He has Passed on; He has Gone

With a heart darkened by sadness, I ask you to kindly leave me a space in your pages¹ for this, so that the many people of the one who has passed on to death will know. At dawn of yesterday, June 22, John James Kawehena left this life, and returned to the everlasting side of the earth. He spent 7 years, 10 months, and 26 days in this forsaken land; and as for us, his friends of this land without parents save one, the Board of Health [Papa Ola], for him is our remembrance.

His land of birth was Kaupo on Maui; his parents were Maunaloa (m) and Kauahine (f), and the three of them lived together; he has a younger sibling in the Apuakea rain,² D. Loheau.

He was growing thin with shortness of breath for these past months, and in the night of the 22nd of this past June, the shortness of breath grew worse and his breath was unbeknownst to us snatched away for good; and the next morning, we went to wake him but he was already gone and his body was stiff; much aloha for him.

He was an active writer for this colony, reporting the news of this land of leprosy patience to the whole world; and he was one of the heads of a newspaper. His writings will no longer appear in your columns.

Aloha to the [kikiipi ?] boys of the press.

JAMES IMAIKALANI.

Kalawao, June 23rd, 1887.

¹Literally a parlor or a room to greet people

²Famous in Koolaupoko on Oahu

[Although the information from Kalaupapa and Kalawao were not usually included in the regular Vital Statistics column, they were often printed in the other columns of the Hawaiian-Language Newspapers!]

(Kuokoa, 7/9/1887, p. 3)

Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Buke XXVI, Helu 28, Aoao 3. Iulai 9, 1887.