Plague and Fire

by James C. Mohr

  The day after Robertson died, the Board heard about three more fresh cases of possible plague. One was a Hawaiian man who had been at the Drill Shed camp for eleven days. The other two men were a recently arrived white American laborer and ajapanese worker. Since there was some doubt whether the Hawaiian case from the quarantine camp was actually plague (which it turned out not to be), the Board's physicians decided to try the anti-pestique on only the American and the Japanese, both of whom clearly had the disease. This time they administered just one vial of serum to each, in a single injection. Unfortunately, the results were the same as in Robertson's case. 24

  The American and the Japanese had both worked at the Pantheon Stables, one of the six largest stables operating in downtown Honolulu. Emerson, Day, and Wood were now reminded by their sanitary inspectors that Wong Chin had also worked there and that Quong Fat Man had frequently slept there. As a result, the three physicians overrode an earlier command that the Pantheon Stables be thoroughly disinfected as a precautionary measure and instead ordered them burned. This was a serious economic decision in a city that still ran entirely on horsepower. The Pantheon's remaining employees were sent under guard to quarantine camps .15

  Later that day the triumvirate learned about Robertson's amateur ratcatching contests and surmised that rats might also be implicated in the Pantheon deaths. Though they did not know what was going on, the three physicians figured they had nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain by stepping up their previously announced efforts to poison rats. They also cautioned the public to use shovels when disposing of dead rats in order to avoid touching them directly. In an effort to understand the mysterious relationship between rats and plague, Hoffman began meticulously cataloguing the exact locale of all dead rats reported to Board headquarters. But everyone was forced to admit that it had "been an unfortunate day in health department circles."26

  As the pattern of sporadic deaths returned, so did tensions within the city. Charles J. Creighton, a local attorney representing Chinese residents accused of violating emergency health orders, launched a flamboyant public challenge of his own to the authority of Citizens' Sanitary Commission inspectors-and hence to the absolute powers of the Board of Health-by threatening to shoot anyone, including designated medical inspectors, who attempted to enter his home. Other anti-Dole whites joined in, accusing the three physicians on the Board of Health of losing control of the situation, and condemning the Citizens' Sanitary Commission as little more than a vigilante mob operating under the evil influence of Hawaii's own "Mr. Pain," Lorrin Thurston. The city's trolley company balked at the triumvirate's mandatory disinfection procedures, which kept downtown business at a standstill. Allegations of fiscal abuse resurfaced and were in turn counterchallenged by the Board's special Finance Committee. The latter refused, for example, to pay claims for the pick-helves that were given out by hardware merchants to passing citizens on the day of the great Chinatown fire, on the grounds that the Board would not have authorized such actions.'

  Anxieties continued to rise during the first week of February, when people began to realize that the refugees from the great fire were nearing the end of their three-week quarantine period. While everyone was relieved that no additional cases of plague had broken out inside the camps-which, among other things, would have lengthened the period of quarantine-they also knew that the vast majority of the refugees soon to be released had no homes to return to and few resources of their own. Frightened members of the Dole administration floated the possibility of calling for additional U.S. troops or activating the Hawaiian national guard, in case the liberated refugees went on a rampage. But critics mocked the idea: "Is the government of the Republic of Hawaii prepared to admit that the Asiatic contingent which the magnificent labor system of the Republic has brought to this city is so large and evil minded that it cannot be controlled by local authorities?" Emerson, Day, and Wood let the proposal die.28

  On February 8, the Board began releasing Chinatown fire refugees from detention camps. Evacuees were not forced out, but they were encouraged to leave if they could find alternative arrangements. With questions of reparations and public maintenance already looming large in private discussions among the Board's members and in debates between the Board's physicians and the Council of State, Emerson, Day, and Wood were reluctant to set the precedent of providing indefinitely for everyone who had sustained losses as a consequence of their antiplague policies. Even so, nearly 700 of the roughly I,85o refugees released from the Kalihi camp returned immediately, and the triumvirate agreed to continue supporting them.29

  Fortunately, the initial exodus from the camps went smoothly. Far from rampaging, some of the Chinese refugees presented gifts of appreciation to their former guards as they left the camps. The Tan Shang Xi Bao Long Ji [Hawaiian Chinese News] admonished refugees not to defy the Board of Health by trying to return to their former homes, and the Board's physicians cooperated actively with the Chinese Aid Society to provide transitional support for those who chose to leave the camps. Consul Yang and Vice-Consul Gu administered a substantial fund that provided essentials to Chinese evacuees, though Yang was later accused of diverting large amounts to his own coffers.30

  Japanese consul Saito Miki provided cash payments to departing Japanese refugees, so they in turn might compensate countrymen who took them in. He also began seeking work for Japanese around the city or, failing that, on plantations elsewhere in the archipelago. Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiian relief societies again came forward to help provide assistance for their respective constituencies. Employment bureaus opened in the camps and managed to find jobs for 120 of the first 44o refugees released from quarantine; newspapers thereafter regularly published lists of available workers and their principal skills."

  Most of the released evacuees had to make do as best they could, and many had no friend or relative to take them in. The editor of Ke Aloha Aina wept at the "pathetic condition" of some of the people released from quarantine. They walked the streets aimlessly during the day and slept outdoors "under kiawe trees and on akulikuli grass" at night, victims, in his opinion, of the "cruelty of this annexationist government that some Hawaiians boast is a good government." He was especially saddened that Hawaiian refugees were being treated callously by "hard-hearted Hawaiians" serving in the Dole government's police force. With no home to go back to, some of the Hawaiian refugees from Chinatown would still be living in the Kalihi barracks two years later and trying to persuade the government to let them homestead there permanently."

  A reporter for the Independent met a Japanese refugee "who looked pale and miserable and scantily dressed." The reporter was disconcerted, "because a month ago we knew him as a thrifty citizen, always in good employ, and always neatly dressed." The Japanese man told the reporter "that he had just been released from the detention camp, to find his house in Chinatown burned down, his furniture and clothing gone up in smoke with the money which altogether represented the savings of seventeen years of faithful labor in these islands." With tears in his eyes, the man "pointed towards the bleak desert between Nuuanu street and the River street and said, `I have lost my home, my property, and even my job.""'

  Through all of this, Emerson, Day, and Wood stoutly maintained twicedaily inspections of the entire city and declined to restore full business hours. Schools remained closed and transit facilities sharply curtailed. Wherever and whenever Board-appointed physicians confirmed new plague cases, the triumvirate continued its policy of relocating any surviving residents to quarantine camps and burning the site. As people continued to die, the dispirited press was reduced to writing about how well the city's human crematorium had been functioning during the crisis. Built in just four days back in December, the facility was praised by a weary Wood, who took sardonic pride in pointing out that Honolulu's crematorium was superior even to the one in Tokyo, Japan-hardly the sort of boast he had been hoping to make.34

  Among the few bright spots for the white elites in Honolulu was the
recovery of Armstrong Smith, a popular young man barely out of school. At considerable risk to himself, Smith had volunteered to run the Board's special plague, or so-called pest, hospital since its creation back in December. He had been continuously at that post ever since. When he suddenly took sick during the second week of February, people feared the worst. But Smith recovered, and the grateful Americans of the city took up a collection to send the young man to medical school once the plague emergency was over.;'

  Discouraged by the enormity of the problems ahead, everyone in Honolulu realized that the plague-induced state of emergency was far from over. Watching the city stagger on, the Roman Catholic bishop of Hawaii wrote sadly to friends in England about "the black death" in the Pacific. "For more than a month we have been exposed to the ravages of this fearful visitation; God alone knows when we shall get rid of it," he reported. "Meanwhile the government and its Board of Health are making desperate efforts to stamp out the disease; they do not hesitate to set on fire all the infected quarters, and if they go on burning down at this rate, one half of the city will soon have disappeared. Up till a few days ago, the victims were Chinese and Japanese or Kanakas [Hawaiians], but now several white people have been attacked," and the population was clearly on edge. "Poor people!" he concluded, "they put more trust in their science than in the mercy of God."36

  s if the frustrations they faced in Honolulu were not enough, Emerson, Day, and Wood continued to receive occasional rumors of plague elsewhere in the archipelago. But beyond asserting their authority-as they did on Hawaii-and insisting on strict quarantine procedures, the doctors had not directly intervened in the daily affairs of the outer islands, where most residents still wanted nothing to do with Honolulu in any event until the epidemic was over. But by early February reports from the island of Maui had become too serious to ignore, so Wood himself decided to make an unannounced trip to Kahului, the island's principal city, on February i i. He took along Charles Louis Garvin, who had been one of the first physicians in private practice to volunteer his services to the Board back in December.'

  When Wood and Garvin arrived in Kahului, they learned that six people had died during the preceding week, all apparently from plague. Four victims were Chinese, the other two were Japanese; all six had lived in Kahului's small Chinatown district. Wood examined another gravely ill Chinese patient in that district, who died three hours later. The doctors then performed postmortem examinations on three of the victims andto confirm their diagnosis-viewed "slides made by Dr. Garvin [which] showed the bacilli of plague in large numbers." All of the bodies were then immediately cremated upon a pyre of railroad ties.

  Acting formally as president of the Board of Health, and invoking the emergency powers the Board possessed throughout Hawaii, Wood called an impromptu meeting of the local physicians in town, the local version of the Citizens' Sanitary Association, the sheriff of Maui, and "all the white population that could be spared from patrolling" Kahului's own hastily established quarantine zone. Together they resolved that Kahului's Chinatown, an area of about three acres, could not be effectively disinfected, so Wood concluded that the "only treatment" available was "disposal of the place by fire." An ad hoc appraising committee removed "such papers and valuables as ... can safely be disinfected," then estimated the worth of the district's buildings and any unsalvageable merchandise they contained. A. N. Kapoikai, who had formerly served in the old Hawaiian senate, took charge of preparing quarantine camps for the people about to be displaced.

  The assessors completed their task in less than an hour, and Kahului's Chinatown was ignited. A San Francisco attorney who happened to be visiting Kahului at the time was surprised to see "far less objections made to the removal and far less resistance" on the part of the Chinatown residents than he had expected. The decision affected roughly two hundred residents, mostly Chinese and Japanese, along with a few Hawaiians and one white, all of whom were relocated to "comfortable" quarantine quarters on the grounds of the town's horse racing track. The sheriff was instructed to find anyone who had left the Chinatown district for other parts of the island during the previous week, round them up, and add them to the residents being quarantined. Wood then formally deputized six local physicians and twelve civilians "as agents of the Board of Health" before returning to Honolulu the following day. Wood left Garvin behind, "with a complete outfit of all that is needed for microscopical and postmortem work," to command the battle against plague on Maui.'

  Returning to Honolulu, Wood found the situation improving. Refugees were continuing to leave the detention camps without incident. With fewer people to detain under quarantine and no widespread civil unrest breaking out, the three physicians reduced the number of national guardsmen they had called to active duty. On February 15, they opened several streets that had been closed to the public since the Chinatown fire. By February 19, Honolulu had gone twelve days without a death, so the triumvirate ordered the Citizens' Sanitary Commission to cut their citywide inspections to once a day. But Wood and his colleagues remained cautious. Over the objection of educators, for example, the physicians in sisted that Honolulu's schools stay closed, and they continued to direct spot fires at sites linked to earlier outbreaks.;

  With the epidemic apparently receding, Emerson, Day, and Wood spent increasing amounts of their time embroiled in financial issues and haggling over future developments. The city's shippers, for example, began to badger the Board to loosen import regulations and asserted that they would self-police the city's wharves and warehouses in exchange for the resumption of unhindered trade. Exasperated by such bullying, Wood rebuked the shippers publicly. "I believe that the steamship companies and the merchants of Honolulu ... are inclined to ship as much freight as they can and escape the restrictions if possible," he told newspaper reporters summoned to the Board's office. "I don't think they are acting in the manner citizens or companies should, who wish to have the plague suppressed soon." Privately to his two colleagues at their daily meeting, Wood put the problem more succinctly: "The merchants [are] getting restless." The physicians also had to spend time dealing with reports of price gouging on the part of retailers and investigating allegations that some physicians in the city were charging Asian patients for services they were supposed to be providing for free.`'

  Dwarfing all other economic issues, however, were the various redevelopment plans for Chinatown, the Board's previous commitment to improving the city's hygienic infrastructure, and the desire on all sides to solve the thorny problem of reparations stemming from all of the Boardordered fires. On February 19, the three physicians took a major step toward the future by earmarking still another $500,000 for sewer construction in the Chinatown area, plus an additional $ioo,ooo for plague-related expenses. In a republic whose national treasury held only about $3 million to begin with, the magnitude of the sums encumbered during the plague emergency indicated just how completely and how boldly the three medical men had taken control of Hawaii.5

  On the same day the three physicians committed "the existing government" to costly projects that would continue after the epidemic ended, three of their volunteer physicians in the field almost simultaneously reported three more deaths from plague. After nearly two weeks without any fatalities, those reports were a discouraging setback, particularly because the body of one of the victims, a man named Ah Hung, had been found at the Hawaiian Hotel Stables. Those stables housed over eighty horses and served most of the city's tourists, as well as many of the city's downtown businesses. If burned, they would be a highly visible symbol to outsiders of how serious the city's plague problem still remained, so the three physicians did not want to condemn them without strong evidence of plague. The other Asian employees at the Hotel Stables claimed that Ah Hung once worked there, but had not been seen for weeks prior to his death, and hence could not have contracted plague there. Company pay records substantiated their claims.

  To resolve the issue, the triumvirate staged a formal hearing, listened to witnesses, and t
ook statements regarding the status of the Hotel Stables. While the evidence about Ah Hung's whereabouts and death remained inconclusive, the hearing brought to light the fact that a prior plague death had occurred there in January. Fearing for their jobs, Japanese employees had concealed that death and secretly substituted one of their friends for the man who died. The doppelganger answered to the name of the dead plague victim, and the local white sanitary inspector never discovered the ruse. Emerson, Day, and Wood disagreed over what to do. President Wood was prepared "to strain a point" in order to do away with these or any stables "in the heart of the city," where he thought they did not belong anyway. The more cautious Emerson felt they lacked sufficient evidence to burn the stables immediately. As a compromise, they agreed on Day's proposal for a tight quarantine around the stables, coupled with a waitand-see policy.

  The decision to delay condemnation of the Hotel Stables touched off another embarrassingly public showdown between the sanitationist attitudes of the vast majority of whites and the Board physicians' more bacteriologically discriminating policy. McGrew, the Board's old medical nemesis, publicly accused Emerson, Day, and Wood of dangerous inconsistency. "It is well known that two persons who afterwards died of the plague had been on the premises for a longer or shorter time," he stated. "Burn them by all means." W. E. Taylor, another of the traditional physicians who had kept his distance from the Board, took a similar position. "I suppose the Board has some good reason for not destroying the Hotel stables," he commented to a newspaper interviewer, "but I haven't any idea what that reason is.... For my part, I most emphatically say, burn the stables."'