Population estimates were 359,000 in 1980, 815,447 in 1990, and over 1.3
million today, including an estimated 25,000 medical doctors. By 1990
census estimates, Asian Indians had a per capita income of $17,777 as
compared to the national average of $14,420, and high levels of educational
achievement (averaging 15.6 years) and annual household income ($34,300).
Indian
Americans have served on the state level in Maryland and Wyoming, and
run for office in states as diverse as California, New York, South Dakota,
Minnesota, and Georgia.
CANTON BANK OF SAN FRANCISCO
Canton Bank of San Francisco,
the first Chinese banking institution, quickly becomes the preferred bank
for nearly one hundred thousand Chinese throughout the U.S. and Mexico.
1900
FALSE IMAGE OF CHINESE "UNDESIRABLES" PORTRAYED The San Franciso
quarantine was a legislation designed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
to harass Chinese living in San Francisco Chinatown.
The bubonic plague scare was an attempt to label the Chinese as "carriers
of diseases," and as a way to remove Chinese from the center of San Francisco.
Other forms of legislation included the Queue ordinance, and the discriminatory
Laundry Ordinances. The bubonic plague scare only perpetuated the false
images of Chinese as undesirables.
CALIFORNIA'S PUNJABI MEXICAN AMERICANS Men from
India's Punjab province came to California chiefly between 1900
and 1917; after that, immigration practices and laws discriminated against
Asians and legal entry was all but impossible. Some 85 percent of the men
who came during those years were Sikhs,
13 percent were Muslims, and only 2 percent were really Hindus.
SAN FRANCISCO'S "NEW CHINESE TELEPHONE COMPANY" OPENS
The new Chinese Telephone Exchange is open and ready for business, after months of preparation. The exchange differs from all others in this city or in the world in that it is gorgeous with Oriental beauty and a marvel of luxurious good taste and splendor.
The telephone company has made it a point to make the new exchange one of the show places in Chinatown. It has spared no expense to obtain this result. The new exchange is in the three-story building at 743 Washington street. The first floor is occupied by a store, which has been refitted and decorated by its owners to be in accord with the remainder of the building.
The entrance to the exchange is up a long flight of narrow stairs, at the head of which is a gayly decorated sign in Chinese letters announcing the presence of the telephone, which, strangely enough, is one of the most popular of the American inventions among the Chinese.
SUNG VS. U.S. Sung
v US Supreme Court rules that unreasonable search and seizure, cruel
and unusual punishment, and trial without jury are acceptable in deportation
proceedings.
CHINESE EXCLUSION CONVENTION In
November 22, 1901 - a Chinese exclusion convention in San Francisco
spells out the reasons why it thinks Congress should exclude Chinese immigrants.
Some excerpts are listed below:
The effects of Chinese
exclusion have been most advantageous to the State. The 75,000 Chinese
residents of California in 1880 have been reduced, according to the last
census, to 45,000; and whereas the settlement of California by Caucasians
had been arrested prior to the adoption of these laws,
a healthy growth of the State in population has marked the progress of
recent years. Every material interest of the State has advanced, and prosperity
has been our portion.
SINS
OF EXCLUSION
Exclusion
and the Racial/Ethnic Enclaves However, exclusion was not only an immigration restriction.
It became a unique form of racism that also socially defined the
situation of the remaining Asians inside the country, as well as
those who managed to slip through after exclusion until 1965. Unlike
blacks who were economically integrated into the center of the U.S.
economy (albeit in extremely oppressive ways) and the Native Americans
who mainly remained outside U.S. society as a whole, the Chinese,
and then the other Asian groups in somewhat different degrees, were
excluded from the mainstreams of U.S. society and instead confined
to ethnic enclaves. The Asian ethnic enclaves thus were also products
of both racial and nationality discrimination.
The
Structure of Dual Domination
One of the prime results of Asian exclusion was the development
of what L. Ling-chi Wang calls "the structure of dual domination."
What this extremely useful concept refers to is that the ruling
circles of not only the United States but also of China, Japan,
Korea, and the Philippines developed fairly elaborate political,
economic, and social institutions to dominate and control their
respective emigrants in the United States; Asians in the United
States were oppressed both by U.S. and homeland elites.
To
varying degrees, the home countries of many European immigrants
to the United States also tried to influence their emigrants. But
the special conditions of exclusion facing Asians produced a unique
racist isolation within the U.S. structure and simultaneously rendered
these isolated communities subject to customs, laws, organizations,
and institutions from the home countries.
In
fact, the two structures were mutually reinforcing. The home countries'
main aim was to retain the political, economic, and cultural loyalty
of their overseas communities, while the principal interest of the
United States was to retain its racially oppressive, especially
exclusionary, policies and occasional access to cheap Asian labor,
predominately in agriculture. Thus, the United States was usually
happy to stay out of the internal workings of the Asian communities
so long as they stayed within bounds of its broader dictates.
To quote the imperial Chinese consul-general
of San Francisco: They work more cheaply than whites; they live more cheaply;
they send their money out of the country to China; most of them have no
intention of remaining in the United States, and they do not adopt American
manners, but live in colonies, and not after the American fashion.
Until this year no statute
had been passed by the State forbidding their intermarriage with the whites,
and yet during their long residence but few intermarriages have taken
place, and the offspring has been invariably degenerate.
It is well established that the issue of the Caucasian
and the Mongolian
does not possess the virtues of either, but develops the vices of both.
So physical assimilation is out of the question.
It is well known that the vast majority of the Chinese
do not bring their wives with them in their immigration because of their
purpose to return to their native land when a competency is earned.
Their
practical status among us has been that of single men competing at
low wages against not only men of our race, but men who have been brought
up by our civilization to family life and civic duty. They
pay little taxes; they support no institutions, neither school, church,
nor theater; they remain steadfastly, after all these years, a permanently
foreign element.
We respectfully represent that their presence excludes
a desirable population, and that there is no necessity whatever for their
immigration.
America is the asylum for the oppressed and liberty-loving
people of the world: and the implied condition of their admission to this
country is their allegiance to its Government and devotion to its institutions.
It is hardly necessary to say that the Chinese
are not even bona fide settlers, as the imperial Chinese consul-general
admits.
We respectfully represent that American labor should
not be exposed to the destructive competition of aliens who do not, will
not, and can not take up the burdens of American citizenship, whose presence
is an economic blight and a patriotic danger.
As common
laborers they have throughout California displaced tens of thousands
of men. But this country is not concerned, even in a coldly economic sense,
with the production of wealth. The United States has now a greater per
capita of working energy than any other land. If it is stimulated by a
nonassimilative and nonconsuming race, there is grave danger of overproduction
and stagnation.
Their
earnings do not circulate nor are they reinvested, contrary to those
economic laws which make for the prosperity of nations. For their services
they may be said to be paid twice, first by their employer and then by
the community.
If we must have protection, is it not far better for
us to protect ourselves against the man than against his trade? Our opponents
maintain that the admission of the Chinese
would cause an enlargement of our national wealth and a great increase
of production; but the distribution of wealth, not its production, is
to-day our most serious public question.
In this age of science and invention the production
of wealth can well be left to take care of itself. It is its equitable
distribution that must now be the concern of the country.
The experience of the South with slave labor warned
us against an unlimited Chinese immigration, considered both as a race
question and as an economic problem. The
Chinese, if permitted freely to enter this country, would create race
antagonisms which would ultimately result in great public disturbance.
The Caucasians will not tolerate the Mongolian. As ultimately all government
is based upon physical force, the white population of this country would
not, without resistance suffer itself to be destroyed.
If we were to return to the antebellum ideas of the
South, now happily discarded, the Chinese
would satisfy every requirement of a slave or servile class. They work
well, they are docile, and they would not be concerned about their political
condition; but such suggestions are repulsive to American civilization.
The free immigration of Chinese
would be for all purposes an invasion by Asiatic barbarians, against whom
civilization in Europe has been frequently defended, fortunately for us.
It is our inheritance to keep it pure and uncontaminated, as it is our
purpose and destiny to broaden and enlarge it. We are trustees for mankind.
Our commerce with China
since 1880 has increased more than 50 per cent. Our consular service reports
that "the United States is second only to Great Britain in goods sold
to the Chinese." The United States buys more goods from China than does
any other nation, and her total trade with China, exports and imports,
equals that of Great Britain, not including the colonies, and is far ahead
of that of any other country.
Therefore every consideration of public duty, the nation's
safety and the people's rights, the preservation of our civilization,
and the perpetuity of our institutions, impel your memorialists to ask
for the reenactment of the exclusion
laws, which have for twenty years protected us against the gravest
dangers, and which were they relaxed would imperil every interest which
the American people hold sacred for themselves and their posterity.
One can almost hear echoes of Gompers's
and Powderly's warnings about the threat that Chinese civilization
poses for America when one reads Caspar
W. Weinberger's "Foreword" to the House of Representatives Report
of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial
Concerns with the People's Republic of China ("the
Cox Report"), which stated, "Communist China's long march against
the United States is as tenacious as it is diverse from campaign contributions
used to buy influence in the White House, to purchasing an interest
in American corporations, to hi- tech spying, [and] to a plain old-
fashioned military buildup and threats . . . "Further, when it is reported
that 450 of the employees at Los Alamos are "foreign
citizens," and that this number includes "more than 30 from Russia,
China, North Korea, and seven other 'sensitive' countries" one senses
that Chinese scientists, whether "imported" or American-born, alien
or citizen, have become the era's current version of the "coolie
menace."
CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT EXTENDED TEN MORE YEARS & SAMUEL GOMPERS
Chinese Exclusion Act extended for another ten years. Immigration officials and the police raid Boston's Chinatown and, without search warrants, arrest almost 250 Chinese who allegedly had no registration certificates on their persons.
WORDS
OF A CHINESE EXCLUSIONIST - SAMUEL GOMPERS:
As the 20th century dawned and with it the possibility that the already
once-renewed Chinese
Exclusion Act would expire, (Samuel)
Gompers worked tirelessly to secure permanent exclusion. In February,
1902, he
testified before the Senate Committee on Immigration, insisting that "the
exclusion of Chinese laborers from the United States is asked for by all
of the wage workers of our country, particularly all the organized wage
earners, regardless of any section of the country from which they hail
and in which they are located." And once again, but even more vehemently,
he
buttressed his argument with an attack on the social, moral, and civic
aspects of Chinese society and culture:
The presence in our country of a people entirely out of harmony and training with American comprehension of liberty and citizenship, who are alien to our customs and habits, as different from us in political and moral ideas as it is possible for two peoples to be, who are so thoroughly grounded in race characteristics that even the generations born and reared among us still retain them, can not but exercise a most demoralizing effect upon the body politic, the social life, and the civilization of the people of our nation.
EXCLUSION'S
EFFECT ON GENDER & CLASS
Exclusion, Enclaves, and the Class Composition of Asians
Exclusion also had a major impact on the gender and class compositions
of the Asian communities, which continues to resonate today.
First
of all, since the vast majority of the first immigrants of each
of the Asian nationalities were male laborers who left their families
behind, exclusion tended to freeze in place the overwhelming male
composition of these communities and stunted the growth of a U.S.-born
Asian population.
Second,
anti-Asian hostility and riots, combined with exclusion, forced
the Asian peoples to band together into Japantowns, Chinatowns and
Manilatowns where the prevailing conditions promoted a large class
of small entrepreneurs (merchants, farmers, labor contractors, restaurateurs,
etc.) and the political and social power of that class over the
workers.
Chinese
Communities
Prior to exclusion the majority lived in agricultural areas where
the business and labor-contracting elite seldom exceeded 15 percent
of the community. Exclusion virtually eliminated Chinese laborers
in small western towns and left only a smattering of Chinese restaurant
or laundry owners. And it drove the majority together into Chinese
enclaves within the cities where entrepreneurs and professionals
constituted some 40 percent.
The
exclusion acts banned Asian laborers, but allowed merchants, students,
and their wives or families to enter the United States, thus further
distorting the class composition of the communities.
The
Chinatowns, Manilatowns, and Japantowns that emerged were not so
much the products of "natural" social forces as the distorted
outgrowth of immigration and naturalization policies that discriminated
against Chinese as a people in general and against specific classes.
Filipino
Communities
Ironically, Filipinos were neither enclaved nor did they develop
an entrepreneurial class on the scale of the Chinese or Japanese.
Many Filipinos remained migrant farm workers for agribusiness on
the West Coast. Their enclaves tended to be in agricultural areas
and their urban communities tended to be adjuncts to or merged with
Chinatowns. The situation of the Filipinos thus remained that of
the first phase: racially coerced labor for agricultural capital.
Japanese
Communities
The Japanese also remained a disproportionately agricultural folk
until their racist internment during the Second World War, but they
were only briefly forced into the role of cheap labor. Japanese
in California were soon able to carve out niches as farmers and
shopkeepers. The Japanese also formed sizable urban Japantowns in
Los Angeles and San Francisco with class characteristics similar
to the Chinatowns.
And, lest the Senators not be informed about the unsalubrious
effects that Chinese immigration had already inflicted and would continue
to inflict on America unless their coming was halted altogether, Gompers
set forth a parade of horribles drawn, he claimed, from facts about the
Chinese situation of the State of California:
All impartial observers agree, and official reports confirm it, that the condition of affairs in the State of California, the people of which had and still have to bear the brunt of this Asiatic contamination almost incredible to our people, in which gambling hells, opium joints, dens of iniquity and vice [abound,] are but superficial evidences of a moral standard as degrading in its exhibition as it is demoralizing by its contact.
Together with Hermann Gudstadt, Gompers
co-authored the most infamous of his screeds on the matter, Some Reasons
for Chinese Exclusion. Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood Against Asiatic
Coolieism. Which Shall Survive?
Setting all claims of racial tolerance, ethnic empathy, or labor solidarity aside, the two veteran Chinese exclusionists reiterated and embellished with purple prose every accusation that had been made against Chinese immigrants, insisting on their mendacity, their womanless and hence immoral life style, their willing submission to cheap labor contracts made in China, their murderous intra-communal conflicts, and, lest these not be sufficient to undermine any notion of their worthiness to come to the United States, Gompers and Gudstadt added a new charge, viz., that Chinese male immigrants seduced chaste, prepubescent white girls and boys into drug addiction and prostitution:
Passing through the upper end of Kearney street, in the vicinity of [San Francisco's] Chinatown, after nightfall one may see a number of what were once men and women, but are now but mental and physical wrecks of humanity. . . . Who and what are these beings, and why are they seen only in San Francisco, one of nature's most favored cities? . . . Some time in the past these poor, miserable, and degraded wrecks were the beloved children of fond parents . . . They have become what is known in the parlance of the street as "dope heads" opium fiends in the ordinary language.
In some manner, by some wily method they have been induced to use the drug. Time was when little girls no older than 12 years were found in Chinese laundries under the influence of opium. What other crimes were committed in those dark and fetid places when these little innocent victims of the Chinamen's wiles were under the influence of the drug are almost too horrible to imagine . . . [T] here are hundreds, aye thousands, of our American boys and girls who have acquired this deadly habit and are doomed, hopelessly doomed, beyond a shadow of redemption. Better death a hundred times than to have become a victim of this worst of all oriental opium habit.
In subsequent years, Gompers would not only oppose American expansion into the Pacific because more Chinese would become part of the labor force, but would also attempt to evict from their jobs Chinese already at work in America. When, in 1898, the House of Representatives was considering a bill authorizing the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, Gompers protested to Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the House, reminding him that "It [had] required more than twenty years of constant organization, agitation, and education to legislatively close the gates of our country to the Chinese";
claiming, beyond all considerations of fact, that of the 100,000 inhabitants of those islands there were 50,000 contract laborers of whom approximately 80 percent were Chinese and Japanese; and predicting that the "annexation of Hawaii would . . . obliterate that beneficent legislation and open wide our gates, . . . [threatening] an inundation of Mongolians to overwhelm the free laborers of our country."
In November, 1881, Gompers and his fellow unionists lent their support to a resolution reported one month later: "declaring the presence and competition of Chinese [laborers] with free white labor as extremely dangerous and demanding the passage of laws entirely prohibiting their importation." But, less than a year later, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited their immigration.
Gompers' fulminations against the Chinese, together with demands for stricter prohibitions on their immigration, did not cease after the Chinese Exclusion Act had been adopted. Fearful that the law would not be administered with appropriate acuity, Gompers presided over a meeting of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions at which the organization's committee on legislation suggested that "a supplementary act" would be needed in order to ensure "the strictest enforcement of the present Anti- Chinese law."
That Gompers perceived the labor problem as a race problem is made clear not only in the words used to refer to non-white, non-Anglo workers in his autobiography, but also, and more viciously, in the pamphlets he wrote on the Chinese question and in his efforts to eliminate the Chinese presence from the American labor market both before and after the passage of the exclusion act.
From the mid-1870s Gompers would make opposition to Chinese immigration a central plank of his labor union platforms. He admired the adoption in 1875 of the "white label" by San Francisco's white cigarmakers.
On the Chinese question Gompers never repudiated his statement of 1894 in which he declared his opposition to the "evil effect of [the] Chinese invasion: [a] people . . . who allow themselves to be barbarously tyrannized over in their own country, and who menace the progress, the economic and social standing of the workers of other countries, cannot be fraternized with."
So sure was Gompers that Asiatic immigration constituted a major threat not only to American labor but to American society that, from 1905 until his death two decades later, he entertained dark suspicions about some kind of evil force at work to thwart his exclusionist efforts.
WORDS OF A CHINESE EXCLUSIONIST - TERENCE POWDERLY:
The opposition to the Chinese coolie is not alone because of his race or his religion, but because of the economic position he occupies in this country . . . They do not assimilate with our people, do not wear our clothing, do not adopt our customs, language, religion or sentiments. It is said that the Chinese, if given an opportunity, will become Americanized. The Chinese coolie will no more become Americanized than an American can take on the habits, customs, garb and religion of the Mongolian . . . American and Chinese civilizations are antagonistic; they cannot live and thrive and both survive on the same soil. Powderly closed this peroration with a dire prophecy: "One or the other must perish."
Thus, on January 8, 1892, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle quoted him censuring employers who opposed exclusion: "Standing behind them [i.e., the Chinese] are Christian employers of this land, who would rather import heathen willing to work for barely enough to sustain life than retain a brother Christian at a wage sufficient to live as becomes a Christian. We do not want opium or the Chinese who grow it . . . "
A decade later, Powderly, having become Commissioner-General of Immigration, and after 1900 in sole charge of enforcing Chinese exclusion, was still unsatisfied: "No graver danger has ever menaced the workingmen of America," he thundered, "than that which faces them when the possibility of lowering the bars at our seaports and border-lines to the Chinese is presented."
In California, the Catholic church had chosen to serve its new-immigrant Irish and Italian constituencies and turned its back on Chinese immigrants, its leading local priest becoming a well-known speaker favoring exclusion.
WORDS OF A CHINESE EXCLUSIONIST - JOHN SWINTON:
The anti-Chinese rhetoric of this East Coast journalist, a Sinophobic demagogue "would later emerge as the nation's preeminent labor editor of the 1880s, proprietor of a radical newspaper that bore his name."
In 1870 Swinton published an editorial in the New York Tribune, denouncing the Chinese as "inferior," "depraved," practitioners of "indecent and obscene, foul and mortifying vices," and asked, "Can we afford to admit the transfusion into the national veins of a blood more debased than any we have known," and answered his own question, stating that it entailed but an easily understood conflict: between "the roast rat against the roast beef," (an adumbration of the infamous paper by Samuel Gompers and Hermann Gudstadt, issued by the American Federation of Labor in Washington, D.C., in 1902,and entitled, "Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion.)
In 1902 the United Mine Workers had unleashed a vituperative campaign in behalf of extending Chinese exclusion and followed that with a program of opposition to Japanese immigration.
To East Coast white workers of the late 19th century, the Chinese Exclusion Act was merely an "indirect result of the labor uprising of 1877." For, although "workers would continue to express only minimal interest in immigration restriction, other groups would begin to see it as a solution for the nation's industrial problems." These "other groups" apparently are the politicians and the forces of monopoly capitalism; for Gyory concludes that "This atmosphere of violence and uncertainty breathed new life into the anti-Chinese movement among those seeking to eliminate or defuse class tensions [!]"
In fact, shortly after the white laborers' violent uprising that left over 40 Chinese dead, drove the rest out of their homes and torched the town's Chinese quarters, the officers of the Union Pacific Coal Department that had first introduced Chinese workingmen into the Wyoming mines, determined to rid themselves of all of the latter and as many as possible of the unionized white workers as well, replacing both with nonunion Mormon miners and, more significantly, with new labor-saving machinery.
Ng,
who succeeded in obtaining a reclassification of newspaper editors as
educators rather than laborers, toured the United States in behalf of
a repeal of the law, published an eloquent refutation of the exclusionist
position in The New York Times, and debated both Powderly and Gompers
when, in 1905, they sought an even harsher measure prohibiting the coming
of Asians
to America.
A study
published in 1916, by Tien-Lu Li, Professor of English at Peking University,
who, having not only examined the facts and forces associated with the
Burlingame Treaty of 1868, the modification of the latter in 1880, the
treaty of 1894, the Exclusion Acts of 1882, 1884, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1902,
and 1904, the extension of the exclusion laws to Hawaii and the Philippine
Islands after 1898, and also critically appraised both the pro- and the
anti- exclusionist positions, concluded, "It is no solution of the problem
that omits the main . . . question . . . the exclusion of Chinese laborers
. . . If the present
policy is sound, wise, and in accordance with eternal truth and justice,
then let it be pursued and maintained, cost what it may. But it would
do no harm to pause and think whether it is."
Organized
labor fought for another 60 years to maintain and enlarge Asiatic
exclusion from both the country and the labor sector;
Or how those laws made it a
virtual impossibility for Chinese
laborers in the United States to live a normal family life, leading
an unknown number to rectify matters through smuggling, through the
documentary creation of "paper
sons," and through resort to the subterfuge that the Immigration
and Naturalization Service came to call the "slot racket."
SAN FRANCISCO'S POLITICIAN ATTEMPTING TO MOVE CHINATOWN
The trouble with the question of removing (San Francisco) Chinatown to a more suitable locality has always been that its proposers have been demagogic politicians of the sand-lot variety. The man, when elected to the Mayoral chair [Isaac Kalloch] by the sandlot elements, issued his proclamation declaring Chinatown to be a "nuisance," and requiring its inhabitants to get out with their bag and baggage within thirty days, at the end of which time the place would be destroyed as a menace to the public health. Of course, the labor elements, living for the most part south of Market street, and who rarely, if ever, came into contact with
Chinatown, shouted themselves hoarse.
The Chief Magistrate of the city had given the word, and it was not for them to question its legality. They were ready at the expirty of the days of grace they avowed, to wade knee deep in blood if necessary to drive the yellow peril into the sea. The police were called in from their beats and housed in the vicinity of the threatened danger; the militia, strongly armed, occupied the armories, and meanwhile the law was invoked which declared the Mayor's proclamation to be illegal, and restrained all parties from committing any overt act.
The laborers were in earnest, but Kalloch was not. He respectfully bowed to the decision of the courts, and the trouble blew over. The cry that "the Chinese must go!" was the shibboleth with which the demagogues at that time conjured the working man's vote into the ballot box. It was not the uncleanliness of Chinatown that they were concerned about, but the capacity of the little brown men to work hard, keep sober, live economically, and render their employers a maximum of service for a minimum of wages. To terrorize the Chinese into leaving the country was the purpose of the sandlotters.
CHINATOWN'S HISTORY
At the turn of the century, Chinatown was a neighborhood of narrow
streets and dilapidated Victorians -- the oldest part of San
Francisco. Immigrants, most of them bachelors, had added balconies,
displaying silk-and-bamboo lanterns and other touches of their
homeland: potted flowers and plants, signs in Chinese, triangular
yellow flags with a dragon to signify the merchant's rank. After the
quake, the city's Reconstruction Committee wanted to move Chinatown
6 miles away to Hunters Point.
"You have to understand, from the time the Chinese arrived (until)
the earthquake, San Francisco City Hall was trying to get rid of
them. Not to move them somewhere -- but to move them back to China,"
said historian Phil Choy, 79, an American-born son of a paper son.
But the effort to move Chinatown stalled when the Chinese government
and white merchants warned that U.S.-China relations would suffer if
Chinatown were pushed aside.
Chinese merchants quickly staked their claim by rebuilding. They
devised a plan to make Chinatown a valued asset of San Francisco --
a tourist spot.
The architecture they chose was not authentic but a fanciful
interpretation designed by white architects. Pagodas in the Far East
are religious buildings, erected as memorials or shrines, for
example, while in Chinatown they house shops.
1902
TAKUJI YAMASHITA The Washington
Supreme Court in 1902 barred Takuji
Yamashita from practicing law solely because he was born a member
of the "yellow race." Three days before his 28th birthday, the state Supreme
Court unanimously rejected Yamashita's petition for admission to the bar
and voided the citizenship Pierce County had granted him. The five white
Washington justices concluded unapologetically that excluding people based
on race dated to the founding of the country, and thus "expressed a settled
national will" on the subject.
On March 1, 2001, the state's modern-day Supreme Court is poised to make
amends for this dark, little-known chapter in the state's racist history.
Responding to a petition from the UW Law School and the state bar association,
the high court plans to reverse its century-old action and admit Yamashita
posthumously to the state bar.
The Fuji Athletic
Club, the first Japanese
American baseball club, was organized in San Francisco. Made up of
immigrants
who had learned the game in Japan, it would grow into several semi-pro
baseball leagues, with clubs in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nebraska,
Tijuana, Vancouver, Washington and Wyoming.
The
teams competed
on the regional and state level within the Nisei (second generation Japanese
American) League, and played against university teams in the United States,
Japan, Korea, and China.
By
World War II, there were over 50
Nisei teams in California alone.
BACKGROUND:
The story of Japanese American players, coaches, teams, and leagues has
very nearly been a lost chapter in American and baseball history. Only
today is it being rediscovered, to the benefit of America, baseball, and
Japanese Americans alike. A principal reason for this rediscovery is the
traveling exhibition Diamonds in the Rough, which tells the story of Japanese
Americans in baseball through words, images, and memorabilia. The exhibition,
opened in Fresno, California, in 1996 and has since been viewed in cities
and towns across the nation as well as at the National Baseball Hall of
Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. Also in the 1990s, a number of major-league
teams, as well as the Hall of Fame, have given belated recognition to
surviving Japanese American players of pre-World War II days. Now in their
eighties and nineties, these venerable heroes once again stand in the
limelight and hear the cheers of baseball fans.
Their
story, and the story of their ancestors and descendants, is a tale of
a great journey, full of hard-won victories, devastating setbacks, and
new triumphs. The travelers on this journey are known by names designating
the generations of Japanese immigrants and their descendants:
So much of their story is wrapped up in baseball. If we were to dissect
a Nikkei baseball, we would find that the center epitomizes the core members
of the Issei and Nisei generations, the pioneers who created a culture.
The fiber and strings would represent the communities, weaving their identities,
loyalties, and cultural affinities around their teams and players. The
leather skin would symbolize the physical and mental toughness developed
by the Issei and Nisei who endured the travails of settlement in a new
land and the eviction and internment of World War II. The stitching bonds
the Issei, Nisei, Sansei, and Yonsei together and seals these family spirits
for future generations.
1903
ANNA MAY WONG IS BORN! This great
actress was nee Wong Liu Tsong, a name which translates to "Frosted
Yellow Willows" was born on January 3, 1905. Despite working with stars
such as Pearl White, Colleen Moore, Lon Chaney, Marlene
Dietrich, Sessue Hayakawa, Douglas
Fairbanks, etc. at studios such as Pathe, Warner Brothers and MGM
- she never achieved the success she deserved!
1903
PETER CHANG - 1ST KOREAN AMERICAN The
United States' first Korean American, Peter
Chang, is born in October. His life is the history of Korean immigrants.
His mother boarded one of Korea's first immigrant boats, the Gallic,
in 1903, well into pregnancy, and gave birth to Chang at the Crusaders
Hospital in Oakland near San Francisco, as Chang
became the first Korean-American. Chang
considers himself 100 percent Korean and 100 percent American. He is
a citizen of the United States, but he cannot escape from being a Korean,
which is what makes him a quintessential "Korean-American."
Chang's wife,
Helen, who died in 1999, once wrote a long letter to the first lady
Eleanor Roosevelt when Chang
was denied promotions because of his race. This letter moved the first
lady and Chang was appointed as chief warrant officer of the navy in
1943, a rare case at the time for an Asian.
Their son, Peter
Jr., 67, was the first Korean to graduate from Stanford Law School.
Their daughter Vula, 62, earned a master's degree from Stanford's graduate
school of the arts. In 1963, Peter Jr., at the age of 26, was selected
as the county prosecutor of Santa Cruz, becoming the first Asian on
the mainland and the youngest person to become a selected chief public
prosecutor. Chang's
grandson Peter the third, 44, earned a Ph.D from Maryland University
in naval architecture and currently works in supplying commodities to
the navy.
1903
KOREAN WORKERS ARRIVE IN HAWAII Korean-American
leaders say the first group of Korean emigrants arrived in Honolulu
on Jan. 13, 1902, when they crossed the Pacific Ocean on the SS Gaelic.
Their arrival became possible only after they agreed to work three years
in the sugar cane fields. 1500 Japanese and Mexican sugar beet workers
strike in Oxnard, California. Koreans in Hawaii form Korean Evangelical
Society. Filipino students (pensionados) arrive in the U.S. for higher
education.
Sugar beet workers comprising the Japanese Mexican Labor Association in
Oxnard stage a strike. The Mexican workers refuse to join the union when
the American Federation of Labor excludes the Japanese.
1ST KOREAN CHURCH IN US & OUTSIDE OF KOREA Korean
Methodist Mission Church was founded by the first group of immigrants
from Korea in Hawaii. It is the first
Korean church planted outside of Korea. It's first members endured a
harsh life on plantations as labors, yet, their faith in our Lord was an
investment that continues to reap spiritual dividends. The present-day congregation
is primarily made up of Korean Americans, along with Japanese-Americans,
Caucasians, and people of Filipino, Vietnamese, Black, Arabic, Hawaiian
and other heritages that are reflective of Hawaii's diversity.
FILIPINO IMMIGRANTS About 400
students (called pensionados) on U.S. government scholarship are often
cited as the first "wave" of Filipino
immigrants between the years of 1903 and 1924. In reality, the new rulers
invested in their education so that they could return to serve
as the middle stratum of loyal natives who, subordinated to landlords and
compradors, would legitimize U.S. domination.
1904
HOLT CHENG - FIRST CHINESE AMERICAN MEDICAL SCHOOL GRADUATE
Holt
Cheng was the first Chinese American who graduated from a U. S. medical
school and passed the California Medical Board. It happened in 1904. He
was born on November 6, 1878 in the Wu Shi Village, Zhongshan County,
Guangdong Province, China to a farming family.
At the age of eight, he
and his cousin were sent to Honolulu, Hawaii to work for their uncle in
a small grocery store. When their uncle retired, the boys traveled to
California. Holt
worked his way through the College of Physician and Surgeons in San Francisco
(known nowadays as the University of Pacific) by picking apples and selling
pictures on the street.
He
graduated in 1904 and passed the California Medical Board examination.
After graduation, Dr. Cheng returned to China to practice Western medicine
and to be with his parents. He
was awarded the "Medical Ju Ren" by the Imperal Chinese Government. He
was appointed the Expectant Secretary of the Grand Secretariat and Head
Master of the Imperial Army Medical College in Guangzhow.
In
1908, he
and his friends founded the Guangdong Guang Hua Medical College which
was the first western medical college established by Chinese. He married
Edna Rachel Lee of San Francisco on March 20, 1910. He retired in 1931
due to health problems. During the WWII, the family moved to Guangxi Providence.
He passed away in 1942 with his wife and son, Homer, at his side. His
physician son believed he died of cancer and/or liver disease.
FIRST KOREAN COUPLE IN AMERICA Dosan
Ahn Chang Ho and his wife, Helen Ahn were the first Korean couple in
American when they arrived in Riverside California in 1904 and remained
there until 1913. They had two sons, Philip
(famous pioneering actor) and Philson. Dosan
helped Korean laborers find jobs by day, and taught Bible studies and English
by night. It was also in Riverside that Ahn laid groundwork for the Provisional
Government of Korea and conceived Hung Sa Dahn (Young Korean Academy). Dosan
Ahn Chang Ho was a freedom fighter, much like Dr. Martin Luther King.
Ahn's spirit continues to live on, 63 years after he gave his life for Korea's
independence. In 1938 when human spirit was in jeopardy all over the world,
Ahn provided hope to all Koreans in their darkest hours. In
1926, he left America for the last time and was arrested in 1932 by Japanese
police while fighting for Korean freedom. He passed away on March 10, 1938
from complications of Japanese imprisonment.
CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT MADE INDEFINITE! Chinese
Exclusion Act made indefinite and applicable to U.S. insular possessions.
Japanese plantation workers engage in first organized strike in Hawaii.
Punjabi Sikhs begin to enter British Columbia.
MARRIAGE BETWEEN "MONGOLIANS" AND WHITES FORBIDDEN Section 60 of California's
Civil Code amended to forbid marriage between whites and "Mongolians." Koreans
establish Korean Episcopal Church in Hawaii and Korean Methodist Church
in California. San Francisco School Board attempts to segregate Japanese
schoolchildren. Korean immigration ends. Koreans in San Francisco form Mutual
Assistance Society. Asiatic Exclusion League formed in San Francisco.
UNITED STATES VS. JU TOY The 1905 Supreme Court
case United
States v. Ju Toy established the Department of Commerce and Labor as
the final level of appeal and due process for immigrants and returning travelers
claiming United States citizenship. Thereafter immigrants could appeal to
Federal courts only on procedural grounds. As a result of this decision
the number of Chinese immigration cases heard in Federal court diminished
significantly.
On
May 14, the Asiatic
Exclusion League was formed in San Francisco, marking the official
beginning of the anti-Japanese movement. Among those attending the first
meeting were labor leaders (and European immigrants) Patrick Henry McCarthy
and Olaf Tveitmoe of the Building Trades Council of San Francisco and
Andrew Furuseth and Walter McCarthy of the Sailor's Union. Tveitmoe was
named the first president of the organization.
Indian
immigration was not wanted. The Asian
Exclusion League in collusion with a number politicians was conspiring
to restrict Indian immigration.
The
Democrats courted the AEL for their political support and in exchange
supported restricting Indians. From 1904 through 1911, the AEL maintained
a continuous pressure on the US government to restrict Indian immigration.
They spread rumors that Indians were bringing in exotic diseases, that
they were polygamists, were "filthy and unsanitary" - health-wise, that
created mass hysteria and put pressure on the politicians to restrict
immigration.
ANTI-ASIAN RIOT IN VANCOUVER Anti-Asian riot in Vancouver.
Japanese nurserymen form California Flower Growers' Association. Koreans
establish Korean Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles.
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE & CHINATOWN ISSUES
Japanese scientists
studying the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake are stoned. San Francisco
earthquake destroys most municipal records, opening up the way for Chinese
"Paper Sons" to immigrate.
The
Earthquake
April 18, 1906 - San Francisco was wrecked by a Great
Earthquake at 5:13 a.m., and then destroyed by the seventh Great
Fire that burned for four days. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of trapped
persons died when South-of-Market tenements collapsed as the ground liquefied
beneath them. Most of those buildings immediately caught fire, and trapped
victims could not be rescued. Reevaluation of the 1906 data, during the
1980s, placed the total
earthquake death toll at more than 3,000 from all causes. Damage was
estimated at $500,000,000
in 1906 dollars.
Tremors
were familiar enough to the Forty-Niners who settled in California, but
people did not pay enough attention to fire. On
six separate occasions during the Gold Rush, San Francisco was ravaged
by fire, and when water ran out, firefighters were reduced to blowing up
buildings in the path of the flames. But the boom-and-bust ethos of the
age prompted the citizenry to regard a fire as nothing more than an opportunity
to build an even bigger and better city. "Nil Desperandum" ("Never despair")
was the slogan that one optimistic landowner carved on the facade of his
house after rebuilding for the fourth or fifth time.
What
they failed to understand was the special ferocity of fire in the
confined spaces of a city, the so-called synergistic phenomenon of extreme
burning, as fire
historian Stephen J. Pyne puts it. When many small fires converge
and convective winds of more than 100 miles per hour are generated, an
urban fire is a holocaust: "Given the intensity of the toxic gasses and
the radiant heat, people die from asphyxiation, burns, and the inhalation
of poison gasses such as carbon monoxide."
Then, too, San
Francisco was especially vulnerable to fire on the eve of the 1906
quake. Ninety percent of its buildings were wood-framed. The highly congested
urban center, with its tall buildings and narrow streets, was surrounded
by farmland and near-wilderness. The peninsula was swept by strong winds
from the sea. Yet the burghers of turn-of-the-century
San Francisco neglected to install such modern fire-prevention measures
as sprinklers. A commission of the National Board of Fire Underwriters
reported in 1905 that "San
Francisco has violated all underwriting traditions and precedent by not
burning up." Not until April 18, 1906.
History of Chinatown The
earth dragon has awakened, Chinatown residents are said to have screamed
as the 1906 earthquake and fire flattened their neighborhood and killed
untold numbers.
San
Francisco's Chinatown was already under siege before the earthquake.
White leaders considered the Chinese an economic threat, filthy and dangerous,
and were trying to push them out. The Chinese Exclusion Act, barring most
Chinese from entering the United States since 1882, had slowed the flow
of newcomers to a trickle of teachers, students and merchants.
Yet when government buildings were destroyed a century
ago, so were the birth and immigration records inside. Scores of Chinese
recognized the serendipity, claiming citizenship and bringing in their
children.
In many cases, for a fee, they also brought in people
who weren't their children. Hundreds of those friends and strangers, who
came to be known as "paper sons," arrived in the Bay Area in the following
decades, changing Chinese
America forever.
"In a strange way, we as Chinese
Americans are indebted to that disaster," said Felicia Lowe, 60, a
Bay Area documentary filmmaker whose father and grandfather were paper
sons. "It was a gateway, an opening, a possibility to allow Chinese people
to come here."
"People
ask, 'Why didn't they count the Chinese?' " he said, referring to
the fact that few, if any, deaths from the earthquake and fire were recorded
in Chinatown, the city's densest area. " 'Why didn't they care?' "
"This
is why," he said, gesturing to a stack of musty leather-bound books
in his study: reports to the Board of Supervisors and the California State
Senate about the filthy conditions of the Chinese quarter. The alleged
horrors included Chinese prostitution, white women living with Chinese
men and white prostitution in Chinatown.
Battle to Rebuild Chinatown
Hidden in the glowing version of history favored by later generations was
a stark old reality. In the quake's chaos, San Franciscans lashed out at
the city's underclass. They beat and shot Chinese immigrants, in part to
prevent
the rebuilding of Chinatown. The total death count in the disaster may
have reached 3,000.
City
leaders at the time of the quake set the total death count at more
than 400. Researchers
now think that 3,000 or more people died and that the fatalities were
intentionally minimized so investors, needed to rebuild the city, wouldn't
be scared away. But no one knows how many people died in the densely packed
blocks of Chinatown, with an estimated population of 14,000.
Racism
against the Chinese was rampant in that age. Chinese immigrants had come
to work in the railroads and mines and were widely viewed as a competitive
threat to the working class
What the Chinese
of San Francisco were prepared to defend was largely a bachelor society.
Restrictive immigration laws prevented Chinese
men from bringing their families to America. Before the quake, Chinatown
had a reputation as a crowded slum rife with disease, brothels and opium.
But Starr says Chinatown also had something that city leaders envied:
it occupied one of the most desirable locations in the city.
"By
1906 on the verge of the earthquake, it suddenly dawned on the establishment
of San Francisco that the prime real estate of the city... at the absolute
epicenter, with its commanding views, was Chinatown.
In fact, even before the '06 quake, the local newspapers
editorialized in favor of moving the Chinese.
After the quake, city leaders presented their plans to relocate Chinatown
to the mud flats on the southern outskirts of the city. The plans were
presented at a meeting between the city relocation committee, the Chinese
Family Associations and the Chinese
Consulate. But the Chinese had different plans, says historian Judy Yung.
How did the Chinese resist relocation?
The relocation committee did not anticipate stiff resistance from the government of China. Chow-Tszchi, first secretary of the Chinese Legation at Washington arrived in Oakland within a few days of the earthquake and met with Chung Pao Hsi, China's consul-general in San Francisco. They, in turn, met with Governor Pardee in Oakland, and told him of the Empress-Dowager's displeasure with the relocation plan, and that the government of China would rebuild its San Francisco consulate in the heart of old Chinatown.
"I have heard the report that the authorities intend to remove Chinatown, but I cannot believe it," the Chinese delegation stated. "America is a free country, and every man has a right to occupy land which he owns provided that he makes no nuisance. The Chinese Government owns the lot on which the Chinese Consulate of San Francisco formerly stood, and this site on Stockton street will be used again. It is the intention of our Government to build a new building on the property, paying strict attention to the new building regulations which may be framed."
Governor Pardee was asked for letters to General Greely, General Funston and Mayor Schmitz, authorizing those officials to grant to the properly accredited Chinese representatives the right to enter the guarded section and care for the distressed Chinese as well as provide for the protection of their burned places of business. The letters were given them, and, armed with this authority, the party returned to San Francisco.
Stiff resistance from the government of China and the fear of losing trade with the Orient, ended this relocation scheme, and rebuilding of Chinatown soon began.
April 23, 1906 - Imperial decree on the 30th Day of the Third Moon from Empress Dowager of China to send 100,000 taels as a personal contribution to the relief of the San Francisco sufferers. President Theodore Roosevelt declined the offer, as well as donations from other foreign governments. "The consul general said, 'The Empress is not happy about Chinatown being relocated. We intend to rebuild the Chinese consulate in the heart of Chinatown where it was."
The Chinese also had another economic argument in their favor. They knew that their taxes contributed greatly to the city's coffers and that other Western port cities would welcome them. San Francisco leaders relented and the reconstruction of Chinatown began about a year after the disaster.
Movement
of Chinatown After the Earthquake:
After the 1906 earthquake and fire, the General Relief Committee
proposal to gather all
Chinese in the temporary camp at the Presidio was quickly adopted
on April 26, and a committee comprised of Abraham "Abe" Ruef; James D.
Phelan; Jeremiah Deneen; Dr. James W. Ward, president of the Health Commission,
and Methodist minister Dr. Thomas Filben, chairman, was appointed to take
charge of the question of the permanent location of the Chinese quarter.
Chinatown then, as today, occupied some of the most valuable real estate
in San Francisco, with its sixteen-square-blocks set between Nob Hill
and the financial center of the West.
From a strictly political standpoint this was a remarkable committee because
Abe Ruef and James D. Phelan were arch-enemies. Their common ground was
abiding racism
and hatred for the Chinese. It is remarkable to think that within
six days of the Great
Fire, this committee was appointed and had adopted a plan to move
Chinatown
to Hunters Point. The idea was not new. Industrialist John Partridge proposed
an "Oriental
City" at Hunters Point before the earthquake, and it had the support
of Mayor Schmitz.
Their common ground was abiding racism and hatred for the Chinese.
It is remarkable to think that within six days of the Great Fire,
this committee was appointed and had adopted a plan to move
Chinatown to Hunters Point. The idea was not new. Industrialist John
Partridge proposed an "Oriental City" at Hunters Point before the
earthquake, and it had the support of Mayor Schmitz. Telegrams sent
by the War Department to General Funston, and the pending arrival of
the Chinese consul-general from Washington, may have also been
deciding factors in the quick establishment of a committee
to "assist" the Chinese.
Politically astute members of the committee were concerned that San Francisco,
ridding itself of the Chinese,
would also lose its lucrative Oriental trade. With virtually all of Chinatown
destroyed, most of its inhabitants fled to Oakland, other cities in the
East Bay, or huddled in the refugee camp at the west end of the Presidio.
But the committee apparently did not anticipate stiff resistance from
the government
of China. Chow-Tszchi, first secretary of the Chinese Legation at
Washington arrived in Oakland within a few days of the earthquake and
met with Chung Pao Hsi, China's consul-general in San
Francisco. They, in turn, met with Governor Pardee in Oakland,
and told him of the Empress-Dowager's displeasure with the plan, and that
the government of China would rebuild its San Francisco consulate in the
heart of old
Chinatown. Stiff resistance from the government of China, and the fear of losing
trade with the Orient, ended this relocation scheme, and rebuilding
of Chinatown soon began.
What Ruffle the Temper of the Chinese Communities? "Only this," replied Dr. Thomas Filben, chairman of the sub-committee on the relief of Chinese and the permanent location of Chinatown, "that the Chinese have been hustled from one temporary camp to another without ceremony. After the fire they were gathered together and put in a temporary camp near Fort Mason. Then there was a summary conference of which it was decided to remove them to the Presidio golf links. They remained overnight and were then hustled out of there and hurried over to a location further away, where the few Chinese remaining in the city are now encamped."
A. Ruef declared there was no disposition to harass the Chinese nor to exclude them from a full participation in the commercial life of the city. He thought matters would be amicably adjusted at the conference today.
Looters in Chinatown Fifteen and twenty members of the National Guard of California had
been arrested by the sentries of his regiment for looting in the
burned district, principally in Chinatown
Earthquake Effects on the Chinese Communities
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was still in effect. Although all Asians were affected, 97 percent of the immigrants processed through Angel Island were Chinese. After the earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed records that verified citizenship, many Chinese residents of California were able to claim citizenship for themselves and dozens of "paper children."
How did the city of San Francisco respond to the needs of the city's Chinese American population after the 1906 earthquake and fire? As the Chinese exited Chinatown, city officials sought to prevent them from returning. In a poorly planned evacuation, Chinese refugees were shuttled to various relief camps all over the city.
A temporary camp on Van Ness prompted relocation to the Presidio
because city officials argued that the site would prove difficult to
dismantle once the Chinese settled again in a location so close to
the original Chinatown. The Chinese presence at the Presidio Golf
Links greatly displeased neighbors "where the summer zephyrs would
blow the odors of Chinatown into their front doors." The Chinese
refugees were transferred, again, the next day to a more remote
location on the Presidio near Fort Point.
Moments
of Comedy and Courage
One Amadeo Peter Giannini, founder of a tiny bank that would one
day become the Bank of America, transferred $80,000 in gold and
silver from the vault to a couple of wagons from his produce business,
concealed the money under crates of oranges and headed out of San
Francisco to his home in San Mateo.
When
he returned to the city two days later, Giannini put a bag of gold
"on a plank laid over two barrels on the Washington Street wharf"
and started making rebuilding loans. "For weeks afterward, the money
smelled of orange juice."
Arts Helped the Recovery
At the time of the earthquake - it was the eighth-largest American city, and the economic and cultural hub of the West Coast. In the aftermath, much of the city was leveled. But through it all, San Francisco's arts community kept singing, writing, acting, and raising money to help bring the city back to life.
SANTA ANA'S CHINATOWN DELIBERATELY BURNED DOWN
California's Chinatown in the city of Santa Ana was deliberately BURNED DOWN to eliminate Chinese Americans in the city. This was planned and executed - despite all parties recognizing that it was unconstitutional!
ADDITIONAL DETAILS:One of the more sensational chapters in the history of the SAFD (Santa Ana Fire Department) concerned the burning of Chinatown. A leper was discovered living in one of the shacks near Third and Bush Street. The area was covered with small, closely built wooden structures, many of which were connected by a maze of underground tunnels and inhabited by people of Chinese ancestry. After the leper was found, a secret meeting of the Board of Trustees was held. It was decided that the SAFD (Santa Ana Fire Department) would raze the area by fire, thereby sparing the remainder of the City from the dreaded disease. On May 25, 1906, the SAFD arrived to surprisingly discover a crowd of several hundred people gathered to watch the spectacle, since this plan was a closely guarded secret. The fire was started with hose lines used to protect the exposures. These lines, along with a light rain that was falling, prevented the fire from spreading beyond the intended area.
JAPANESE UNABLE TO REIMMIGRATE TO THE U.S. Japan and the U.S. reach "Gentlemen's
Agreement" whereby Japan stops issuing passports to laborers desiring to
immigrate to the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signs Executive Order
589 prohibiting Japanese with passports for Hawaii, Mexico, or Canada to
re-immigrate to the U.S. Koreans form United Korean Society in Hawaii. First
group of Filipino laborers arrives in Hawaii. Asian Indians are driven out
of Bellingham, Washington. Korean laborers are banned from immigrating to
the United States.
FILIPINOS GREATLY RECRUITED AS LABORERS Peasants
were recruited by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association as cheap contract
labor when the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 cut off the Japanese supply.
From 1907 to 1933, Filipino "nationals," neither citizens nor aliens, numbered
118, 436 - seven out of ten percent of Hawaii plantation workers! Severely
exploited and confined to squalid barracks, Filipinos joined with Japanese,
Chinese, Korean and other nationalities in a series of militant strikes
in 1920 and 1924.
1908
CANADA "CURBS" ASIAN INDIAN IMMIGRATION Canada curbs Asian Indian immigrants
by denying entry to immigrants who haven't come by "continuous journey"
from their homelands (there is no direct shipping between Indian and Canadian
ports). Japanese form Japanese Association of America in resonse to the
anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. Asian Indians are driven out
of Live Oak, California.
7000 JAPANESE PLANTATION WORKERS GO ON STRIKE As a result of 4 months of
strikes by 7000 Japanese workers at major plantations on Oahu, the Hawaiian
Sugar Planters' Association decides to raise wages and abolish system of
setting wages by nationality. Koreans form Korean Nationalist Association.
1ST CHINESE TO AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS In 1909, Zhan
Tianyu was the first Chinese to be elected to the American Society
of Civil Engineers. Four years later he founded the Chinese Engineering
Society which became a national organization, and he became its first
president. Zhan was the first Chinese to receive an honorary degree from
Hong Kong University. After his death in 1919, a bronze statue of him
was erected at the Qinglung Railroad Station. The Chinese government built
a railroad museum in Zhan's honor near the Great Wall at Badaling.
1909
GUNJIRO AOKI'S MARRIAGE TO HELEN GLADYS EMERY Artist
Brenda Wong Aoki's great-uncle, Gunjiro Aoki, that makes her family
part of California history. In
1909, the elder Aoki's marriage to Helen Gladys Emery, the Caucasian
daughter of Grace Cathedral's archdeacon, rocked San Francisco and the
state. It prompted the California Legislature and the city to pass anti-
miscegenation laws.
The
bride and groom fled to Seattle just ahead of mobs who had threatened
to tar and feather them. Aoki's grandfather, the archdeacon's assistant
who had brought his younger brother to San Francisco in the first place,
was banished to Utah, where he took up sharecropping. Brenda
Wong Aoki's family is made of Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Scots
descent. Her paternal grandfather, a Christian priest, helped found the
city's Japantown.
