Plague and Fire

by James C. Mohr

  Curious sightseers came back the following day to survey the results of the fire. What had been a densely developed and heavily populated area roughly equal in size to twenty-five city blocks was now completely devastated. "It was hard," reported the press, "even for a person perfectly acquainted with Chinatown, to pick out the places where various buildings [had] stood." The gutted brick shells of only five structures remained standing in what was otherwise a sixty-acre field of charred debris. The largest of those shells, the front facade of the Kaumakapili Church, would eventually have to be pulled down for safety. Intense heat had melted anything made of metal, even cooking pots. Sections of the ground had been baked to near-ceramic hardness. Strewn among the debris were over fifty safes, some open and empty, others intact. The latter were dragged to a central location where owners would be allowed to claim them.

  A burned-out fire engine and the shell of the Chinatown fire station. The station had been at the corner of Maunakea and Pauahi streets. Hawaii State Archives

  Businessmen speculated that property losses from the fire easily exceeded $3 million, a sum that dwarfed any previous property loss in Hawaiian history-and no one knew how, or even whether, those losses would be compensated. In terms of material destruction, Honolulu had never experienced anything close to the great fire of January 20, 19oo. Even under the best of circumstances, such a catastrophe would be difficult to address. But as Emerson, Day, and Wood recognized all too clearly, these were not the best of circumstances. Honolulu still had an epidemic of bubonic plague on its hands, which might now spread farther and faster than ever before.Z"

  fter staying up all night directing emergency operations, Emerson, Day, and Wood reassembled at Board headquarters to assess the situation on the morning of January 2 1. Though the problems they faced were immense, they shared a bittersweet sense of relief. Roughly six thousand people had been evacuated from the burning district with no loss of life. Even more remarkably, no serious violence had occurred, despite the fact that the refugees, some of whom were armed, had lost absolutely everything in a fire that smelled to many of them like some sort of plot, probably hatched by white businessmen. Though traumatized and victimized, the vast majority of the refugees had gone along with the doctors' provisional orders, avoided confrontation with the ad hoc citizen guards who massed to hem them in, accepted the support provided by ethnic aid societies, and cooperated with the representatives of foreign governments.

  Nor did the population outside the Chinatown district panic. Honolulu citizens of all races outside the quarantined zone had spontaneously armed themselves in an almost symbolic gesture of self-defense, and they had formed human barricades to channel the exodus from Chinatown to Kawaiahao Church. But no one struck a violent blow; no one made scapegoats of the refugees. That behavior too was remarkable, especially since the racist assumptions of whites in the crowd had been fanned for a week preceding the fire by editorials and letters in the English-language newspapers asserting that Mrs. Boardman's death was a harbinger of what lay ahead if the foul forces of the Chinatown slum were loosed in the city. The paper most friendly to the government later learned that many whites had refused to join the human cordon at all, and it chastised them as fainthearted. Honolulu's large population of Hawaiians also withheld any resentment they felt toward the Chinese and Japanese of Chinatown, even though they too blamed Asians for bringing bubonic plague into their city.'

  Grateful for the rather amazing calm, the doctors acquiesced in the rapid withdrawal of the U.S. troops they had requested the previous afternoon. Carmichael and the American commander had violated their standing orders by letting those troops leave their base in the first place, so they were anxious to retrieve the soldiers as quickly as possible, hoping fervently that none of them would come down with plague as a result of their foray into the city. But Emerson, Day, and Wood were taking no chances around the refugee camps. They replaced the federal troops with regular shifts of Hawaiian Republic national guardsmen, some of whom were trained as sharpshooters.

  While the plight of the refugees and the enormous questions surrounding their future occupied the immediate attention of nearly everyone in Honolulu after the fire, the three physicians dared not lose sight of the reason why they were still in charge of the Hawaiian Islands: the presence of plague. Indeed, the week preceding the fire had been the deadliest to date. Fifteen people had died, bringing the total to more than forty in the three weeks since the return of plague at the end of December.2

  Publicly, Wood expressed the physicians' hope that the Chinatown fire might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. "Providence or somebody else had stepped in" to achieve something they had despaired of accomplishing so effectively: the safe removal of everyone from the most dangerous plague district in the city and the prompt destruction of virtually all of the goods and animals of that district that might be harboring bacteria. He offered reassurance to the rest of the city that there was "no great danger" from the refugees themselves, since they would be in quarantine for three weeks, and because plague seldom "communicated from person to person." And he "wanted to impress" upon everyone in Honolulu "that it was not people but localities that were dangerous, and to a minor extent the belongings of infected people." Surely the fire posed unprecedented civic challenges, but it might also provide the city with an unprecedented break in the battle against pestis. Wood did not want to lose that momentum.'

  Consequently, that same day, the Board of Health met with representatives of the Citizens' Sanitary Commission and the Council of State to reaffirm their confidence in the policy of burning plague sites, despite what had happened the day before. In private session, the physicians on the Board received from Dole and Thurston the strong reaffirmation they sought. Thurston in particular agreed with Wood that the great fire, by obliterating what was far and away the largest and most dangerous source of plague, had presented the city with a unique opportunity to stop the epidemic once and for all by isolating and eliminating any remaining hot spots of disease. To forestall any crises of authority, President Dole reiterated publicly that "the Board of Health was [still] running the Government," and all "other executive members of the Government were ... ready to back it up in any and every necessary measure."4

  To signal their return to routine, the three physicians ordered the immediate resumption of close daily inspections and the submission of health reports on absolutely every person in the city. To help implement the renewed push, Thurston persuaded most of the city's white businessmen to suspend normal activities for ten days so that their employees, white and nonwhite, would be available to maintain the new inspection schedules. Emerson, Day, and Wood tried to make clear to their agents that they agreed with Dole's stated opinion that "no distinction should be made between nationalities" in the implementation of those close inspections: every individual of every race in every neighborhood would be rigorously monitored.'

  Refugees under guard outside Kawaiahao Church. Hawaii State Archives

  With public order restored and their absolute authority reconfirmed, the Board's three physicians resumed their ongoing assessments of reported plague sites, some of which had not been consumed in the Chinatown fire. The fire department also resumed its targeted burns just two days after the Chinatown debacle, when it carried out the earlier order to destroy the Boardman property and a group of previously condemned buildings on the edge of Chinatown. Included in those fires were all of the Boardman furniture, the family's grand piano (even though Sarah Boardman had apparently never played it), and a "rare collection of curios."6

  By January 26, all of the people initially assembled at the Kawaiahao Church on the night of the great fire had been relocated to more permanent detention centers, and the church itself had been thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. In just four days, volunteers acting under the Board's supervision had constructed scores of rough barracks at the city's principal quarantine camps. The barracks at the Drill Shed site accommodated about 1,200 people, the major
ity of whom were Japanese. Barracks at the greatly expanded Kalihi beach site became home to almost 5,000 people, some 1,500 of whom had already been at Kalihi due to evacuations and burnings before January 20. The majority of the people at Kalihi were Chinese, though some Hawaiians and many Japanese were there as well. Roughly 1,000 people thought to have been directly exposed to plague sites were transferred to the so-called Kerosene Warehouse site. That group included over 500 Hawaiians, over 300 Chinese, and slightly fewer than Zoo Japanese. Along with approximately 700 people confined elsewhere, the Board found itself holding over 7,000 people in detention camps during the fourth week of January, or about one out of six residents of Honolulu.'

  The process of camp assignment did not go seamlessly. A bold group of 248 Chinese men, for example, fearful that the Americans were sending them to death camps, initially refused internment at Kalihi and threatened to resist relocation by force. But Consul Yang persuaded them that the Americans would keep their word to provide food and housing, so the potential rebels agreed to divide themselves into groups of ten to help oversee an orderly distribution of the provisions rather than fight. A smaller group of Chinese men had to be forcibly restrained from tearing down relocation tents; a number of families that were accidentally separated in the confusion of the relocation process had to be reunited; and two babies were born to refugee women during the relocation process. But for the most part, the process went more smoothly than anticipated."

  To manage everyday affairs and most routine matters inside the various detention camps, the physicians on the Board of Health appointed camp committees for each site. To handle their increasingly complicated and now greatly enlarged fiscal operations, the doctors appointed an ad hoc Finance Committee comprised of Honolulu businessmen to advise them on such things as construction contracts and labor costs. They did not give the businessmen independent discretion, however, insisting instead that they themselves would make all final decisions. The triumvirate knew they were already under suspicion as pawns of the white commercial elites and did not want to feed those suspicions by giving free financial rein to the businessmen.

  The new committees attended to such practical, though essential and expensive, matters as drilling an artesian well to provide the large Kalihi camp with a reliable source of fresh water. The Bishop Estate, the large holding company that owned the land where the Kalihi barracks had been built, agreed to pay for half the cost of the well, since the estate would benefit in the long run. But such seemingly straightforward and mutually beneficial measures nonetheless involved detailed negotiations, substantial amounts of time, a good deal of patience, and the commitment of public funds. In the case of the artesian well, the process was also complicated by years of bickering between the estate's trustees and the physicians on the Board, who publicly accused each other of disregarding or mishandling their prior responsibilities under the city's health codes. Similar issues were multiplied a thousand times as incident after incident and problem after problem arose day after day in camp after camp.`'

  All of the people displaced by the great fire of January zo had to be fed, clothed, and generally cared for. With no time to think in advance about what they might need or what they might save, they were even worse off than those displaced by the earlier, smaller, and more systematically conducted evacuations. Some of the new refugees required medical attention, and all of them needed to be closely monitored during the next twenty days for signs of plague. So Emerson, Day, and Wood appointed other doctors to help oversee each of the major detention camps. To prepare food, camp directors employed some of Honolulu's top chefs, most of whom were out of work while the city's restaurants remained closed."'

  Refugees being taken to detention camps. They are dressed alike in government-issued clothing. Hawaii State Archives

  Volunteers throughout the city began to collect household goods for distribution in the camps, while churches and other relief organizations redoubled their clothing and sewing drives. Wealthy whites donated thousands of dollars to the Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiian relief funds that had been organized earlier in the month. The Board of Health also opened a donation center next to its own office, where people could deposit useful items that the physicians would then send to whichever camp was most in need at any given time. Literally tons of food, clothing, and miscellaneous goods quickly began to arrive."

  The huge outpouring of charitable support drew glowing reports from the Honolulu press. Swelled with civic pride, the city's most prominent pro-government editor publicly doubted that any American metropolis could have done as well as Honolulu in the wake of the great fire. In some ways, he may have been right. Looking back six months later, Carmichael reported to his Marine Hospital Service superiors in Washington that "all of the citizens united in a common cause; there was no bickering, and a more devoted, self-sacrificing community I have never seen." "Many of the most prominent citizens," he continued, "acted as sanitary inspectors, and all stood ready to help the authorities with their time and money in the fight against the plague."12

  From inside the camps, the situation looked far less rosy. Some detainees, for example, regarded the city's charity as little more than hypocrisy: "This is like taking an arrow and wounding a man from a distance and then secretly go[ing] up to dress his wounds and soothe his pain in order to receive his thanks," wrote one of them, quoting an old Chinese parable. Letters written to the English-language press by irate Chinese detainees also continued to allege a conscious intent behind the burning of Chinatown. In vague terms, they warned of reprisal and retribution, perhaps when China rose again to world power or when the perpetrators of the great fire faced their God in the life hereafter."

  Vice-Consul Gu Kim Fui, who was allowed free access to his countrymen in the camps, formally protested overcrowding. At the Kalihi camp, Gu reported as many as twenty-five people sharing a room, and he complained that clothes and blankets were being held in storerooms rather than passed out to the needy. Trouble also arose over the health care of detainees. The Board allowed traditional Chinese physicians to visit their patients in the camps, provided they did not prescribe anything without the permission of a Board-appointed physician. When one of the traditional healers provided herbals on his own, his pass was revoked. Wood's position on the subject was unambiguous: "as long as the people were at the camp," he declared, they "[would be] under the Board of Health physicians. " 14

  Other Chinese refugees took the less bellicose, but still sharply critical position articulated in a public letter from the chairman of a group calling itself the Chinese Citizens' Committee. Reprinted in the English-language dailies, the letter blamed the Board of Health for allowing the world pandemic to get through their protective screens in the first place, and then for failing to insist upon sufficient precautions when they ordered the burning of specific sites. The Chinese Citizens' Committee rightly reminded the people of Honolulu that the Chinese consul and vice-consul had repeatedly warned Emerson, Day, and Wood that many of Chinatown's buildings were dangerously close together, and hence difficult to destroy separately. Less than a week before the great fire, the Chinese consul had written formally to the government suggesting that wooden buildings be torn down and then burned, rather than burned in place, "thereby lessening the dangers to adjoining buildings." But their advice went unheeded, and as a result many of their compatriots had now lost everything. The Chinese Citizens' Committee realized that "what is done cannot be undone," and they appreciated "the kindly intention and expression of sympathy from a great many of the residents of Honolulu." But they also began what would become a steady drumbeat in favor of "a speedy and just settlement." Ongoing demands from the Chinese consul eventually grew so numerous that the English-language press reminded him publicly that he represented a weak government with little international influence and warned him that he risked alienating the general population if he did not desist."

  Though they did not openly rebel, most of the Chinese refugees forced into the d
etention camps by the great fire refused to cooperate with the Board's internal oversight committees. They declined construction jobs, regularly protested their conditions, insisted on the right to reestablish opium-smoking facilities in the camps, and generally signaled their unwillingness to help make the best of what they regarded as a fundamentally flawed policy. In the Kalihi camp, such protest actions were reported to be consciously organized under the tacit direction of Ah Hee, the proprietor of an up-and-coming carpentry shop on the Chinatown side of Nuuanu Street that was destroyed in the great fire.16

  As the Japanese and Hawaiians had done earlier, the Chinese also complained bitterly about the humiliation of the camp's disinfecting procedures. Physical hardships were bad enough, they lamented, but "nothing compared to the shame, the black, black shame ... brought upon our women, our wives, the mothers of our children! ... forced to stand naked, stark naked in the streets for the white devils to see, for the whole world to see!" Vice-Consul Gu went over the heads of the Board and complained directly to Dole himself about just such an incident. According to Gu's informants, a Board-appointed physician was administering "antiseptics to bathe Chinese, Japanese, and native Hawaiian" women in the Kalihi camp, when some of the Chinese women, particularly those "who had bound feet or were shy," objected. The physician thereupon ordered "managerial personnel [i.e., ordinary camp guards, not medical people] ... to take off their clothes by force." Dole promised an investigation, but the Board-appointed physician who gave the order, according to Gu, managed to co-opt Consul Yang, who reported back to Dole that he could find "no evidence of mistreatment of Chinese women." Gu felt the doctor should have been placed on probation, and the women involved in the incident wanted Vice-Consul Gu to sue the physician, Consul Yang's frustrating behavior notwithstanding. But the bathing procedures were changed the next day to provide more privacy and remove civilian guards, so Gu decided to drop the matter. The three physicians also arranged for Kong Tai Heong, Li Khai Fai's physician wife, to attend future disinfecting baths of Chinese women."