Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I hope I never forget this book. The way John Tayman humanized everyone on the Island. Everyone had their individual personalities, fears, comforts, and dreams.

The first castaways to the island were sent to die and to be segregated from healthy people. Some of the first castaways didn't even have the disease but stayed on the Island for months or years or even decades. They were often misdiagnosed. The doctors often didn't want to be near the patients and only asked them questions about numbness since the disease attacks nerves and they diagnosed almost all blemishes as leprosy.

In the beginning, the island was sparse and had no shelter and the first castaways just layed out in the open to sleep and slowly they built their own shelters any supplies that were sent from the big island were used by the crew for the ship they came in on or stolen by the first superintendent of the settlement and sold to the healthy inhabitants on the Island.

The Island of exiled lepers lasted for 103 years. The actual act of imprisoning people on the Island lasted that long. Some of the inhabitants stayed so long on the Island that when they were allowed to leave they didn't want to, they made it their home and the outside world would inevitably shun them and stare, which was harder to bare. Some survivors did venture out and traveled but they were always welcomed back to the settlement on the Island after the disease was managed with antibiotics. The antibiotic treatments were developed in the 1940's

Bernard, one of Molakai's long time residents requested that it be a national park to prevent the land from being taken over by millionaire beach front would be estate owners from taking over the Island and pushing out the current inhabitants, and it was done.