Plague and Fire

by James C. Mohr

  The decision to burn plague sites was a bold departure, since the deliberate use of fire against plague was not-contrary to intuitive assumptionsa common practice prior to the global pandemic of the i 89os. To be sure, goods and clothes were sometimes burned in earlier plague epidemics, since many people feared such items might somehow convey disease. Islamic medicine had used smoke from specific types of aromatic wood in hopes of warding off plagues. Unintended fires appear in retrospect to have inadvertently helped suppress plagues, as happened famously in London in 1666. And without a doubt, the occasional building was sometimes intentionally torched, though usually for symbolic reasons, or for scapegoating purposes, not as part of a systematic public health policy. But for the most part, buildings were valuable assets, not to be destroyed cavalierly, especially when there was no reason to believe that destroying them would affect the spread of the disease.

  Only with the current pandemic-and the bacteriological understanding of disease-did public health officials try the tactic of deliberately and systematically burning plague sites. Bacteriological experts believed that pestis could lurk inside buildings, beneath floorboards, and behind walls, so burning would incinerate any bacteria still hiding there. The precedent best known to members of the Honolulu Board of Health was the British use of fire to disinfect a small portion of the Taipingshan district of Hong Kong in 1894. Even there, the British had targeted just 6.25 acres and 384 houses, a fifth of which had experienced at least three plague deaths apiece. Moreover, the British had first demolished the buildings, then burned the rubble.''

  In 1899, surprisingly few buildings in Honolulu were regarded as genuine assets. As the Board's physicians explicitly recognized and openly discussed, rising urban land values meant that most lots in the city would be worth more without their existing structures than with them. This was especially true inside the Chinatown district, where a high percentage of poorly constructed buildings occupied potentially prime commercial land immediately adjacent to the harbor. Emerson, Day, and Wood never consciously acted on such economic premises. Quite the contrary-they were bitterly annoyed that any burnings they undertook might paradoxically reward owners who had flaunted the city's building and hygienic codes, by increasing the value of their land at public expense. Nonetheless, selective burning, even on a rather large scale if necessary, seemed economically less destructive in burgeoning Honolulu on the eve of the twentieth century than it had seemed in most other cities in the past."

  To the Honolulu physicians' credit, they also stepped up their search for less destructive ways to rid buildings of bacteria. They continued to experiment with various forms of fumigation (usually with burning sulfur), with disinfecting compounds (especially formalin), and with various acid washes (testing different concentrations of each). But their ongoing efforts and experiments continued to yield either inconclusive or downright discouraging results. So, in their view, fire remained their only completely reliable option. The U. S. Army doctor assigned to Camp McKinley just outside Honolulu had already reached the same conclusion independently. "In my opinion," wrote Blair D. Taylor to his superiors in Washington near the end of December, "Chinatown will have to be burned up and rebuilt on a sanitary basis before the plague can be stamped out. Such a course, I understand, is now being contemplated by the authorities."''

  The three physicians made the first public demonstration of their new policy on Sunday morning, December 31, 1899. At 11:00 A.M. they met three local businessmen who had agreed to constitute an ad hoc "Board of Appraisers." Together the six crossed into the quarantined zone and headed for an adjoining pair of two-story buildings, where Day had previously discovered a Chinese man named Ah Kau dead from plague. Emerson, Day, and Wood inspected the buildings, formally condemned them as a plague site unable to be disinfected in any ordinary fashion, and declared that they would have to be incinerated."

  After the buildings were evacuated, the appraisers made their estimates, and an order was sent to the nearby Chinatown fire station. At 3:00 P.M. firemen ignited the complex, which quickly burned to the ground. Some 85 occupants of the complex, "Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiians," according to the Board's official record, "were taken to a new Quarantine station at Kakaako, where they will be supplied and fed." Monday morning papers carried extensive coverage of the event, thus confirming rumors that had circulated through the New Year's weekend. Lest there be any doubt, the Board ordered additional burnings each of the next two days in the block where another Chinese man, Quon Wo Quon, had died of plague on New Year's Eve. Less than a month earlier, the "existing government" in Honolulu had been happily preparing to welcome the twentieth century with altogether different fire works.

  The English-language press immediately and enthusiastically endorsed the Board's decision to begin targeted burning. The pro-trade Commercial Advertiser heartily approved the concept of "fighting the devil with fire" and believed that "destruction is the only certain disinfection." "Expensive this will be," conceded that paper, "but the cost to Hawaii in dollars and cents alone, if the plague is not stamped out within the next thirty days, will pay for two Chinatowns and the Hawaiian national debt thrown in." The Friend, a paper that summarized events for the missionary community, was glad to see that the Board had decided to burn "the filthy tenements where the disease has appeared." According to the Friend, public health alone, even if plague was not upon the city's doorstep, justified the destruction of such inhumane and unsanitary situations. The greedy owners of such properties had shown no sensitivity to the patently obvious need for hygienic improvements.20

  Goods being removed from a condemned building. Hawaii State Archives

  The Hawaiian Gazette, though no particular ally of the government, believed fervently that the fire policy was essential to the city's salvation and praised the combined pressure of Honolulu's newspapers for bestirring the Board into actions that finally seemed commensurate with an onslaught of the dreaded bubonic plague. "The cost of burning down whole blocks of houses, if necessary, for the public good and to save life will not be objected to by thoughtful people," argued Austin's Hawaiian Weekly, "even if it increases taxation." The Evening Bulletin heartily agreed, urging complete support for the new policy, warning people not to get carried away by rumors, and dismissing with contempt "the suggestion by a contemporary that consideration of politics influenced the Board." Perhaps most surprising of all was a lead editorial in the anti-Dole Independent. Two days after the first fire, that paper commended none other than Lorrin Thurston himself for spurring "our very lame Board of Health" into proper and forceful action. Two days after that, the editor followed up by assuring the Dole administration that it "need not fear attack from any party even if they spend every cent in the treasury to again render our city pure and healthy. 1121

  Although the English-language press was overwhelmingly in favor of the new fire policy, Chinatown property owners themselves expressed grave reservations that quickly turned into legal protests. While removing old buildings might increase land values in the long run, they reasoned, the process would be economically disastrous in the short run. They would have no income for a minimum of several months; they would have to replace inventory and equipment at higher prices; and unless they were willing to sell the land, they would have to pony up a great deal of additional capital if they wanted to replace their lost buildings with better structures.

  A large portion of the property inside Chinatown was owned by wealthy white investors from outside the district, who leased their properties to the residents. Those owners included the Hawaii Land Company, the Silvera Estate, and a number of white absentee landlords and investment trusts based in San Francisco. The Bishop Estate, a powerful corporate entity that controlled huge concentrations of land and capital throughout Hawaii, also owned substantial amounts of property in Chinatown. Most of the individuals involved in these real estate corporations would normally be counted among the Dole government's strongest supporters, but the "existing government's" Bo
ard of Health seemed now to be turning on them. Lawyers for those corporate owners quickly joined the district's individual owners, some of whom were Chinese and Japanese, in protests against what they considered the Board's arbitrary actions. In some cases the outside owners also enlisted the support of their Chinatown lessees, who would lose their places of business if the owners lost their buildings."

  In formal letters to the Board, Chinatown property owners challenged the suspension of ordinary legal processes. Enoch Johnson, one of the white owners, expressed the basic contention of many others: "I do hereby protest against the action of the Board of Health as it is contrary to the Constitution." The law firm that represented the Hawaii Land Company agreed. The Board's proposed actions, in their view, were "contrary to the law and Constitution, especially Article i 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Hawaii, which is the same as the Constitution of the United States of America." Others went beyond expression of legal qualms to threaten members of the Board as individuals. One irate owner, for example, vowed to hold "each and every person [on the Board of Health] ... personally liable for damages." Attorneys for several other owners likewise prepared to sue the three physicians separately "for the loss and damage" suffered by their clients and to indict the doctors for "flagrant violation ... and prostitution of powers .1121

  At the scene of a controlled burn in early January. Hawaii State Archives

  Reactions from within the quarantined district itself varied widely. Most Japanese physicians continued to comply with the Board's edicts by sending anyone suspected of having plague symptoms to the plague hospital for observation. But many Japanese residents in Chinatown stopped cooperating with their own physicians, since referral might now result in the relocation of family members to a quarantine camp and the destruction of their hard-earned property. After a week of sending patients to Kakaako, Mitamura had to be "saved from serious assault at the hands of 35 Japanese" by other Japanese in the neighborhood. In just "a matter of seconds," over two hundred residents appeared at the scene of the altercation, clear evidence of the high tensions inside Chinatown. Ominously, the attack had been organized by three men who had served as inspectors during the first quarantine, but who now saw cooperation with the Board of Health as a threat to Japanese property. The instigators were later arrested and incarcerated in one of the city's detention camps. In another incident, the Japanese residents of a rooming house being inspected for possible condemnation threw a trunk at one of the Board-appointed doctors at the site, injuring his arm. Many Japanese property owners signed protest petitions alleging both discrimination on the part of the white Board and the illegality of such arbitrary actions against both people and property.24

  In an effort to maintain order and work with the Board as much as possible under the circumstances, Japanese consul Saito Miki coordinated a central system for recording potential Japanese damage claims. Prominent Japanese who lived outside the quarantine district gathered themselves together, initially as the Japanese Society, in order to help compensate "fellow-countrymen in consequence of [losses incurred in] the sanitary fires." Out of these cooperative efforts developed some of Hawaii's most enduring Japanese charitable organizations.zi

  At least according to the English-language press, most Hawaiians inside the quarantined district appeared to be cooperating with the Board's policies, though protests over food supplies continued. One Hawaiian who had a family of six children told the press that they received four pounds of poi and half a pound of meat per day. "He says he is not to be blamed for the plague, nor is his family, and he is very desirous to learn how a member of the Board of Health would feel if placed under such circumstances on such a diet." Like others displaced by the burning of their residences, Hawaiians resented the implication that they were somehow at fault. When a site was condemned, "men were taken as if prisoners of war by lines of military guards and women were taken away by wagon under guard to be placed under quarantine.""

  Hawaiians also protested the transporting of people to resettlement camps in the same wagons that were used to carry sick patients to the special hospital and dead plague victims to the crematorium. Their actions forced an end to that practice. The dowager queen allowed her estate to be converted to a resettlement camp for any Hawaiians forced to relocate, and Hawaiian cooperation was also enhanced by the Board's ongoing efforts to explain its policies in the Hawaiian language and by the use of Hawaiian police to deal with Hawaiians under quarantine. Hawaiians remained alert, however, to their material losses and prepared to sue for their property and leaseholder rights. They did not want to be left "like victims of the `a'o [shearwater] bird, standing naked on the cliffside" and at the mercy of "government leaders blinded by money."27

  The most vigorous opposition to the Board's fire policies from inside Chinatown flared up from the Chinese community. A fresh round of posters appeared, threatening death to agents of the Board and to Chinese doctors who continued to work with them. In defense of Chinese property, Consul Yang even agreed to cooperate with his reform-minded opponents in the United Chinese Society. On the day after the first fire, Yang arrived at the Board's office to present a list of demands: twenty-fourhour notice prior to any burning, assurance of suitable quarters for all those who might be displaced, and full compensation for all property losses. The three physicians acceded to the first two points and promised negotiations, once the crisis was over, regarding the third.21

  Many Chinese property owners also organized protests of their own and, like their white and corporate counterparts, quickly retained lawyers to represent them before any courts or governmental agencies that might be willing to listen. Several wrote individually to the Board, each denying that his particular property was a health threat and asking that his goods be spared from the general policy. The Chinese consulate and the United Chinese Society also prepared and distributed broadsides urging business owners to keep carefully itemized lists of their property so that they could file claims for compensation later.29

  The United Chinese Society also prepared formal preprinted petitions against the burning of any Chinese property and circulated them throughout the Chinese sections of Chinatown. The petition signed by ten Chinese property holders in block 2 was typical: "We recognize the serious condition of affairs at the present time and pledge ourselves to do everything possible to assist the Board of Health in stamping out the plague," avowed the petitioners. "We are ready to remodel, disinfect and fumigate, or do anything that the Board may direct toward the cleaning of any premises in this block." The petition then urged that the fire policy not be enforced on that block. The residents of seven other blocks, 155 individuals altogether, submitted identical, preprinted petitions, with the same avowals and the same requests for exemption. Among the signers were Yim Quon, president of the United Chinese Society, and Wa Ha Pau, editor of the Chinese Chronicle.3o

  When the Board of Health first implemented the fire policy, the "existing government" made no public statement about it. But in the face of mounting protests and the threat of personal lawsuits, Smith and the three physicians asked to meet with Dole and his top advisors. In their own words, the Board members "wanted the support of the Cabinet and the people in undertaking the responsibility of burning buildings." In a private meeting they quickly got the reassurance they sought. According to the Board's minutes, "The government was willing and ready to support whatever measures [the Board deemed] necessary to put the city in a good sanitary condition." Among the measures explicitly endorsed were "detention camps" for people dislocated by the fire policy but still subject to quarantine. Though no one could predict the duration of the epidemic and no one knew for certain how many structures around the city would eventually have to be burned, the group agreed that construction should begin immediately on a detention camp capable of housing five hundred evacuees. And in all probability, they reluctantly agreed, "more than one" such camp should be anticipated. Dole then publicly reaffirmed the absolute power of the Board of Health fo
r the duration of the plague crisis."

  Bolstered by the president's pronouncement, Emerson, Day, and Wood began to realize just how extraordinary their situation really was. Though they were nonelected public health officers, they were empowered-in the face of a world pandemic-to destroy private property; to incarcerate quarantined individuals in public camps; and ultimately to manage the affairs of the entire archipelago, public and private, in an absolute and essentially dictatorial fashion. To implement their decisions, they were deploying the militia, the police force, and the fire department. They were drawing huge amounts of money from the Hawaiian treasury, and their proposed actions would almost certainly require still-larger sums in the future. No checks or balances existed to counter the Board's decisions, regardless of how arbitrary or unnecessary they might appear to be. No meaningful routes of appeal lay open to those aggrieved by any of the Board's actions.

  uring the first week of January, Honolulu's death toll from plague began to rise slowly and steadily. On January 4, Board physicians confirmed four additional deaths, the largest number on a single day since the epidemic had reappeared at Christmas. That brought the total number of known plague deaths to nineteen. Even allowing for deaths concealed by friends and relatives, that figure was hardly astronomical, especially in comparison with death tolls reported in Canton, Hong Kong, or Bombay. But the pattern emerging in the first two weeks of the epidemic greatly frightened everyone in the city who was familiar with the way this current epidemic of bubonic plague had been harvesting its victims elsewhere.'