On July 28

On this day in ...
... 1959, voters in Hawaii, which would become the 50th state in the United States the following month, made congressional history by electing Americans of Asian ancestry to 2 of 3 available positions. Republican businessman Hiram L. Fong became the 1st Chinese-American elected to the U.S. Senate from any state, while Democrat Daniel K. Inouye, a decorated veteran who lost a limb in World War II, became the 1st Japanese-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from any state. A third Asian-American candidate, the former President of Hawaii's Territorial Senate, lost a bid for the remaining Senate seat by fewer than 4,600 votes out of more than 162,800 cast. (credit for Honolulu Advertiser photo of Hawaii's congressional delegation in 1973; from left, Inouye, Fong, who would serve till 1977, U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, and Spark Matsunaga) Still a Senator, Inouye was sworn in as "president pro tempore of the Senate, a mainly ceremonial position that ranks third in line of succession to the presidency," just last month.

(Prior July 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

Postcard from Palmyra

The United States has many well-known offshore territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa. I have just had the pleasure of visiting one of the least known: Palmyra Atoll. One of the 12 most isolated islands in the world, Palmyra (above) is located about 1,052 miles south/southwest of Hawaii. It is only accessible by privately chartered plane (estimated $6,000 per person) or aboard a recreational yacht. I am a stowaway on the latter (to use the term "crew" would be a major stretch of the truth). Thanks to the wonders of satellite technology, this post thus hails from S/V Constellation (above), currently deep at sea.
The history of Palmyra Atoll is fascinating and little known. Originally claimed by Dr. Gerrit Judd of the United States, it was later taken by citizens of Hawaii for the benefit of Kamehameha IV, and was formally annexed to the Hawaiian Kingdom in April of 1862. (In 1897, as posted, Hawaii was annexed to the United States.)
The Atoll was privately owned until 1934, when it was placed under the Department of the Navy. The Navy built an air station there, and brought 5,000 men to the station during World War II. The Atoll is still littered with remnants of its military occupation; for example, entry on entire islands is forbidden due to unexploded ordinance.
After the war, the Fullard-Leo family, the most recent private owners of the Atoll, sued the military for return of the Atoll. In United States v. Fullard-Leo (1947), Supreme Court ruled in the family's favor. In 1990, the family leased the island to Peter Savio, who hired Roger Lextrait as caretaker. Lextrait had several animals on the island, one of them a dog named Dadu (left), which he trained to hunt small black-tipped reef sharks for food.
The dog remains on the island, and I personally witnessed him pounce on a shark. He didn't get it ... but then he's getting up in years.
In 2000,The Nature Conservancy purchased the Atoll, retaining one island as a research station for scientists, and the rest is managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildlife refuge. The total staff and visiting research teams at the time I was there brought the population of the Atoll, as shown at right, to a whopping sixteen people! It's practically a cosmopolitan center in the mid-Pacific. The scientific research being done there varies; from sea turtles to algae to mud, if it relates to the Atoll's ecology it is fair game. The scientists were kind enough to show us their lab work, and Amanda Myers from the Fish and Wildlife Service took us on what was, frankly, the most amazing snorkel trip of my life.
When the good people of Palmyra aren't working, they're playing at the "Palmyra Yacht Club," a structure predating the Nature Conservancy's tenure on the Atoll. The three rooms (one with an ancient weight set, one with a ping pong table and library, and the last with a BYOB bar (below left)) are covered in words of wisdom and signatures, like those below right, from the yachties who have been visiting the islands since the 1980s. It's quite a monument to adventurers the world over.
Palmyra made news in the 1970s when it was the site of the double murder of two pleasure cruisers, husband and wife Mac and Muff Graham.
The story is set out in Vincent Bugliosi's torturous 800-page book And the Sea Will Tell. Unless you are looking for a lengthy refresher in evidence law, this book should be skipped, though I understand there is a film version which might prove more palatable.
The two resultant murder trials took place in federal court, apparently pursuant to the Department of the Interior Order 3224, which gave all executive, legislative, and judicial authority over the Atoll to the Secretary of the Interior.
This authority notwithstanding, Palmyra seems as final as the final frontier can be these days.
My journey continues to Samoa, and I'll post regarding my adventures there when I make landfall.

(all photos (c); see here)

On August 20

On this day in ...
... 1947, following nearly "140 days of proceedings, including the testimony of 85 witnesses and the submission of almost 1,500 documents," U.S. military judges announced their judgment in the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg. Sixteen of the 23 defendants were convicted on charges related both to the systematic killing of persons deemed unfit on account of mental or physical impairments and to the ghoulish medical experiments conducted on concentration camp detainees. Of the 16 convicted, 7 were sentenced to death on this day and executed on June 2, 1948. To the lone woman defendant, Herta Oberheuser (above left), a physician who conducted experiments at the Ravensbrück camp, the judgment directed these words:

HERTA OBERHEUSER, Military Tribunal I has found and adjudged you guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as charged under the indictment heretofore filed against you. For your said crimes on which you have been and now stand convicted Military Tribunal I sentences you, Herta Oberheuser, to imprisonment for a term of twenty years, to be served at such prison or prisons, or other appropriate place of confinement, as shall be determined by competent authority.

As posted in our Women at Nuremberg series -- to be reprised later this month during the 3d Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs of which IntLawGrrls is a proud cosponsor -- Oberheuser would be released from prison in 1952 and would try to resume the practice of medicine, but would lose her license on account of camp survivors' protests. (photo credit) She died in 1978.

... 1818, according to Spanish WikiPedia, Kamehameha I, the King of Hawaii depicted on the U.S. quarter at right, signed a treaty which included a provision by which Hawaii "became the 1st country to recognize the independence of the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata," another name for the country today better known as Argentina. The entry serves as a reminder of Hawaii's former status -- about which we've previously posted here, here, and here -- as a sovereign subject of international law.

(Prior August 20 posts are here and here.)

On July 4

On this day in ...
... 1960, the 50th and final star was placed on the current U.S. flag in commemoration of Hawaii having become the 50th state on August 21, 1959, nearly 8 months after its closest predecessor, Alaska.
... 1971, a lowland gorilla named Koko was born at the zoo in San Francisco, California. As detailed here, since Koko was an infant Dr. Penny Patterson (right, with Koko) and colleagues have studied the language abilities of this member of an endangered species. They say that Koko has learned more than 1,000 American Sign Language signs.

(Prior July 4 posts are here and here.)

On March 7

On this day in ...

... 1848, was concluded the māhele, or division of Hawai'ian lands in a single transaction that had begun on January 28, 1848. The division was made among King Kamehameha III, the chiefs, and the protectors of land known as the konohiki. The transaction is recorded in the book whose cover is at right.

... 1989 (20 years ago today), by orders numbered 1 through 5, the Beijing-controlled "People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region" declared martial law in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and certain other areas. The move, which followed days of demonstrations, provoked statements of concern from, inter alia, the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament.

(Prior March 7 posts are here and here.)

Isolation of infectious disease patients: past and present

What happens when we get sick? We ask ourselves a series of questions and then make choices regarding our care: Do I feel well enough to go to work today? Do I need to see a doctor? Should I pursue the treatment my doctor recommends? While of course these choices are tempered by a number of factors including access to and ability to pay for medical care, nonetheless a basic assumption in law and in medicine is that medical treatment is voluntary and based on consent.
Except that this assumption is not always true. As a recent visit to Kalaupapa on Moloka`i reminded me, sometimes the state balances the public health against the consent of the individual -- and public health comes out on top.
The tragic history of Kalaupapa began innocently enough. In 1865, concerned for the welfare of his people in the face of a (then-termed) leprosy outbreak, King Kamehameha V passed into law an Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy. The Act intended to clarify that leprosy was included in an existing civil code provision that stated “when any person shall be infected with the small-pox, or other sickness dangerous to the public health, the Board of Health, . . . may, for the safety of the inhabitants, remove such sick or infected person to a separate house. . .” The Act expanded on the idea of a “separate house” and authorized the use of government land, or the purchase of new land, to establish a site for the “isolation and seclusion of such leprous persons. . .” It also gave the power to the Board of Health to confine, and the Police or District Justice to arrest “any person alleged to be a leper.” These measures, even forty years later, were argued to be absolutely necessary to protect the health of the public.

On January 6, 1866, the first twelve people, all Native Hawaiian, were exiled to Moloka`i. There were no services provided by the State, and by one account:

patients [were] rounded up and torn from their families, caged in cages like animals, loaded on boats whose Captains braved the scourge, and the sea, and upon arrival, dumped the lepers off the coast of Molokai. They were expected to swim ashore and make a home for themselves with virtually no help from the outside world. Some of the lepers actually died in the water trying to swim ashore.

During the next one hundred and three years, approximately 8,000 people were sent to the Kalaupapa peninsula. The conditions there were dismal, brightened only by the soon-to-be-saint Father Damien, who in caring faithfully for his charges, contracted the disease himself. Mandatory isolation remained the law through the monarchy, annexation, and even statehood. The isolation law was not abolished until 1969. The cure for leprosy was discovered in 1941.
Of the thousands of people sent to Kalaupapa, 23 remain living today. Of the dead, nearly 75%, or 6,700 people, rest in unmarked or unidentifiable graves. In 2008, the State of Hawaii issued a formal apology. This year, for the third consecutive legislative session, a bill has been introduced that would make a national monument at Kalaupapa to honor those that were “forcibly relocated” there.
As I toured the peninsula I felt secure believing the days of the state forcing isolation upon people suffering from misunderstood diseases were behind us. On my return home, I discovered that while our moral compass may reject such public health strategies, our society has yet to bring our laws into compliance.

Currently, Title 42 United States Code Section 264 charges the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with “preventing the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and within the United States and its territories/possessions.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is delegated the authority to “detain, medically examine, or conditionally release persons suspected of carrying a communicable disease.” Under this regime, both isolation (separation of those suffering from a disease from others to stop its spread) and quarantine (isolating those that are not yet sick but may have been exposed) of the following diseases are permitted: cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). New diseases may be added at any time by executive order. This regime sounds dangerously like the one in place in Hawai`i in 1865.
Perhaps some comfort (or perhaps more terrifying), the power to isolate and quarantine is also dealt with on the state level pursuant to police powers. The states have a wide range of legal regimes and protections for civil liberties in place. As described by the CDC:

State and local laws and regulations regarding the issues of compelled isolation and quarantine vary widely. Historically, some states have codified extensive procedural provisions related to the enforcement of these public health measures, whereas other states rely on older statutory provisions that can be very broad. In some jurisdictions, local health departments are governed by the provisions of state law; in other settings, local health authorities may be responsible for enforcing state or more stringent local measures. In many states, violation of a quarantine order constitutes a criminal misdemeanor.

While we may feel that our societal moral code would reject such treatment of the sick, and particularly so in the hands of a new administration, our laws allow much more in this regard than most of us our comfortable with. Before we reach a crisis where little argument is possible in the face of panic, it is time to engage a debate on the balance between the protection of the public health and individual rights.

(All photos, except Kamehameha portrait in the public domain, are © Kathleen Doty 2009).

On November 28

On this day ...
... 1843 (165 years ago today), as described at the website of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, the governments of Britain and France entered into this Anglo-Franco proclamation regarding what are now known as the Hawaiian Islands (left):

Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and His Majesty the King of the French, taking into consideration the existence in the Sandwich Islands of a government capable of providing for the regularity of its relations with foreign nations, have thought it right to engage, reciprocally, to consider the Sandwich Islands as an Independent State, and never to take possession, neither directly or under the title of Protectorate, or under any other form, of any part of the territory of which they are composed.

The 2 thus officially gave recognition to the Hawaiian Kingdom, which then "entered into treaties with the major nations of the world and ... established over ninety legations and consulates in multiple seaports and cities." Observance of the date as a national independence holiday, Ka La Ku'oko'a, was suspended after U.S. intervention a half-century later, but has been revived in recent years.
... 1943 (65 years ago today), amid World War II, leaders of 3 Allied states met in Tehran, Iran. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin (right) discussed the waging of the war and sketched postwar plans. They would issue a Declaration at the end of the conference on December 1.

On September 2

On this day in ...
... 1838 (170 years ago today), Lili‘uokalani (right) was born in Honolulu to high-ranking Hawaiian chiefs. Upon the death of her brother, King Kalākaua, in 1891, she became Queen of Hawaii. (portrait credit) Two years later she was overthrown and imprisoned, and a "provisional government" put into place. As we've posted, the deposed queen objected to the Treaty of Annexation that this new regime entered with the United States in 1897. IntLawGrrl Kathleen Doty has named Lili‘uokalani her transnational foremother.
... 1898 (110 years ago today), in the Battle of Omdurman, troops led by Britain defeated an army of Sudanese who'd ruled "a large part of Egyptian Sudan" since 1881. The defeat in the city, which lies on the western banks of the Nile opposite Khartoum, secured British dominance over Sudan.

On July 7

On this day in ...
... 1898 (110 years ago), President William McKinley signed Congress' Joint Resolution No. 55, also known as the Newlands Resolution, by which the United States annexed the Republic of Hawaii; the island chain at left thus became the U.S. Territory of Hawaii.
... 2003 (5 years ago), Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, sustained "the fiercest attack" in 3 months by rebels of its 2d "largest Hutu rebel group -- the Forces for National Liberation." The assault was part of a civil war that already had claimed 300,000 lives. In May 2007, the Burundi government agreed to set up a truth commission and tribunal for trial of persons charged with crimes during that war. (map & flag credit)

On June 16, ...

... 1976, a march in Soweto, South Africa, by more than 10,000 students opposed to the apartheid government, turned into a riot in which police killed hundreds. Another hundred died soon after in rioting throughout the country. International attention made the event a watershed in the path to majority rule in South Africa.
... 1897 (110 years ago today), the United States and the Republic of Hawaii signed a Treaty of Annexation of Hawaii in Washington, D.C. The following day Lili‘uokalani (right), who'd become Queen of Hawaii in 1891 and objected for years to the "provisional government" that purported to represent the islands, wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Sherman:

I ... do hereby protest against the ratification of a certain treaty ... purporting to cede those Islands to the territory and dominion of the United States. I declare such a treaty to be an act of wrong toward the native and part-native people of Hawaii, an invasion of the rights of the ruling chiefs, in violation of international rights both toward my people and toward friendly nations with whom they have made treaties, the perpetuation of the fraud whereby the constitutional government was overthrown, and, finally, an act of gross injustice to me.