philippines. She tried to reconnect with her son years later, but he wouldn’t respond to her calls or messages, “so I just let it go,” she said.

Watanuki didn’t have to go to Kalaupapa, but she “felt she could never have a normal life except at Kalaupapa,” Monson said. She wasn’t the only one who voluntarily lived there because of the stigma in the broader community.

“That’s a comment on society,” Monson said. “We’re going to have more instances where there are new diseases, and how are we going to treat people? You have to think of the effects on each other, and we have to show compassion.”

For nearly 60 years, Kalaupapa was Watanuki’s home. She found love again, marrying her second husband Teetai Pili, and after his death in 1981, she met a man who worked for the National Park Service and had come to help clean her husband’s grave, she told PBS. His name was Randall and he was a carpenter, and he offered to help her with anything she needed. 

In 1995, they got married and had just returned from their honeymoon when they had the honor of traveling to the Vatican to meet the pope and bring back a relic of Father Damien, who spent his life caring for the people of Kalaupapa. 

Watanuki’s deep faith was a hallmark of her life, Monson said. She was “very devoted” to Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope, a sister in the Order of St. Francis who also dedicated her life to Kalaupapa.

King remembers traveling with Watanuki to Rome for the canonization and beatification of both saints. The Catholic Church raised funds to take the residents, and Seawind Tours arranged their transportation. It was an unforgettable, “once-in-a-lifetime experience” for the residents.

“They took it very seriously. It was very important that they were represented as … Father Damien and Mother Marianne became saints, and to be a part of that was really special,” King said. 

Watanuki especially made things fun. King described her as a “spark plug” who was full of life and had the kind of winning smile could get people to do anything, even if they didn’t want to at first, King said with a laugh. 

When Watanuki wanted to start up Kalaupapa Saints Tours in 2023, she asked King to come to Kalaupapa to discuss plans. He started looking at his schedule to plan a trip for the following month, but Watanuki cut in. “No no, I mean tomorrow,” she said. That was Watanuki, always “the first one ready to go and do things,” King recalled.

“She was always just a ball of energy and always had a hug, always asking: ‘How are you?’” he said. “She’s just an absolute delight to be around.”

At the same time, “you didn’t want to cross her … and I never did, thank you,” he added.

Watanuki never seemed to stop moving, even as she grew older. Lau first met her in the early 1990s and remembers how she would spend mornings working at the Kalaupapa Store and afternoons cleaning the yard of St. Philomena’s Church. Mass was held early, at 5:50 a.m., so Watanuki could start her morning shift at the store by 7 a.m. She faithfully showed up for her four-hour shifts until the week before her death.

“She was always there with a smile on her face and everything,” said Lau, who is part of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities. “She was just full of energy.”

Watanuki was also active with the local Lions Club and was a fixture at the annual Christmas parties.

“Aunty Meli would always go around with her little can, because they had a lot of prizes, and every time that their names were called or their raffle ticket was called, she’d be there with her little can and she’ll be pounding the floor, wanting some donations for the Lions Club,” Lau said. 

On weekends, Lau traveled to Kalaupapa to help at St. Elizabeth Convent, and she started coming for weeks at a time, assisting Clarence “Boogie” Kahilihiwa at the bookstore. Eventually, she moved to Kalaupapa full time in 2020.

She soon learned to expect the sight of Watanuki “running around with her two dogs in her car,” taking them down to her beach house where she’d feed the cats. She often shared her boundless energy when giving advice to others.

“When I think of her, all I could think of is that whenever somebody was having little problems and whatnot, she’ll always say to them, ‘be strong,’” Lau said.

She would have celebrated her 92nd birthday in October.

Rick Schonely will never forget the last time he saw Watanuki, smiling and dancing hula at a Christmas party held by the Lions Club in Kalaupapa in December. The club flew Schonely and the rest of the Kalaupapa Backyard Band down to sing for the party at McVeigh Hall.

“Aunty Meli got up and danced in front of us and was rocking out,” Schonely said. “Afterwards, we took pictures … and she’s smiling, she’s healthy as can be. And so it’s sad to hear that she’s gone now.”

Schonely met Watanuki “many moons ago” while driving visitors around for Aunty Gloria Marks and Damien Tours. He drove the company’s final tour in March 2020 shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and said Watanuki was “always one of the queens of Kalaupapa.”

Monson worries about the future of Kalaupapa. She says what makes it special is the people, and she hopes their stories will always stay at the forefront and that the public will still be able to visit Kalaupapa. For years there have been talks about what the place will look like after the last survivors die, and Monson said they still don’t know.

For now, the state Department of Health said the Kalaupapa Saints Tour can keep operating through the end of 2026. Visitors to Kalaupapa must be over 16 and get a permit from the department.

“We will continue working closely with the National Park Service and the tour operators to determine the appropriate next steps,” the Department of Health told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative via email on Friday.

Most of the land at Kalaupapa is owned by the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and the Department of Land and Natural Resources. The Health Department said that the National Park Service and the landowners would determine any future uses.

The National Park Service could not be immediately reached for comment. 

The Department of Health described Watanuki as a “very spirited and much loved member of the Kalaupapa community, and her passing has been deeply felt by the community and by all of us who had the privilege of knowing her.”

Lau and Monson said remembering the stories of the people who lived at Kalaupapa will help keep their legacy alive. Monson is currently working to establish a memorial at Kalaupapa to pay tribute to the 8,000 people sent there over the years.

Monson first visited Kalaupapa as a Maui News reporter in 1989, back when “reporters were still controversial” there. She said some people tried to get her thrown out, suspicious of what she’d write. But once they realized “I wasn’t there to air dirty laundry or write disrespectfully of people,” they started to come around. Watanuki was like that. At first, she was “very cautious about what she would share.” But eventually she got more comfortable, and she realized that people didn’t have the negative reaction to her story that she was expecting.

“It made them admire her even more, that she was able to overcome this,” Monson said.

Monson added that “to me, the healing thread of Kalaupapa is this incredible sense of community that they developed from the earliest days.” 

“That’s another thing that is often left out of the history, is how they were helping each other and they were helping rebuild that community,” Monson said. “It wasn’t just Father Damien, and not taking anything away from him, he was a remarkable man, but he didn’t do it all himself, right? And so these people who were sent away, facing all of these hardships and difficulties, basically rolled up their sleeves and went to work and were helping one another.”