HILO — The 63-year history of Hawaii Island's only prison quietly ended yesterday when the last 30 Kulani Correctional Facility inmates were transferred to Oahu facilities.

"They're all settled in now," said Tommy Johnson, deputy director of the state Department of Public Safety's Corrections Division.
One of the men went to Oahu Community Correctional Center, three others to Waiawa Correctional Facility and the remaining 26 to the Federal Detention Facility in Honolulu, he said.
"So far, we haven't had any disturbances," Johnson said of those and previous Kulani inmates' arrival on Oahu. "We haven't had any fights. We haven't had any assaults."
None of Kulani's former 123 male inmates are being sent to Mainland prisons, he said.
"There's room (in Hawaii) because we're using the FDC," he said of the federal facility.
The Department of Public Safety announced the shutdown July 25, one day after West Hawaii Today's sister paper in Hilo, the Tribune-Herald, reported that information. Mayor Billy Kenoi and other leaders complained about how prison officials revealed their decision.
"It troubles me that this alarming proposal was announced only to the prison staff, while the community and elected officials of Hawaii Island have been excluded from the discussion," Kenoi said at the time.
Also upset are some of the 76 men and women who work at the prison located on Stainback Highway, about 20 miles south of Hilo.
"All of the inmates are gone right now. Where do we go from here?" asked Ikaika Dombrigues, a building maintenance supervisor who has worked at Kulani for 20 of the 26 years he's been employed by the Department of Public Safety.
Both the Kulani employees and prisoners are unhappy with the decision to close the facility, he said.
"Their lives have just been crumbled," he said of employees who will continue reporting to work for the near future.
"I'll be going there every day until I get my (reassignment) letter," said Dombrigues, who has lined up a replacement job in Hilo. "It's a waiting game now."
Kulani employees will be doing a complete inventory, along with ongoing maintenance, Johnson said.
Eventually, all will be reassigned to the Hawaii Community Correctional Center, also known as the Hilo jail, although some employees have asked to be allowed to fill openings at prisons on other islands, he said.
There are enough vacancies at Hawaii's jails and prisons to absorb the displaced Kulani workers, Johnson said.
The state plans to allow the U.S. Department of Defense to begin using the 20-acre facility at the end of November, he said.
The goal is to turn the prison into a Hawaii National Guard Youth Challenge Academy for teens age 17 and 18 who are not going to graduate from high school, Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, the state's adjutant general, announced in July.
Some Kulani workers wish that won't happen.
"It will be a sad chapter because the whole county loses here," one person claiming to be prison guard said on the eve of the closure.
The man, who called the Tribune-Herald on Wednesday but declined to give his name, said that he was still clinging to the chance the 160-bed, minimum-security prison could be saved.
"We're just hoping for a miracle that Kulani doesn't close," he said. The facility opened in 1946 as a work camp.
Closing Kulani will save an estimated $2.8 million a year, Public Safety Director Clayton Frank said in a July 24 press conference in Honolulu.
"It is not fiscally feasible to continue to operate Kulani while the state continues to look for ways to close the budget gap," he said of the $786 million budget deficit.
It costs taxpayers $6 million a year to run Kulani, Frank added.
That decision to shutter Kulani has been a painful one for workers like Dombrigues, who claimed he was lied to by Public Safety administrators and ignored by his union, the United Public Workers.
"We are just peons," he said. "What can we do?"