Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown

by Dillon, Richard

  LATELY THERE HAVE BEEN MANY ROBBERIES AND MORE CRIME THREATENED. THE LAW OF ALL LANDS FORBID SUCH CRIMES. THE CRIMINAL ELEMENT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO GO ON UNCHECKED. IT WILL SURELY BE SUPPRESSED AND THE LAW-ABIDING PEOPLE WILL BE PROTECTED. HEREAFTER, NO CRIMINAL ARRESTED FOR ROBBING OR SHOOTING WILL BE BAILED OUT. IGNORANCE OF THE LAWS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED AS AN EXCUSE. ALL SHOULD REMEMBER THE UNIVERSAL LAW FORBIDDING CRIME. MY PEOPLE MUST QUICKLY REPENT AND NOT MAKE TROUBLE FOR THEMSELVES IN THIS LAND.

  Chang was intelligent enough to know that his proclamation would not cause the city’s hatchet men to repent their evil ways, but he hoped his action might frighten them into at least postponing their street battle. He was right.

  Such crowds gathered in Chinatown’s streets on a late April day of 1895 that cable cars were stopped until police could clear the tracks. The cause of the commotion was a new rash of signs posted on telephone poles on the major corners of the Quarter. Only when Sergeant Christensen ordered the placards torn down did the crowds disperse. The small unsigned posters denounced the special police squad reorganized by the Six Companies as a worse evil than the grafting white special police force of earlier years. The signs read:

  TAKE NOTICE, THE WHITE DEVILS SENT INTO CHINATOWN BY CHIEF CROWLEY HAVE LATELY BEEN HELD IN CHECK. THEY DO NO MORE BLACKMAILING. BUT WE ARE ONLY RELIEVED OF ONE CLASS OF BLOOD-SUCKERS TO BE AFFLICTED WITH ANOTHER. THE CAPTAIN AND EIGHT MEN APPOINTED BY THE SIX COMPANIES TO KEEP ORDER ARE NOW WORSE THAN EVER THE WHITE DEVILS WERE. THEY ARE BLACKMAILING THE WOMEN, THE OPIUM SELLERS AND THE LOTTERY GAMES. NONE OF US ARE SAFE FROM THEM AND IT IS TIME THEY WERE DONE AWAY WITH. WE HAD TO PUT UP WITH THE WHITE DEVILS BUT WE WON’T PUT UP WITH THE SIX COMPANIES’ DEVILS.

  “I don’t know who was the author of this notice,” said Vice-Consul Owyang to reporters. “It was some scurrilous denunciation, I suppose, and as the police tore it down, no attention will be paid to it. If the men appointed by the Six Companies to act as policemen have been blackmailing anyone, we don’t know anything about it.” The reporters dutifully returned to grinding out the traditional predictions of more tong wars. And as usual they were right, as Murderer’s Alley—Baker Alley—lived up to its reputation again. A man was shot to death by a highbinder for kicking a dog. But a really explosive incident was the Mook Tai case.

  A Chinatown guide claimed, “In fifteen years, I have never seen Chinatown so worked up over anything. If some agreement is not reached in a day or two, there will be the bloodiest war ever seen in the Chinese Quarter.” A member of the Ning Yeung Company was murdered, presumably by Mook Tai. Immediately the boycott was increased as the dead man’s company joined the embargo on the Sam Yup commercial houses and butcher shops. The angered meat cutters retaliated by declaring war on the See Yup Company, which led in the boycotting, but their inflammatory posters were torn down by police. The tongs put up posters egging on both sides as fast as the police tore them down. A small riot erupted when the butchers had a rally. Cartoons accusing the Consul General, Li Wing Yu, of bribery in the Mook Tai case were the next to bloom on the brick walls of Chinatown. These caused another riot. Once again the fighting tongs had real cause to rejoice. The already tottering business community appeared to be intent on self-destruction as it shattered itself further by dissension. An old Chinatown expert, throwing his hands up in despair, commented: “This is no war of rival tongs. In fact, the most reputable and wealthy portion of the Chinese community is involved, including the Consul General. Neither Chong Wai, the murdered man, nor Mook Tai, the alleged assassin, belongs to the highbinder class.”

  Crowley, more exasperated than ever by the spreading of this contagion, hurried new posters up over those of the quarreling factions and the trouble-stirring tongs. They read:

  NOTICE TO THE CHINESE POPULATION OF THIS CITY AND TO THOSE OF THE STATE THAT MAY CONGREGATE HERE. WHEREAS ON THE 12TH DAY OF JULY, 1895, ONE CHONG WAI WAS MURDERED IN THIS CITY IN COLD BLOOD AND ONE MOOK TAI IS NOW UNDER ARREST BECAUSE IT IS BELIEVED THAT HE IS THE MURDERER, AND THE FRIENDS OF MOOS TAI THREATEN TO COMMIT VIOLENCE ON THE PERSONS OF THE FRIENDS OF THE DECEASED SHOULD THE SAID MOOS TAI BE CONVICTED FOR HAVING COMMITTED SAID MURDER, I DO THEREFORE WARN ALL CONCERNED IN THIS MATTER, IF THE SAID MOOK TAISHOULD BE HELD ON THE PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION ON A CHARGE OF MURDER, THAT THE GUILT OR INNOCENCE OF SAID MOOK TAI WILL BE DECIDED BY A JURY OF UNBIASED CITIZENS OF THIS CITY AND COUNTY. IN THE MEANTIME, SHOULD ANY UNLAWFUL ACTS BE COMMITTED BY ANY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE CHINESE FACTIONS CONCERNED IN THIS MATTER, THE STRONG ARM OF THE LAW WILL BE BROUGHT TO BEAR TO SUPPRESS ANY OVERT ACTS THAT MAY OCCUR IN THIS CASE, AS I WILL BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION WITH THE POLICE RIFLE BATTALION AT ONCE AND IF I AM COMPELLED TO ACT, I ASSURE YOU, THE LAW BREAKERS WILL BE TAUGHT A LESSON THAT WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR ALL TIME.

  It took Crowley a long time to make his postered point but when he did there was no doubt that he was ready to shift to an even more drastic policing of the Quarter.

  The rifle-bearing squad did not march through Chinatown, but the San Francisco board of health sent an expeditionary force. This team was guided by members of the Chinese vigilance committee and Sergeant Owens of the Chinatown squad. They looked into rookeries two stories underground, and shudderingly examined the hole called The Last Chance or Leprosy Hall. Here they threw into the street sides of beef “in advanced stages of decay,” and carcasses of two “pea-green sheep.” But their main purpose was to earmark shanties for destruction as health hazards. They had the cooperation of Chief Crowley, who saw the physical destruction of ghetto Chinatown and the warrens of the highbinders as the only sure way to rid the city of them.

  As the year came to a close there was a rash of tong fights caused by the desertion of one tong for another by a hatchet man; a small riot connected with the Sam Yup-See Yup rivalry; and two skirmishes between the Suey On and the Wah Ting San Fung tongs. The following year saw the powerful Wong family association try to break the boycott, but it failed. Some of the Bo On tong countered with a poster campaign and Sergeant Harper and his squad were kept busy de-posting chun hungs. Summer saw more deaths from shootings and stabbings. Many thought these were connected with the boycott. Meetings were held between police and Sam Yup officials to try to end the violence, but all were fruitless. A hatchet man and his stooge were captured after gunning a Chinese druggist to death; a Bo On tong member was shot and killed, and while the search for the assailant was on, still another man was shot in reprisal. A Chinese who called at Receiving Hospital to see the victims went- away shaking his head and muttering, “Lots more be killed tomorrow. Big fight now.”

  Some of the tongs connected with the See Yups were cowed by a telegram which reached the Consulate from Chinese Minister Yang in Washington and which was immediately made public: YOU ARE TO DISSOLVE THE HIGHBINDER ASSOCIATIONS AND THE SEE YUP ASSOCIATION WITHOUT DELAY. NONCOMPLIANCE WILL SUBJECT YOU TO IMPEACHMENT AND DEGRADATION FROM OFFICE. But there was no possible way in which the new Consul General, Fung Yung Heng, could dissolve the See Yup Company—or the tongs. Other tongs threatened consular officers. Reporters found the Vice-Consul willing to speak for the Consul General and himself. The press knew that police had received reports that both officials were scheduled to die at the hands of salaried soldiers on October 17, 1896. King Owyang said, “It is a mistake to suppose that the present trouble lies between the See Yups and the Sam Yups… The real status of the case is that trouble exists in the See Yup Company alone. It is composed of twelve highbinder organizations of whom ten are now neutral, while two—the Bo On tong and the Bo Leong tong—are at war. The Bo Ons are assisted by the Suey Sing tong and the Hip Sing tong, the Bo Leongs by the On Yick tong and the Hop Sing tong. As regards the cause, you know as much as I do…” A reporter asked, “Do you realize the danger you are in?” “Certainly,” said the Vice-Consul. “But it will do no good to kill us. New men will take our place at once.”

  Concealed riflemen guarded the S
ee Yup headquarters. Consul General Fung’s maneuver of securing twenty John Doe warrants for his special police—to be used to arrest See Yup highbinders for vagrancy—was thwarted by the See Yups obtaining a restraining order on him. At least, groaned Crowley, the warring factions were making use of legal weapons. There was another poster war of course, with chun hungs going up every day. Vice-Consul King was accused of almost every crime, and Six Companies’ police officer Lee Fook Ning was denounced as the fomenter of all the trouble between the Bo Leong and Bo On tongs. Of the Consul General himself, the posters read: TAKING THESE MURDERS AS A PRETEXT THE CONSUL TELLS HIS SUPERIORS THAT HE IS MERELY DESTROYING THE ABODES OF MURDEROUS HIGHBINDERS. WHERE IS HIS LOVE FOR HIS COUNTRYMEN? WITH BUDDA-LIKE LIPS, HE HAS A WOLF’S NATURE.

  More murders ensued. A See Yup, discovered hanging in a stable next door to the Consulate, an apparent suicide, was found to have been shot before being lynched. In reprisal a Wah Ting San Fung highbinder shot down a Bo Leong before his brother and other witnesses. The brother, who swore revenge, told police, “These three men came across to where he was. They said not a word but one suddenly drew a large revolver from under his blouse and handed it to one of the others and at the same time pointed at Ging. The man took the revolver and shot my brother. As he fell, he stepped up and shot him three more times….”

  Vendetta followed vendetta. The Suey Sing ranks were thinned by one with only hours left in the (Christian) year. According to a witness, the victim was sighted by eight men at Jackson Street and St. Louis Alley. One pointed at him dramatically. Another, the stooge, drew a pistol and handed it to a third. The latter fired one shot into the air to scatter the crowd and to give himself a better target, then lowered his weapon methodically and fired twice, killing the Suey Sing.

  While the war continued there were those—even among the tong membership—who sought peace. The powerful Bo Ons were tired of war. Perhaps peace was in sight that Christmas of 1896. But hopes were dashed and for years by the event which made 1897 a critical year in Chinatown’s history. The murder of powerful Little Pete on January 3, 1897, marked the high point of tong violence. The effects of the crime were lasting; there was no quick tapering off of violence. Rather, it crystallized the professionalism of murder in Chinatown and had an effect like the booster charge of a modern rocket. The tong wars were continued on a high plateau of incidence. But in its way the murder of Little Pete was the beginning of the end, too, although San Francisco had to wait nine years for the San Andreas fault and the earthquake and fire to put an end to tong rule in Chinatown.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Little Pete: King Of Chinatown

  “Pete was square. When he said ‘You shall have your cut,’ that was enough. He never threw me down yet.”

  —James B. Ranier, San Francisco

  horse trainer, 1897

  “Little Pete was unquestionably the cleverest Chinaman on the Pacific Coast and probably in the United States. He was a born organizer and was full of schemes and deviltry… Until his advent there were no highbinder societies or tongs and the Chinese were quiet, orderly and peaceable.”

  —Chief of Police Patrick Crowley, 1897

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY, the opium addict essayist, would have enjoyed sitting in on the 1897 murder of Little Pete, Chinatown’s tong-war boss. The case became a cause célèbre of all time in that area. It is the only Chinatown homicide which has come to be considered an unsolved “classic” in the annals of San Francisco crime. It was a skillfully planned and executed assassination, and, as De Quincey wrote, “Assassination is a branch of the art of murder which demands a special notice.” He was a keen student of homicide, his concern being entirely with the “taste” with which it was conceived, planned and carried out. Like Samuel T. Coleridge, he argued that once the act—murder or arson—was consummated the question of the morality of it was ended and there was left only the matter of the style of its execution.

  The erasure of Little Pete was accomplished with daring, imagination and style. The assassins were in danger of being killed themselves; they made a clean getaway.

  Much lore and legend have encrusted the facts about Fong Ching, alias Little Pete. Even his name varies from account to account because of the inflective idiosyncrasies of Cantonese dialects and usage. In one account he may be Fung Ching; in another Fung Jing Doy. His business alias—F. C. Peters—is often mistakenly rendered J. C. Peters. Some say he did not know a word of Chinese; others that he spoke fluent Chinese but could neither read nor write a word of it except to sign his name. Still others insist he was so highly literate that he wrote Chinese operas which were performed on the stage of his own Jackson Street theatre. There may be truth in the latter, for Pete was a theatre enthusiast. He posted a standing offer of $1,000 per month, for example, for Poi Loi—China’s outstanding actor—if he would perform in San Francisco. This was no small sum in those days.

  There is confusion as to the site of his murder. Actually he was shot down around the corner from Waverly Place on Washington Street, almost on the doorstep of his home. This was ironical, for he had extraordinary protection there. Two vicious police dogs kept watch, along with a large group of Chinese hatchet-men bodyguards and one or two white bodyguards.

  The chief suspect in the crime is another source of confusion. He has been called Wing Sing, Woon Sing, Chun Wing Sing, Chin Woon Sing, and Chun Woon. His supposed accomplice was Chin Poy or Chan Ah Chuey. The name of Pete’s ubiquitous white bodyguard on the night of his murder is sometimes given as Ed Murray, whereas it was actually C. H. Hunter. (Murray was an earlier aide of Pete’s.) And finally, while most students of Chinatown history feel that Pete was earmarked for murder early and stalked long, a minority believe that his killing was a spur-of-the-moment revenge action demanded by the See Yup Company for the assassination of one of its men immediately after a disagreement with some of Little Pete’s cohorts in one of his gambling dens.

  What we do know of Little Pete is that he was a strange admixture of East and West. He was a well-to-do businessman, yet a boss of Chinatown crime. He was both respected and hated but also genuinely liked by many. His passing posed a problem to law-abiding members of both races. Should they attend ceremonies honoring a business magnate who doubled as the rackets’ boss of Chinatown?

  When Little Pete was killed he got the entire front page of the Call, including three line drawings and six headlines or subheads. The story of his life was told in thumbnail fashion in a welter of uppercase type which festooned page One:

  Little Pete Murdered by His Enemies

  CHINESE HIGHBINDERS ASSASSINATE THE MOST FAMOUS OF LOCAL MONGOLIANS

  GRAND JURY BRIBER SHOT DOWN BY SEE YUP ASSASSINS

  KING OWYANG, THE CHINESE VICE-CONSUL SAID TO BE NEXT ON LIST OF DOOMED SAM YUPS

  THE GREAT LEADER KILLED IN BARBERSHOP FOR PRICE SET ON His HEAD

  NOTORIOUS VICTIM WAS ONCE MILLIONAIRE, RACE-JOBBER, IMPORTER OF SLAVES AND THE MAN WHO GAVE CHRIS BUCKLEY THE TITLE OF BUND WHITE DEVIL

  Little Pete enjoyed neither a long nor an honorable life. But it was an exciting one. He was born in Kow Gong, about ten miles out of Canton, in 1864, and came to San Francisco when he was ten years old. In his early teens he became an errand boy for a Sacramento Street shoe factory. Hard working and ambitious, Pete was also loyal to his family; when he was making only $10 a month as a shoestore clerk he contributed part of his wages to the support of his relatives, including an aged mother in Canton. By attending the Sunday school of the Methodist Chinese Mission as well as a grammar school (and some say high school too), Pete learned to be fluent and proficient in the English language. He joined the Sam Yup Company and while still a youth became involved in Chinatown and city-wide politics. Although a young man of taste, breeding, grace and gentility amounting almost to delicacy, his was a ruthlessly materialistic philosophy. His story was Horatio Alger, Dupont Gai style, but with sinister o
vertones.

  As interpreter for the Sam Yup Company, Little Pete was privy to all sorts of business information which could make a smart man into a powerful and rich man. Handsome, intelligent and always immaculate in appearance, he became so well-liked by the Caucasians with whom he did business that he was Mr. Chinatown to them. He was perhaps the most thoroughly Americanized Chinese of his day, despite his fondness for Chinese costume and theatre and his retention of his queue. He was a great lover of American methods, and these helped him to get ahead in the Quarter. He took excellent care of his health and was bright eyed and clear skinned—the direct antithesis of the sallow, tubercular (and possibly leprous) coolie of sand-lotter tradition. Pete dressed richly and well; his Oriental clothing was expensive and in the best of taste. He appeared to indulge in none of the vices for which his countrymen were condemned at the time. Little Pete combined Oriental cunning and sagacity with Occidental friendliness and business acumen.

  In short, the cultured, Westernized Little Pete would seem to have been the ideal man to lead Chinatown toward a better day; to integrate it and its people into American life. Unfortunately Little Pete had a serious flaw in his diamond-hard character. He did not know the difference—or at least he cared to draw no distinction—between good and evil. He knew what was legal and what was illegal, but instead of a true sense of right and wrong, Pete had only an egocentric philosophy. What was good for Little Pete was good. This ambition, power hunger and superpragmatic philosophy would lead him to success. But it would also drag him to an untimely death on the floor of a barber shop. When his time came, at thirty-three, the people of Chinatown were ready to forgive him for his sins. His success story and his personal charm and charity had made him their idol.