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

by Dillon, Richard

  Give me men and I can break up these tongs in two days. No jury on earth would convict a man for taking summary action in stopping such a reign of terror. They never have in the past and they will not now.

  Although the large damage suits for the earlier raids were still pending in United States’ courts, Crowley gave Price the men he needed. The latter embarked on a new series of tong raids with the usual destruction of josses and furniture. First to be destroyed was the headquarters of the Suey Sing tong, for it was thought by many on the force to be responsible for Pete’s murder. Over the years both uniformed men and plainclothes’ details had been used in Chinatown, with the latter the more effective. But right after Pete’s death, to make a stronger show of force, Price outfitted his men in new bright-blue uniforms in place of the former quiet gray color. Within an hour of the resplendent squad’s lockstep entry in Chinatown chun hungs blossomed on brick walls, reading LOOK OUT FOR SERGEANT PRICE AND HIS MEN! THEY ARE DRESSED LIKE PEACOCKS AND ARE COMING TO STOP THE WAR AMONG THE CHINESE.

  In death Little Pete was even more of a celebrity than in life, and crowds of Chinese and Caucasians gathered to see the corpse. Not all came out of morbid curiosity. Robert Ferral, one of his friends, said, “I’ve known Little Pete for years. I’ve prosecuted him and he has been my client and I have never known him to break his word.”

  Pete’s widow and little son came with Pete’s brother Fong Shun to receive the deceased property. Coroner William J. Hawkins was afraid to turn over Little Petes’ magnificent diamond ring, gold watch and other jewelry to anyone else. He gave Chun Li a paper bag of belongings and then slipped the ring on her finger. As she gazed at it her composure was shattered and she sank to the floor, shrieking with grief. Her female companions and Pete’s brother were in tears, and even Coroner Hawkins was much moved by their emotion.

  The body was taken from the funeral parlor in the finest casket Fong Shun could buy—one of metal covered with broadcloth. On the 25th it was moved to the morgue and there Hawkins empaneled a jury for a coroner’s inquest. The body, dressed in fine Chinese burial raiment including the so-called consular cap with gold knob worn by nobility in the Old Country, was then moved to Pete’s shoe factory. An area had been cleared where Pete could lie in state only thirty feet from where he had met his death. The building was quickly besieged by curiosity seekers. The gloomy building was bright with a profusion of flowers; colored candles and incense burned at the foot of the coffin and before an altar erected in the rear. In one corner the bereaved family and hired mourners, in blue wrappers and flowering white headdresses, kept up a continuous lament.

  According to Price, highbinders were shadowing all Chinese who entered to view the corpse and were preparing a fate similar to Pete’s for them: “These fellows,” he said, “want to see who offers condolences to the relatives. When it comes to a feud they will have such persons marked.” The ceremonies began with the cooking of ritual meats, the burning of punk and candles in front of the barbershop of death, and the clanging of cymbals and incantations of priests. The procession got under way at 1 P.M. on January 26, with a platoon of police leading. With the help of exploding firecrackers and clanging gongs they managed to force a path through the press of people to the Sam Yup cemetery at the far end of the Richmond district, adjacent to the Jewish cemetery. Here the funeral ceremonies were held, but Pete’s body was not buried. It was returned to the undertaker’s vault to be kept there until the estate could be settled and the widow could return with it to China.

  The entire population of Chinatown plus curious tourists and hordes from inland Chinatowns turned out en masse to see the floral tributes, brass bands, marching mourners, and the ornate hearse drawn by six black horses in royal black trappings. Rumors that the See Yups would interfere with the ceremony were completely unfounded. Everyone in Chinatown—friend or enemy—was an interested spectator. A goodly portion of Caucasian San Francisco was on hand too. One hundred and twelve carriages took mourners to the cemetery. Roofs, windows, balconies and lampposts were alive with people watching the parade. Little Pete’s funeral dwarfed all others before or since, and became a measuring stick against which other public events in the Quarter would be compared; there were 31,000 Chinese spectators alone.

  Among the spectators was a prematurely gray young man with a slight look of distaste on his handsome face. He made notes as he eyed the antics of the mob scrambling for a better view of the procession. Frank Norris was the top reporter on San Francisco’s fine literary magazine, the Wave. (Talent abounded in the office of this journal which John O’Hara Cosgrave pioneered—and included Ambrose Bierce, Jack London and George Sterling.) And this was future novelist Frank Norris, who within the next seven years would write the highly successful McTeague, The Octopus and The Pit. His story of Little Pete’s funeral was a fine piece of incisive reporting:

  …Perhaps I have seen a more disgusting spectacle than that which took place at “Little Pete’s” funeral ceremonies, but I cannot recall it now. A reckless, conscienceless mob of about two thousand, mostly women, crowded into the Chinese Cemetery. There was but one policeman to control them and they took advantage of the fact. The women thronged about the raised platform and looted everything they could lay their hands on; China bowls, punk, tissue-paper ornaments, even the cooked chickens and bottles of gin. This, mind you, before the procession had as much as arrived.

  The procession itself was rather disappointing—from a picturesque point of view. Perhaps one expected too much. There might possibly have been a greater display of color and a greater number of bands…

  At the cemetery, however, things were different. There was & certain attempt here at rites and observances and customs that would have been picturesque had it not been for the shameless, the unspeakable shamelessness, of the civilized women of the crowd.

  A few mandarins came first, heads no doubt of the Sam Yup, one of them in particular with all the dignity and imposing carriage of a Senator. He was really grand, this mandarin, calm, austere, unmoved amidst this red-faced, scrambling mob. A band of women followed, the female relatives of the deceased.

  “Here comes his wife!” screamed half-a-dozen white women in chorus.

  Pete’s widow was wrapped from head to foot in what might have been the sackcloth of the Bible stories; certainly it had the look of jute. A vast hood of the stuff covered her whole face, and was tied about the neck. Two other women, similarly dressed, but without the hood, were supporting her. A mat was unrolled, and after the white women had been driven back from the platform by the main strength of two or three men, not yet lost to the sense of decency, the mourners kneeled upon it, forehead to the ground, and began a chant, or rather a series of lamentable cries and plaints, “Ai-yah, ai-yah, yah.”

  A gong beat. A priest in robes and octagon cap persistently jingled a little bell and droned under his breath. There was a smell of punk and sandalwood in the air. The crouching women, mere bundles of clothes, rocked to and fro and wailed louder and louder.

  Suddenly the coffin arrived, brought up by staggering hack drivers and assistants, a magnificent affair of heavy black cloth and heavy silver appointments. The white women of the crowd made the discovery that Little Pete’s powder-marked face could be seen. They surged forward in the instant. The droning priest was hustled sharply. He dropped his little bell, which was promptly stolen. The mourners on the mat, almost under foot, were jostled and pushed from their place, or bundled themselves out of the way, hurriedly, to escape trampling.

  Just what followed after this I do not know. A mob of red-faced, pushing women thronged about the coffin and interrupted everything that went on. There was confusion and cries in Cantonese and English; a mounted policeman appeared and was railed at. There can be no doubt that more ceremonies were to follow, but that those in charge preferred to cut short the revolting scene.

  The coffin was carried back to the
hearse, a passage at length being forced through the crowd, and the Chinese returned to the city. Then the civilized Americans, some thousand of them, descended upon the raised platform, where the funeral meats were placed—pigs and sheep roasted whole, and chickens and bowls of gin and rice. Four men seized a roast pig by either leg and made off with it; were pursued by the mounted police and made to return the loot. Then the crowd found amusement in throwing bowlfuls of gin at each other. The roast chickens were hurled back and forth in the air. The women scrambled for the China bowls for souvenirs of the occasion, as though the occasion were something to be remembered.

  The single mounted police, red-faced and overworked, rode his horse into the crowd and after long effort at last succeeded in thrusting it back from the plundered altar and in keeping it at a distance. But still it remained upon the spot, this throng, this crowd, this shameless mob, that was mostly of women. There was nothing more to happen, the ceremony was over, but still these people stayed and stayed.

  This was the last impression one received of Little Pete’s funeral—a crowd of men and women, standing in a huge circle, stupidly staring at the remains of a roasted pig.

  The following June the jury in Judge Carroll Cook’s Superior Court failed to agree in the trial of Wing Sing for the murder of Little Pete. In November a jury returned a not-guilty verdict after the defense, led by General A. L. Hart and Colonel T. V. Eddy, proved to its satisfaction that Wing Sing was nowhere near the scene of the tragedy when Pete was shot. Chin Poy had earlier been released because of insufficient evidence.

  Eddie Gong, writing thirty-five years after the assassination, stated that the murderers were two Suey Sings named Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop. They were in San Francisco on a stopover while en route to China and were chosen for the task because they were unknown to Pete, his bodyguard and the police. However, Gong is so often wrong in describing details of the Little Pete case that this convenient solution of the perfect Chinatown crime must be viewed suspiciously.

  It is much safer to consider the case as still unsolved and to accept the verdict of the coroner’s jury at the inquest: “We find that Fong Ching, aged 34 years, nativity China, occupation merchant, residence 819 Washington Street, City and County of San Francisco, came to his death January 23, 1897, at 817 Washington Street, said City and County, from shock of gunshot wounds and we further find the wounds were inflicted by persons or a person unknown to us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Aftermath: Chinatown In Ruins

  “The strange, mysterious old Chinatown of San Francisco is gone and never more will be. Heaps of sand and colored ashes mark the once densely populated, gaily painted, and proverbially wicked haunts of highbinders and slave dealers.”

  —Donaldina Cameron, 1906

  IMMEDIATELY after Little Pete’s murder, the police clamped a tight lid on Chinatown. It was lucky for the Quarter that the force’s repressive measures were so effective. Chief Lees thundered, “I will end highbinderism in San Francisco if I have to call out the entire police force to do so.” Even though he did not end it, there was no war and those who were calling for the razing of the Canton of the West, like Editor Charles Shortridge of the Call, found little real support. Shortridge hoped that Pete’s murder would rouse the entire city to action, but to his disgust the citizens were moved only to sign a petition to President McKinley, urging him to put a stop to slavery in Chinatown.

  The Chinatown squad rousted about 300 men in 22 tong raids and arrested almost 50 of them, besides hitting opium dens and slave-girl dealers. They had one less headache when Loo Fook Yeung, called King of the Highbinders, was killed. Sergeant Price again took over the Chinatown detail during the day and Sergeant Cook was put in command of the squad at night. Captain Wittman created a special striking force of 55 policemen, which he split into 15 different “boarding parties,” struck at the gambling dens run by the tongs, and dragnetted 242 gamblers. The police were helped in their cleanup by the successor to the Chinese Vigilance committee, the Chinese Society for English Education. Many of the leaders of this society found prices placed on their heads by the tongs, as a result.

  A neutralist Consul General, Ho Yow, favoring neither See Yups nor Sam Yups—although leaning toward the latter—almost secured an end to the boycott which was a major factor in the persistence of the tongs. The politico-economic chaos in Chinatown, as a result of the boycott, extended the life of the fighting societies by many years. Chinese Minister Wu Ting Fang tried to help stabilize Chinatown by approaching the United States Government in regard to . a formal extradition treaty between the two countries to permit the expulsion from the United States of hatchet men; but the United States did not warm to it, since Yankee and Chinese judicial processes were so different. Wu Ting Fang finally did act in the way the Examiner had claimed he had on the night of Pete’s murder. He secured the arrest and imprisonment of relatives of See Yups in China. Shortly, however, he traded their release for a cessation of the boycott by the See Yup Company.

  But as spring gave place to summer and fall the tong wars began to spread. The Wah Ting San Fongs and Sen Suey Yings joined the Hop Sings against the Suey Sings. As the hatchet men began to take their toll once more, headlines screamed MURDER AGAIN STALKS ABROAD IN CHINATOWN. The chief of police, confronted with a dozen or more murder attempts and half of them successful, laid down an ultimatum to Chinatown. He notified the Six Companies and the Consulate General that if the tong murders did not cease he would not only increase the strength of police patrols in Chinatown, but would personally start an agitation for the expulsion of all Chinese from San Francisco. A naturally disturbed Ho Yow replied, “I will do everything in my power to prevent further trouble, and I will lend my support to any measure which will assist in suppressing crime. I define my official capacity in this city as being consular and commercial, however, and I am not a detective, hence I cannot ferret out crime. This duty rests with the police. Understand, I do not mean to refuse to give the police any assistance I can but the bulk of the responsibility must not be placed on me.” Ho Yow did get the Six Companies and the Merchants Association to post rewards for the leaders and hatchet men of the warring tongs, to hire Chinese private detectives, and to pay rewards to Chinese who would give testimony in court. Ironically, the sums were based on a figure which would allow a person to flee the city. The Six Companies made another of its threatening but not very effective pronunciamientos—“If the tongs do not cease the taking of life, the highbinders will be turned over to the police by the Chinese themselves.” All in all, Ho Yow was the most effective Consul General the city had seen and his actions (particularly his pressure on Minister Wu to put the squeeze on Kwangtung relatives) earned applause from the Wave and other important publications.

  Of course the tongs did not cease the taking of lives. All efforts to end the Hop Sing-Suey Sing war failed despite several abortive peace proclamations, the fleeing of nineteen hatchet men from San Francisco, and the death of the Suey Sings’ president in December. Hundreds of innocent people fled the city. Many preferred to return home to China. Chinatown was terrified. Between 1890 and 1900, the population of the Quarter dropped from 25,000 to only 14,000, and the Chinese population of the United States, largely in California, declined by a full 16 percent.

  At the end of 1898, with the boycott not yet dead, Chief Lees put up a chun hung of his own which garbled the facts of life in Chinatown badly but which made clear his determination to clean up the district:

  TO THE CHINESE: REPORTS COME TO MY OFFICE OF MUCH TROUBLE EXISTING IN THE CHINESE QUARTER IN THE PAST THREE OR FOUR WEEKS RELATIVE TO THE HIGHBINDERS SOCIETIES. IT APPEARS THAT THE SEE YUP TONG [sic], WHOSE HEADQUARTERS ARE ON CLAY STREET, DETAIL MEMBERS OF THEIR SOCIETY TO ROB, BLACKMAIL AND BOYCOTT THE SAM YUPS AND OTHER SOCIETIES; ALSO, MURDERS HAVE BEEN TOO FREQUENT LATELY. I, AS CHIEF OF POLICE OF THIS COUNTY, WARN AND CAUTION SUCH SOCIETIES THAT ARE ENGAGED IN BOYCOTTING, ROBBING,
AND MURDER, THAT SUCH ACTS ARE CONTRARY TO THE LAW OF THIS STATE, WILL NOT BE TOLERATED ANY LONGER, AND MUST BE STOPPED, AND IT WILL BE MY DUTY TO CAUSE THE ARREST OF EACH AND EVERY ONE WHO COMMITS OR IS SUSPECTED OF COMMITTING ANY OFFENSE AS STATED ABOVE. IT IS HOPED THAT ALL CHINESE SOCIETIES WILL HENCEFORTH RESPECT THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY, OTHERWISE THEY WILL HAVE TO TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES.

  The tongs, of course, preferred to take their chances on the consequences. The chief continued the old blitzkrieg-style raids, still the most effective deterrent, and in 1899 had the Chinese Society for English Education raided along with the tongs. It was believed by many in the department that the society had succumbed to temptation and become nothing more than a front for tong activities or even a supertong itself. Its officers vehemently denied all charges, and portions of the press backed them up. But the police lost confidence in them, convinced that they informed on illegal gambling dens or prostitution only to move in themselves to take over once the police raiders had left. The raid on the society turned up nothing incriminating, and the piling up of damage suits led Lees to relax for a time. The blitzkrieg raids were stopped, and tough Lieutenant Price was shifted from Chinatown to other duty, even though a Suey Sing vs. Sen Suey Ying war broke out with the usual shootings and hatchetings. While the former posted a lopsided score of killings (4-0 in their favor over the Sen Suey Yings), the police appeared to be helpless.