Cleansing Western Samoa: Leprosy Control during New Zealand Administration, 1914–1922

Abstract

When New Zealand military forces occupied Sa ¯moa in 1914, there were 12 recorded leprosy sufferers isolated in a leprosy station established by the Imperial German government in the village of Falefa. By 1918, the leprosy sufferers had been relocated to the island of Nu‘utele, off the east coast of Upolu. Four years later in 1922, the patients were transferred to the Fiji leprosy colony on the island of Makogai. Drawing largely on archival, song and oral records, this paper focuses on the years from 1918 to 1922 and examines the network of authorities involved in the care of leprosy sufferers and the policies of the New Zealand administration to keep Sa ¯moa ‘clean’ of the disease. This care and these policies led to the ‘Makogai solution’, which, as fragments of songs and oral histories indicate, was for decades to haunt those left behind in Samoa.