by Huang, Yunte
Kathleen Brandes, the final gatekeeper of my writing for this book, is simply the best copyeditor it has ever been my fortune to work with.
The following people at various institutions have also most ably and generously assisted me in accessing precious images and research materials: Cherry Williams, curator of the Lilly Library at Indiana University; Trinh Dang at Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Cynthia Engle at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu; Alison Rigney at the Everett Collection in New York; Yessenia Santos at Simon & Schuster; Kawehi Yim at the Hawaiian Humane Society; George Lee at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin; and Dorinda Hartmann at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
The writing of this book coincided with the yearlong Fulbright residencies in Santa Barbara of Professor Dongfeng Wang and Professor Chunyan Chen, a great Chinese couple from Canton. Their visit brought China back to me, and their friendship nurtured my soul as much as their cooking nourished my body.
I have left for last my acknowledgment of the deepest bond, the two stars that, despite the distance, light up my lonely night sky: my children, Isabelle and Ira. Their absence from my daily life leaves a vacuum that can never be filled by phone calls, postcards, or even frequent visits. In some ways, it is for them that I sit down every day, open a vein, and write my heart out.
Notes
Prologue
1 “Disguised Apana Caught Gamblers,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 13, 1904.
Chapter 1: Sandalwood Mountains
1 Gilbert Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii” (master’s thesis, University of Hawaii, Manoa, 1990), p. 52.
2 Ibid., p. 39.
3 Isabella Lucy Bird, Six Months in the Sandwich Islands: Among Hawaii’s Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes (1881; reprint, Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 1998), p. 17.
4 Mark Twain, Letters from Hawaii, ed. A. Grove Day (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1975), p. 28.
5 Kinau Wilder, Wilders of Waikiki (Honolulu: Topgallant Publishing Company, 1978), p. 4.
6 Jack London, “Koolau the Leper,” in Jack London, Stories of Hawaii, ed. A. Grove Day (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 1986), p. 39.
7 Yunte Huang, Transpacific Imaginations: History, Literature, Counterpoetics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 55–56.
8 Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974), pp. 49–50.
9 Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992), p. 47.
10 Ibid.
11 Mark Merlin and Dan VanRavenswaay, “The History of Human Impact on the Genus Santalum in Hawaii,” in USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. (PSW-122, 1990), pp. 46–60.
12 Dougherty, p. 46.
13 Ibid., pp. 46–47.
14 Samuel M. Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii (Honolulu: Kamehameha Schools Press, 1961), p. 70.
15 Merlin and VanRavenswaay, p. 54.
16 Daws, p. 79.
17 James Cook, Voyages of Discovery. Compiled by John Barrow from authorized 18th-Century Admiralty Editions and Documents (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1993), p. 405.
18 Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1975), pp. 36–37; Wai-Jane Char, “Chinese Merchant-Adventures and Sugar Masters in Hawaii: 1802–1852,” in Hawaiian Journal of History 8 (1974), p. 4.
19 Wai-Jane Char, p. 4.
20 Daws, p. 44.
21 Bob Dye, Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains: Afong and the Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), p. 11.
22 Thomas G. Thrum, “Notes on the History of the Sugar Industry of the Hawaiian Islands,” in Hawaii Annual, 1875, pp. 34–42.
23 Dye, pp. 11–12; Wai-Jane Char, p. 4.
24 Daws, p. 169.
25 Ibid., p. 173; Simon Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 207–8.
26 Daws, pp. 178–79.
27 Tin-Yuke Char, pp. 57–58.
28 Daws, pp. 173–74.
29 “Report of President of Bureau of Immigration to Legislative Assembly,” in Bureau of Immigration Reports, 1886, p. 23.
30 Twain, pp. 270–71.
31 Ibid., p. 258.
32 Bureau of Immigration Report, 1882–1898, 1: 266–77.
Chapter 2: Canton
1 W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (1975; reprint, New York: Barnes and Noble Publishing, 2002), p. 167.
2 Quoted in Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 32.
3 Ibid.
4 Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii (Hong Kong: Cosmorama Pictorial Publisher, 1960), p. 5.
5 Ibid, p. 6.
6 Hanes and Sanello, p. 34.
Chapter 3: Paniolo, the Hawaiian Cowboy
1 Takaki, pp. 71–72.
2 Ah Huna Tong, “Chang Apana Had Long and Enviable Record on Force,” in Honolulu Advertiser (May 22, 1932).
3 “Many Present at Rites for Noted Sleuth,” in Honolulu Advertiser (December 18, 1933).
4 Richard J. Cleveland, A Narrative of Voyages and Commercial Enterprises (Cambridge: John Owen, 1842), pp. 229–30.
5 Hawaiian Humane Society, Poi Dogs and Popoki (Honolulu: Hawaiian Humane Society, 1997), p. 18.
6 Joseph Brennan, The Parker Ranch of Hawaii: The Saga of a Ranch and a Dynasty (New York: John Day Company, 1974), pp. 21–31.
7 Ibid., p. 45.
8 Ibid., p. 32.
9 Ibid., pp. 35–36.
10 Ibid., p. 40.
11 Ibid., pp. 49–50.
12 Ibid., p. 48.
13 Ibid., p. 46.
14 Chester A. Doyle, “Charley Chan and Officer Apana,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (December 1, 1935).
15 Helen K. Wilder, “About ‘Charlie Chan’ Apana,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (January 3, 1936).
16 Brennan, p. 3.
17 Ibid., p. 57.
18 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” pp. 46, 43, 26.
Chapter 4: The Wilders of Waikiki
1 Kinau Wilder, pp. 1–2.
2 Dye, pp. 95–97; Elizabeth Leslie Wight, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Kinau Wilder (Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific Press, 1909), p. 150.
3 Wight, p. 161.
4 Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrecker (London: Cassell & Company, 1892), pp. 9–10.
5 Kinau Wilder, p. 19.
6 Gilbert Martines, “In Search of Charlie Chan,” in Hawaii Herald 4:2 (January 21, 1983), p. 1.
7 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” pp. 25, 44.
8 Wight, p. 150.
9 Earl Derr Biggers, The Chinese Parrot (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1926), p. 27.
10 Ibid., p. 14.
11 Helen Wilder, “About ‘Charlie Chan’ Apana.”
12 Kinau Wilder, p. 99; Hawaiian Humane Society, p. 33.
13 Hawaiian Humane Society, p. 31–32.
Chapter 5: “Book ’em, Danno!”
1 Hawaiian Humane Society, p. 33.
2 Ai, pp. 45–46.
3 Biggers, Chinese Parrot, pp. 33–34.
4 Tong, “Chang Apana Had Long and Enviable Record on Force.”
5 Hawaiian Humane Society, p. 28.
6 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” p. 29.
7 Ibid.
8 Daws, p. 286.
9 Ibid., p. 276.
10 Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1920), pp. 1–4.
11 Daws, pp. 287–90.
12 Albertine Loomis, “Summer of 1898,” in Hawaiian Journal of History 13 (1979), p. 97.
13 Daws, p. 169.
14 Leon Straus, The Honolulu Police Department: A Brief History (Honolulu: The 200 Club, 1978), pp. 1–6.
15 George F. Nellis
t, ed., The Story of Hawaii and Its Builders (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1925), p. 305.
16 Straus, p. 22.
Chapter 6: Chinatown
1 Winchester, p. 331.
2 Pacific Commercial Advertiser (January 26, 1883).
3 Dye, p. 205.
4 Karen Sawislak, Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871–1874 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 48. Jason Puskar, “Underwriting the Accident: Narratives of American Chance, 1871–1935” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2004), p. 32.
5 Richard A. Greer, “‘Sweet and Clean’: The Chinatown Fire of 1886,” in Hawaiian Journal of History 10 (1976), pp. 33–48.
6 Ibid., p. 45.
7 Ai, pp. 191–93.
8 Tin-Yuke Char, pp. 103–10.
9 Marie-Claire Bergere, Sun Yat-sen, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 25–26.
10 Yansheng Ma Lum and Raymond Mun Kong Lum, Sun Yat-sen in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), p. 5.
11 Ibid., p. 7.
Chapter 7: The See Yup Man
1 Bret Harte, “See Yup,” in Bret Harte, Stories in Light and Shadow (Lon don: C. Arthur Pearson, 1898), pp. 93–94.
2 Tin-Yuke Char, p. 151.
3 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” p. 40.
4 Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), p. 68.
5 Tin-Yuke Char, pp. 140–41.
6 Dye, p. 199.
7 “Gamblers Escaped Through a Hidden Trapdoor,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (May 20, 1904), p. 3.
8 Harte, “See Yup,” p. 93.
9 Clarence E. Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980), p. 238.
10 “Disguised Apana Caught Gamblers,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (July 13, 1904).
11 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” p. 37.
12 “Honolulu’s Highways and Byways,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (March 16, 1908).
13 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” p. 34.
Chapter 8: Desperadoes
1 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” p. 37.
2 “Tricks of Wiry Japs: No Joke to Try and Arrest Some of Them,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (June 19, 1901).
3 “Officer Apana Sued for $2000,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (July 6, 1905), p. 3.
4 John Jardine, Detective Jardine: Crimes in Honolulu (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 40.
5 “Chang Apana Detective, In Fact and Fiction,” in Honolulu Police Journal (October 1931), p. 34.
6 Daws, pp. 209–10.
7 A. Grove Day, ed., Introduction, in Jack London, Stories of Hawaii, pp. 10–11.
8 “Chang Apana Detective, In Fact and Fiction,” pp. 34, 42.
Chapter 9: Double Murder
1 Earl Derr Biggers, The House Without a Key (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), p. 258.
2 “Chang Apana Detective, In Fact and Fiction,” p. 34.
3 Martines, “Modern History of Hawaii,” p. 33.
4 “Popular Girl Believed to Have Drowned,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (July 3, 1919), p. 1.
5 “Chang Apana Detective, In Fact and Fiction,” p. 42.
6 “Chinaman and Handsome Young Wife Murdered; Home Robbed,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (May 1, 1913), pp. 1–2.
7 “Officers Trail Murderer and Loot to Lair,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (May 2, 1913), pp. 1, 8; “Police Unravel Murder Mystery,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (May 6, 1913), p. 4.
8 “Rodrigues Confesses to Double Murder,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (May 7, 1913), pp. 1-3; Joseph Harrow, “Value of ‘Unimportant’ Evidence Shown in Murder Solution,” in Honolulu Police Journal 1:2 (December 1931), pp. 6–7.
9 “Filipinos Are Arraigned; To Plead Monday,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (May 22, 1913), p. 1; “Death the Punishment for Murder,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (June 14, 1913), p. 1.
10 Joseph Theroux, “A Short History of Hawaiian Executions, 1826–1947,” in Hawaiian Journal of History 25 (1991), pp. 147–55.
11 “Filipinos Expiate Murders,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (July 8, 1913), p. 1.
12 Theroux, pp. 157–58.
13 Harrow, p. 48.
14 “Chinese Present Chief McDuffie with Badge,” in Honolulu Star-Bulletin (July 30, 1913).
Chapter 10: The Other Canton
1 Carl Carmer, Stars Fell on Alabama (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934), p. xiii.
2 James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
3 Ted C. Fishman, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World (New York: Scribner, 2005), p. 137.
4 Barbara Gregorich, “Charlie Chan’s Poppa: The Life of Earl Derr Biggers,” in Timeline: A Publication of the Ohio Historical Society 16:1 (January–February 1999), pp. 2–3.
5 Ibid., p. 2.
6 Ibid., p. 4.
7 Earl Derr Biggers, unpaginated manuscript, Bobbs-Merrill Collection, Lilly Library, Indiana University; hereafter cited as Lilly Library.
8 Mark J. Price, “Mystery of Charlie Chan: Fictional Detective Follows Trail of Clues from Akron,” in Akron Beacon Journal (May 5, 2008).
9 Ibid.
10 Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (first published 1920; reprint, New York: Penguin, 1995), p. 10.
Chapter 11: Lampoon
1 Gregorich, p. 5.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Jean Gooder (New York: Penguin, 1995), p. 229.
Chapter 12: The Raconteur
1 Biggers, House Without a Key, p. 123.
2 Elrick B. Davis, letter to A. H. Hepburn, April 18, 1933, Lilly Library.
3 The content of this column was reproduced in the press release by Bobbs-Merrill on the eve of publication of Biggers’s first novel, Seven Keys to Baldpate, in February 1913, Lilly Library.
4 Bobbs-Merrill biographical sketch of E. D. Biggers, unpaginated type-script, Lilly Library.
5 Gregorich, p. 6.
6 “Earl Derr Biggers Has Interview with World’s Biggest Parrot,” press release by the Publicity Department of Bobbs-Merrill, Lilly Library.
7 Gregorich, p. 6.
8 Earl Derr Biggers, Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913; reprint, Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003), pp. 11–12.
9 “Earl Derr Biggers,” in Harvard College Class of 1907 Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report (June 1932), p. 43.
10 “Earl Derr Biggers Has Interview.”
11 Lilly Library, unpaginated manuscript.
12 Quoted in Gregorich, p. 6.
13 Ibid.
Chapter 13: The House Without a Key
1 Gregorich, p. 7.
2 “‘Dope Traffic’ Has Hawaii in Horrid Grip,” in Honolulu Advertiser (May 4, 1924).
3 “Officers Seize Opium; Arrest Two Japanese,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (March 9, 1920), p. 1. “Police Uncover Opium Store in Jap Garage,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (April 7, 1920), section 2, p. 1. “U.S. Marshal Arrests Captain of Police; Charge Failure to Report Opium Haul,” in Pacific Commercial Advertiser (March 23, 1920), section 2, p. 1.
4 Biggers, House Without a Key, p. 1.
5 Helen Walker, article about lecture given by Earl Derr Biggers in Pasadena, Pasadena Star-News (April 11, 1925). Biggers, House Without a Key, pp. 116–17.
6 E. D. Biggers, letter to Laurance Chambers, October 23, 1922, Lilly Library.
7 E. D. Biggers, letter to Laurance Chambers, December 18, 1922, Lilly Library.
8 E. D. Biggers, letter to Laurance Chambers, January 14, 1924, Lilly Library.
9 Harvard College Class of 1907 Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report, p. 43.
10 Honolulu Star-Bulletin (June 6, 1924), p. 6.
11 Earl Thompson, letter to J. David Reno, February 26, 1979, Honolulu
Police Department Museum.
12 Gina Halkias-Seugling, Librarian, General Research Division, New York Public Library, e-mail to author, July 15, 2008.
Chapter 14: The Heathen Chinee
1 Biggers, House Without a Key, pp. 76–77.
2 Ibid., p. 82.
3 Harvard College Class of 1907 Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report, p. 43.
4 Daniels, p. 9; Takaki, p. 79.
5 Takaki, pp. 81–82.
6 Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), p. 16.
7 Ibid., p. 37.
8 Milton Meltzer, The Chinese Americans (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell), pp. 4–6.
9 Takaki, pp. 84–86.
10 Meltzer, pp. 22–23, 1–2.
11 Takaki, p. 87.
12 Daniels, pp. 59–62; Winchester, p. 214.
13 Daniels, p. 39.
14 Ibid., pp. 34–39.
15 Takaki, pp. 101–2.
16 Ibid., p. 103.
17 Ibid., pp. 111–12.
18 Daniels, pp. 54–55.
19 Takaki, pp. 110–11.
20 F. Bret Harte, The Heathen Chinee (Chicago: Western News Company, 1870), pp. 1–9.
21 Gary Scharnhorst, “‘Ways That Are Dark’: Appropriations of Bret Harte’s ‘Plain Language from Truthful James,’” in Nineteenth-Century Literature 51:3 (December 1996), pp. 377–99.
22 Robert Lee, p. 17.
23 Willoughby Speyers, letter to E. D. Biggers, February 4, 1931. E. D. Biggers, letter to Laurance Chambers, February 6, 1931. Laurance Chambers, letter to Biggers, February 9, 1931, Lilly Library.
24 E. D. Biggers, letter to Laurance Chambers, April 26, 1932, Lilly Library.
25 Robert Lee, p. 28.
26 Ibid., p. 42.
27 Ibid.
28 Hinton R. Helper, The Land of Gold: Reality versus Fiction (Baltimore: Henry Taylor, 1855), p. 88.
29 Robert Lee, pp. 41–42.
Chapter 15: Fu Manchu
1 Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu: Being a Somewhat Detailed Account of the Amazing Adventures of Nayland Smith and His Trailing of the Sinister Chinaman (1913; reprint, San Jose, CA: New Millennium Library, 2001), p. 13.
2 Cay Van Ash and Elizabeth Sax Rohmer, Master of Villainy: A Biography of Sax Rohmer (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), p. 63.
3 Ibid., p. 3.
4 Ibid., p. 4.
5 Ibid., p. 10.
6 Ibid., pp. 74–75.
7 Ibid., p. 75.
