Aloha Friday: Henry Opukaha'ia

Aloha, it's Friday! Today I want to tell you about Henry Opukaha'ia also known as Henry Obookia.  In case you're wondering how to say his last name, it's pronounced this way: oh-poo-kuh-huh-ee-ah)

Henry was born on the Big Island of Hawai'i, on the opposite side from our last story, in the 1790s. When he was about 10 years old, there was a war on the island. During this war, Henry's mother and father were killed in front of him. He strapped his baby brother to his back and escaped. But his brother was killed by another soldier's spear. Henry was then put under the care (some records say he was taken prisoner) of the soldier who killed his parents. Talk about an uncomfortable situation.

Well, that didn't last long because Henry discovered he had an uncle who was kahuna (priest/leader) at a nearby heiau (temple) and he was sent to live with him. On a visit to an aunt in a neighboring village, he witnessed said aunt's death when she was thrown off a cliff by a soldier for violating a kapu law. He escaped the solider and returned to his uncle's home. He says in his  memoir that that's when he began to dream of living somewhere else.

When he was 16, he boarded a merchant ship and spent the next few years sailing the Pacific. While onboard, he became friends with a Christian sailor, Russel Hubbard who taught Henry to read and write using the Bible.

In 1809, the ship landed in New York and was sold. Henry went to live with the Captain of the ship and continued to learn English. Now that he could read and write, he began to explore religion.

He said, "Hawai'i gods. They wood-burn. Me go home, put 'em in fire, burn 'em up. They no see, no hear, no anything. On a more profound note he added, We make them (idols). Our God-he make us."

In 1814, after traveling throughout Connecticut farming and studying, he began speaking publicly and worked on translating the Bible into Hawaiian. By 1815 he'd finished writing his book, "Memoirs of Henry Obookiah." And in 1817, he was among Hawaiian and American students training as missionaries to spread the gospel around the world and back home in Hawaii. One account of his life says that from the time Henry discovered Christianity he had a deep desire to take the truth back to his homeland so they could be liberated from kapu.

Unfortunately Henry died of typhus in 1818 but his life and his faith inspired 14 missionaries to take the gospel to Hawaii. His work at translating the Bible into Hawaiian was a terrific aid in printing primers and Bible stories in Hawiian.

The connection to last week's story? Those 14 missionaries sailed aboard the Thaddeus and landed on the Big Island in March of 1820, just six months after Kamehameha II abolished the kapu system.