Word: molokai
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...plot is laced with the usual colonial tensions and pretensions: Hoxworth feuds with a polyglut of races while his pineapple princess (Geraldine Chaplin) goes quietly mad. Every time the pace slackens, which is often, someone goes to sea, either to pick up field hands or to transport lepers to Molokai. The incessant ebb and flow is intended as a metaphor for the turbulent tides of Hawaiian life. But the real metaphor here is the pineapple, which in the good old gangster days was a synonym for bomb...
...controversy in Hawaii for the better part of a century. A Belgian-born Roman Catholic priest seeking converts, he was greeted with hostility by Hawaii's ruling Protestant-missionary families from the moment he arrived in Honolulu in 1864. He eventually volunteered to serve the leper colony on Molokai, became a beloved, if eccentric figure there; he wore a flowered native dress under his cape, tied up the brim of his battered clerical hat with string. At the age of 49, he died of leprosy, or Hansen's disease...
...volcano-born islands (only eight are inhabited), 2,400 miles west of San Francisco, 6,435 sq. mi. in area (size of Rhode Island and Connecticut together), spread over 1,600 mi. of the mid-Pacific. Included in the 50th state: inhabited islands of Hawaii, Oahu, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Maui, Molokai, Kauai, Niihau. Mean temp. 74°, annual precipitation ranging from a low of 14 in. on the moonlike volcanic coast of the "Big Island" of Hawaii to the U.S.'s highest of 471 in. on the lush island of Kauai. Agricultural economy ($302 million a year from little more...
...again that they discovered the Japanese had punctured all their cans of food in a search for contraband. Heaving the rotting" food overboard, they lived for a month on a few fish and a soup made of axle grease, curry powder and water. When they finally staggered ashore at Molokai, their delirium and ravaged appearance sent the lepers of Father Damien's colony fleeing in terror...
...ancient fear of leprosy is fast disappearing-so much so that the late Father Damien's famed settlement for leprosy patients on the Hawaiian island of Molokai is being opened to tourists. From a peak of 1,180 active cases in 1890, the settlement today has only 75. Since some 150 recovered patients prefer to remain, officials hope to give them a livelihood as guides and taxi drivers by encouraging outside visitors...