Claims for lost property resulting from the great fire strained the capacity of the file cabinets at Board headquarters. Many of the largest losses were claimed by white landowners, whose rented buildings in the quarantined district had been destroyed completely. Another source of claims came from business owners, white and Asian, whose stores, merchandise, or production facilities had been in Chinatown, though they themselves lived elsewhere. The largest and most desperate group of claimants, however, were the refugees themselves, most of whom began submitting claims while still interned in the quarantine camps. During earlier controlled fires, the Chinese and Japanese consulates had worked out a way for their constituents to submit their own property inventories, which then functioned as a check against official appraisals made by Board-appointed assessors. Both consuls now invited similar constituent-drafted tallies of all losses from the great fire.
The efforts of Yang Wei Pin and Saito Miki rapidly amassed bulging folders full of fire claims, which they regularly delivered to the Board's office. Many of the claims were extremely detailed, listing such specific items as straw sandals and socks valued at ten cents. But the three physicians had no way of verifying the self-generated claims, which was a problem, since all parties-including the Chinese and Japanese press-realized that many of them were almost certainly inflated. Unable to solve that problem in the short run, the medical triumvirate simply accepted the mounting volume of claims without comment. They still had the plague itself to deal with, and they were perfectly willing to let other agencies adjudicate reparations sometime in the future.Z"
Also behind the decision to defer claims was a pronouncement from the leading American insurance companies doing business in Hawaii. When they learned what was happening in Honolulu, key representatives of those firms met in San Francisco and collectively agreed to reject all claims lodged by policyholders as the result of Board-ordered fires. The insurance companies took the position that public authorities had purposely ignited the fires and would therefore have to pay for any damages the fires had done, intentional or accidental. Some of the city's policyholders still held hopes that insurance companies based in Europe and Asia might be more generous, but the news was a heavy blow to Honolulu's American elites, who knew that their own treasury was down to almost nothing as a result of actions taken by Emerson, Day, and Wood during the last three months.29
Stonewalled by the insurance industry, some of the fire victims took their damage claims instead to the Hawaiian Republic's supreme court, even though the status of that court was unclear in the congressional resolution of annexation. Ducking the issue, the Hawaiian justices ruled on March 3 r that nothing should be done until President McKinley decided whether or not to commit federal funds to help the annexed archipelago deal with its fire reparations. Since McKinley was actively engaged in the ongoing efforts of Hawaii's "existing government" to secure formal territorial status under the American Constitution, the supreme court justices had reason to hope Washington might bail them out if they played for time.
To mollify those who wanted to see some preliminary action at the local level, however, Dole himself took a position different from that of the supreme court. Early in April, he announced the creation of a special ad hoc court of claims to begin processing requests for compensation for losses incurred in Board-ordered fires. Though many claimants wanted prompt action, or at least some short-term assistance to help them rebuild their lives, Dole's promulgation of a special court met stiff resistance from the outset. Attorneys for English-speaking claimants protested the legal status of the special court and squabbled over how justices should be appointed to it. When the white merchants and landlords realized that the special court did not intend simply to calculate the fair market value of their losses and pay them, but intended instead to argue the degree of public liability involved in each separate claim, the English-speaking Honolulu Chamber of Commerce formally protested this action of the administration they had done so much to install and otherwise strongly supported."'
Asian claimants opposed the special court even more forcefully. They considered Dole's appointees, in the words of Japanese editor Soga Yasutaro, to be "nothing but second-rate lawyers," in whom Asian leaders had no confidence. Under the special court's guidelines, Japanese and Chinese victims would have to prove the government's liability for the losses they had suffered, as if the issue were being contested between parties in a civil suit, and government lawyers could invoke such factors as zoning violations to reduce the government's liability, thereby punishing Asian residents for negligence on the parts of absentee owners. Asians believed that they had weathered a disproportionately heavy blow in order to save the larger community, and that the larger community should now compensate them for the sacrifice they made, not challenge their right to recompense in an ad hoc courtroom operating under rigged rules."
To help the Dole administration "reflect on the fact that the organization of the claims court lacked justice and fairness," the Provisional Japanese Council, which spoke for Japanese economic interests much as the Chamber of Commerce spoke for white economic interests, decided to approach their counterparts in the Chinese business community. In the words of a participant in this movement, "those of us among the victims were determined by all means to bring about fundamental changes" in the proposed reparations process. Together the community leaders formed the Japanese-Chinese Bi-National United Association, agreed upon a set of resolutions, and then planned a mass meeting to announce them. Newspaper editorials and handbills in three languages publicized that meeting so successfully that it became the largest Asian rally ever held in Honolulu."
Roughly five thousand people, about two-thirds of whom were Chinese, gathered on the grounds of a Japanese school to protest the special court of claims. The flags of China and Japan "were peacefully intertwined" on a temporary stage, and the operative word was "peacefully." Japanese and Chinese businessmen had rarely interacted with one another on terms other than competitive, and ordinary Chinese and Japanese residents had refused only weeks earlier to be intermingled in the quarantine camps. Now the two communities stood together, and their leaders all agreed that it was "a splendid thing to behold." After three hours of oratory in Chinese, Japanese, and English, the completely orderly crowd ratified a resolution denouncing the special court as "unfair and unjust." The resolution passed with a thunderous roar, and not a single dissent was audible. The mass meeting also offered cheers for President McKinley, whose financial backing-if it could be obtained-would offer the merchants their best hope of receiving full compensation, in addition to cheers for China and Japan. A joint committee of seven Chinese leaders and six Japanese leaders agreed to take the protest formally to President Dole.;;
Faced with a steady litany of editorials denouncing inflated claims, with opposition from his own supporters in the Chamber of Commerce, and now with an unprecedented united front presented by the city's most influential Chinese and Japanese leaders, Dole permanently adjourned his special court of claims the following day, April 9. Like everyone else, he decided to wait for McKinley. In a personal interview with the delegates from the rally, the president vowed "that he would do everything in his power to see to it that the victims would not be subject to any further inconvenience." Dole realized he had made a clumsy mistake, which strengthened the resolve of his opponents, weakened his support in the Chamber of Commerce, inadvertently united the Chinese and Japanese, and turned the reparations issue into a political nightmare.14
Even ardent pro-annexationists realized that Dole's mishandling of reparation issues in the short run would make them harder than ever to resolve in the long run. The Evening Bulletin, for example, characterized Dole's actions as "a combination expressive of incompetence, ignorance, and poor politics." In the end, the United States government would indeed assume most of the financial burdens of the plague and fire reparations of 1 goo. But the prolonged and tangled proceedings of the subsequent United States Claims Commission would limp a
long for years, and despite apparently good intentions, those proceedings would leave a bad taste in the mouths of Hawaiian residents of all races for decades thereafter.''
With the prospect of reparations stalled indefinitely, Emerson, Day, and Wood faced rapidly escalating pressures to at least permit the resumption of normal economic activities. They had earlier vowed to keep their policies in effect until thirty days passed without a new case of plague, and because one had occurred on the final day of March, they intended to sustain their emergency measures through April. But restless planters on the outlying islands launched a campaign to end shipping restrictions short of thirty days. Sugar production was a year-round activity in Hawaii, with planting, harvesting, and refining schedules carefully staggered to maximize the productivity of available labor. Since December, those carefully calibrated operations had been on hold, and the planters feared a serious breakdown if they were not soon released from the triumvirate's bans on new labor coming in and refined sugar going out.
The planters were quickly joined by almost all of Honolulu's businessmen, both Asian and English-speaking, whose livelihoods depended directly or indirectly on international commerce. Increasingly vocal merchants pressed the physicians to relinquish their "great executive powers" and to cease their role as "a government within a government-with authority almost exceeding that of a legislature." In the merchants' view, the time had come for the Board of Health to revert to its pre-plague status as a minor agency reporting to the attorney general. The physicians' sharpest critics accused them of prolonging the state of emergency for the sole purpose of continuing to raid the treasury "by use of the plague bugaboo." But Emerson, Day, and Wood refused to bend.;
For the Board's physicians, the price of maintaining their policies through April was a constant pummeling from the press. The Evening Bulletin, the Star, and the Commercial Advertiser took turns jabbing the doctors over their ongoing spending, even though plague had disappeared. One of the lowest blows was delivered on April i g, when the Advertiser ran a feature story about the way Alexandria, Egypt, had dealt with the plague epidemic. According to the article, the total deaths in Alexandria barely exceeded the total deaths in Honolulu, even though the population of the Egyptian city was estimated to be ten times that of the Hawaiian city. The paper, which had led the cry to burn Chinatown after the death of Sarah Boardman and had floated the possibility of mandatory inoculations, then pointedly observed that Alexandria's sanitary department-in contrast to Honolulu's Board of Health-had achieved its low death rate without recourse to either burning or inoculations. The following day, the Advertiser noted smugly that the Alexandria story had been "the subject of much comment on the streets" and had given "impetus to the general feeling among business men" that Emerson, Day, and Wood had pushed their policies far enough.17
Tensions came to a head over when and how to begin redevelopment in Chinatown, which had been completely sealed off since late January by a Board-ordered barrier fence. Asian and white businessmen all favored prompt redevelopment. They wanted to believe that pestis could not survive very long on its own, and their hopes were buoyed by a report that U.S. surgeon general Wyman submitted to the U.S. Treasury Department. He claimed plague bacilli could not survive more than four hours when exposed to sunlight, more than four days when sitting at room temperature, or more than eight days in sterilized water. If the surgeon general was correct, the businessmen contended, then Chinatown should be clear of contamination by now and rebuilding could safely begin."
But Board physicians still feared the bacilli might be alive in Chinatown's abandoned cesspools or in organic materials below ground. They were also aware that the British in Bombay had not only plowed the ground at plague sites but soaked the soils with petroleum, burned them, and kept the sites isolated for a year. Kitasato was similarly demanding that plague districts in Japan remain vacant for at least a year. Consistent with their approach through the entire crisis, Emerson, Day, and Wood agreed to resolve the impasse by having Hoffman conduct bacteriological surveys of Chinatown's soils. If he did not find plague, the district would be reopened when the plague emergency ended. Hoffman dutifully dug and tested soil samples for the next two weeks, and to the relief of everyone concerned, the samples all came up free of pestis.39
The triumvirate weathered more criticism when Carmichael lifted all medical restrictions on American military ships bound for the mainland after April zo. Though he had supported his close friends on the Board of Health through the entire crisis, and no doubt would have preferred to support their thirty-day decision, Carmichael was under strong pressure himself. Marine Hospital Service officers exercised a good deal of discretion when it came to assessing local health conditions, and Carmichael knew that it would help him stay on the professional fast track if he expe dited the flow of American troops to and from the Philippine Islands, where the United States was fighting Filipino forces in another recently acquired Pacific archipelago. But his action fueled resentment among Honolulu merchants who still had to put up with the expensive and timeconsuming inspections, fumigations, and outright bans demanded by their own local physicians, while their new parent government allowed its soldiers to pass through the islands as if plague was no longer a threat. The press, in turn, suggested a public debate over the need to continue the "thirty-day safeguard," and noted the "natural impatience" welling up in the city.4°
As more days passed without new cases, all parties seemed to soften their positions and prepare for a graceful end to the plague crisis. Though the three physicians maintained strict control over the few people remaining in detention camps, they overlooked technical violations of other quarantine restrictions all around the city. Stores quietly reopened; public amusements resumed; health inspections essentially ceased altogether. In private discussions, the Council of State began to realize how extraordinary the previous five months really had been. Large portions of Honolulu had been burned, the Hawaiian treasury had been drawn down without much accounting or oversight, and the business affairs of the republic were in the hands of three medical professionals who knew nothing about business. Perhaps it was time to reassert their own authority "and try to get back to legal methods. 1141
The Advertiser, for its part, stopped hammering the Board of Health and printed a formal tribute to its president, hailing Wood as the man who led the city to victory in "the war waged against plague." No one had ever had so much "power reposed in him," according to the paper, and fortunately for Hawaii, Wood proved himself up to the job. "Though Dr. Wood has a stiff temper and an obstinate will, he possesses also a power of sympathy most invaluable to him as a physician and a man; and though many of his actions during the hight [sic] of the plague may have seemed arbitrary and severe to some, yet will the majority acknowledge his sense of justice and sincerity of motive."4z
The Advertiser even ran a follow-up story about Alexandria, Egypt, this time admitting that the death counts officially reported there were meaninglessly low, since most deaths were not officially recorded. The editor also acknowledged that the Egyptian sanitary department had manufactured large supplies of Haffkine's serum and imposed a widespread program of inoculation. Moreover, Alexandria had been forced to maintain its restrictions for an extra six months, not thirty days, as lingering cases continued to break out. By those standards, the triumvirate's management of the epidemic in Honolulu was looking magnificent.4;
The shell of Kaumakapili Church as it appeared during the cleanup period after the fire. Soon after this picture was taken, the shell was pulled down as a safety precaution. Hawaii State Archives
On April 2 7, just three days before all restrictions were due to be lifted, the false rumor of a fresh case of plague spread distress throughout the city. But Board physicians investigated the report and quickly rebutted the story. Three days later the entire Board issued a brief public statement ceremoniously signed by Wood: "I hereby declare the port of Honolulu and all other places in the Hawaiian Islands to be free from
infection by bubonic plague. All quarantine regulations adopted by the Board of Health on account of bubonic plague in the Hawaiian Islands are hereby rescinded." The announcement triggered relief and celebration.44
n the same day Honolulu Board of Health president Clifford Wood formally decreed Hawaii free from plague, U.S. president William McKinley-sitting six thousand miles away in Washington, D.C.-Concluded his morning's work by signing "An Act to Provide a Government for the Territory of Hawaii," then arose and headed off for lunch. Though weeks would pass before either man learned of the other's legal action, the day had produced a remarkable coincidence in Hawaiian history by officially concluding two interconnected campaigns, one medical and the other political.'
The law McKinley signed granted Hawaii full territorial status under the Constitution of the United States, thus putting the archipelago on an equal footing with Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, which were also territories at that time. By placing Hawaii on the ultimate path to statehoodthe Senate had rejected a proposal precluding that possibility-the act culminated the crusade begun eight years before by the annexationists. Though no one knew it at the time, Hawaii would be the last United States acquisition to be dealt with in this manner; the other so-called insular possessions gained by the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, including Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam, never received the full territorial status afforded to Hawaii. To no one's surprise, McKinley named Dole as the first territorial governor. For six weeks following the end of the plague emergency, Hawaii returned to civilian rule under the "existing government" and prepared for the transition ahead. On June 14, i 900, amid fireworks and parades, the new territorial government officially came into being.'
Plague and Fire Page 23
