Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History

by Huang, Yunte

  In closing arguments, prosecutor John Kelley identified the obvious flaw in the so-called unwritten law—its racial inequality. Yes, Mr. Darrow had spoken of mother-love and husband’s honor, Kelley said. “Well, there is another mother in this courtroom. Has Mrs. Fortescue lost her daughter? Has Massie lost his wife?” Then, as described by Stannard in his brilliant book, Kelley looked toward where Joseph Kahahawai’s parents were sitting and rested his case by asking, “Where is Kahahawai?”27

  After two days of deliberation, the jury on April 29 delivered a verdict that stunned nations on three continents: all four defendants guilty of manslaughter. As soon as the first verdict on Thomas Massie had been read, Thalia first let out a scream and then uttered a piercing wail, causing others to be unable to hear the rest of the verdict. Darrow, the most venerated lawyer of his generation, sank into his chair, muttering: “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t think or understand how anybody could be that cruel.”28 The personal disbelief was squarely matched by the outrage expressed in the mainstream media. “I am astounded! Shocked!” said Floyd Gibbons in his Hearst column the next morning. “The Fortescue-Massie case verdict is legal mockery…. Are we no longer Americans? No longer free and white? Are all the mainland millions of us in a class with those seven white men of the Massie jury who let five yellow and brown men swing a verdict directly against the sympathies of the whole civilized world?” Then Gibbons went on to call for “white American rule in Hawaii.”29

  In the meantime, more than a hundred senators and representatives began pressuring Governor Judd to pardon the four convicted killers. They sent a threatening cable to Judd, expressing their “deep concern for the welfare of Hawaii” and stating that only “prompt and unconditional pardon of Lieutenant Massie and his associates” would ensure the continuation of that concern. In other words, pardon or else. Eventually, Judd even received a call from President Herbert Hoover. Even though the content of that phone conversation was never revealed, we can make a reasonable guess from the subsequent turn of events.30

  On May 4, the judge sentenced each of the killers to ten years of imprisonment with hard labor. Within an hour, however, the four were sipping champagne at the Governor’s Mansion across the street from the courthouse—Judd had commuted their sentence to one hour in custody of the High Sheriff of the Territory.

  In retrospect, when Clarence Darrow was wrapping up his closing argument with a climactic rhetorical question, he looked into the eyes of the five nonwhite jurors and instinctively knew that he had just lost the last case of his career. As he would later recall, “When I gazed into those dark faces, I could see the deep mysteries of the Orient were there. My ideas and words were not registering.” Sharing Darrow’s conflation of Chinese and Hawaiians, Grace Fortescue made a similar observation of that dramatic moment: “The stoical Oriental faces betrayed no emotion.”31 The courtroom maestro, who had made a career out of making heartfelt appeals to jurors, had been tripped up by what he regarded as an insurmountable racial barrier. Maybe he was correct in blaming his defeat, however temporary, on the racial feelings of the jurors, but how could they think or feel otherwise when justice was in such lamentably short supply?

  Seen from another perspective, however, it would be wrong to interpret the verdict as a mere expression of racism. The seven Caucasian jurors, each one of whom had the power to cause a jury deadlock, had certainly not cast their votes based on racial prejudice. As the Chicago Tribune put it in a front-page story the day after the verdict, “Racial lines were obliterated by the jury’s verdict, and the Hawaiian race cannot be in any way held responsible for this decision.”32 In fact, the seven white jurors had plenty of good or convenient reasons to acquit their fellow Caucasians: four of them worked for Big Five corporations; two were Walter Dillingham’s employees.33 The same Chicago Tribune story pointed out: “The greatest business houses in the Territory were represented on that jury.” In addition to concerns with their own job security, the seven white jurors, as well as the five nonwhites, were also fully aware of the other possible consequence of their decision: martial law in Hawaii, or a military takeover of the civilian government. But in the end, each one decided to follow his or her conscience and obey the rule of law rather than choose the convenient path that had been followed by countless all-white juries across the nation in similar cases. As one of the white jurors put it after the trial, “Kahahawai was killed…and we could not allow ourselves to be swayed by emotions. Law and order must prevail.”34 Even though the governor’s decision to commute the sentence had rendered the Massie Case yet another ugly manifestation of racism, the guilty verdict by a mixed-race jury seemed to indicate that, in the early 1930s, the racist foundation of American culture was showing signs of cracking, at least in Hawaii.

  Months later, at the request of prosecutor John Kelley, Governor Judd hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the nation’s leading private-investigation firm, to conduct an independent probe of the Massie Case. On October 3, 1932, after a thorough, three-month examination, the agency’s report concluded: “It is impossible to escape the conviction that the kidnapping and assault was not caused by those accused…. We found nothing in the record of this case, nor have we through our own efforts been able to find what in our estimation would be sufficient corroboration of the statements of Mrs. Massie to establish the occurrence of rape upon her.”35 In other words, the rape had never occurred. Still, Joseph Kahahawai was dead, and many lives were ruined and careers shattered. Hawaii, now haunted by the specter of military rule and humiliated by the interference of a federal government five thousand miles to the east, would struggle in the wake of this racial tragedy for many years. Chang Apana, who had fought all his life for the rule of law, would have only months to live—certainly not long enough to see the day when the scales of justice could finally be fairly balanced.*

  24

  The Black Camel

  CHANG APANA AND CHIEF CHARLES WEEBER, 1932 (Courtesy of Hawaii State Archives)

  Death is the black camel that kneels unbid at every gate.

  —Charlie Chan

  EVEN IF CHANG Apana, then in his early sixties, had wanted to get involved in the Massie investigation, Captain John McIntosh’s standard departmental policy of removing nonwhite detectives from important cases would have prevented him from doing so. This was in stark contrast to the Charlie Chan novels and films, in which the police chief invariably entrusts Detective Chan with a major case involving the murder of a prominent white person.

  Although he had only been a spectator on that morning of January 8, 1932, Apana, like almost everyone else in Hawaii, was affected by the ongoing drama and disastrous fallout of the Massie Case. As soon as the first trial had ended in a hung jury, leading local white citizens reviled the Honolulu Police Department for its mishandling of the case and its perceived inability to protect whites from the dangers posed by “dirty” browns. They called for a major overhaul of the department. Within days, Walter Dillingham formed an emergency committee of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce charged with the task of cleaning up the HPD. On January 22, 1932, a bill passed in the territorial legislature led to the creation of the five-member Police Commission, empowered to appoint a new police chief and to enact rules and regulations for the conduct of the HPD and its business in the City and the County of Honolulu. On January 27, the commission appointed Charles F. Weeber—Dillingham’s personal secretary for the previous eleven years—as the chief of police and gave him the full authority to revamp the department.1

  Even though he had no experience in police matters, Chief Weeber took bold steps and adopted new policies and procedures that had been totally alien under the old sheriff. Leon Straus, a police veteran, wrote about the HPD:

  To a number of officers that had entered the service prior to 1932, the “New Look” did not have much of a future. But within a relatively short time, it was quite evident that the so-called “New Look” was going to be a permanent fixture, and the die-hards found a s
trange world of modern concepts and techniques had been introduced and were gaining public favor and support. As might be expected, a goodly number of this group decided against remaining in the service, and retired on pension, transferred to other jobs, or resigned.2

  Apana was offered a pension to retire, but he felt insulted. “What for do I want a pension?” he replied. “What would I do if I was not a policeman?”3 On May 2, three days after the Fortescue guilty verdict and two days before the sentencing and commuting, Apana was injured in a car accident. He suffered a fractured collarbone and was taken to Queen’s Hospital.4 The injury forced Apana to reconsider the pension offer.

  On May 15, eight police veterans, including Apana, retired as Chief Weeber’s reorganization took effect. Local newspapers reported Apana’s pension to be $123.75 a month, which was the maximum allowed by law (50 percent of his regular salary) but at the lower end of the average amount received by his fellow retirees.5 To remedy this injustice and to recognize his extraordinary service, three prominent haole businessmen offered to make up the difference between Apana’s active-duty pay and his pension for as long as he would live. The Chinese community in Honolulu presented him with a medal, reflecting his devotion to the force.6

  News of Apana’s retirement rankled Earl Biggers. He was concerned not that justice had abandoned either his hero, Apana, or the murdered Kahahawai, but that his readers might lose interest now that the real detective had gone off into the sunset. On May 20, he sent a request to his publisher: “Please call to your publicity man’s attention the fact that Charlie has not by any means retired from the Honolulu force…he’s just on a long—and in view of recent events it may prove a very long—leave of absence. What a bit of luck for me I wasn’t nearly through a novel about the beauties of Hawaii when that mess broke!”7

  The “novel” Biggers mentioned in the letter was his sixth Charlie Chan book, Keeper of the Keys. The Saturday Evening Post had just paid Biggers $40,000 for serial rights, an extraordinary figure during the Great Depression and about thirteen times Apana’s annual pension. About to be published by Bobbs-Merrill in June, the novel actually was less about the sandy beaches of Hawaii than the snowy sierras in Northern California. In the book, Charlie Chan has just finished a big case in San Francisco. In honor of its proud son, the Chan Family Society has invited him to a banquet in Chinatown. It seems that the Honolulu detective is standing at the very pinnacle of fame—no wonder Biggers feared that news of Apana’s retirement would diminish interest—when he receives a mysterious missive from a Dudley Ward, asking Chan to travel to his summer house in Tahoe. Riding on train tracks that were laid down by his countrymen more than half a century earlier, Chan contemplates the early history of Chinese immigration, the transpacific wave that washed him ashore on the island of Oahu many years ago. Finally arriving at the snow-capped resort on limpid Lake Tahoe, Chan realizes that he seems to be attending a convention of one woman’s four jilted ex-husbands. A sharp report from an upstairs room soon leads the odd party to the dead body of the beautiful Ellen Landini, now “a fallen flower,” to use Chan’s prodigious metaphor, “that can no longer return to the branch.”

  In writing this book, Biggers extensively researched the history of Chinese in the American West. He drew upon the unenviable lives of Chinamen in mining, railroad construction, laundries, and other menial jobs, especially with the character Ah Sing, the novel’s literal “keeper of the keys,” who has long served the Ward family as a houseboy. His name obviously recalling Bret Harte’s “heathen Chinee,” who has “ways that are dark,” Ah Sing remains under suspicion throughout Biggers’s novel. In the end, however, Charlie Chan catches the killer and exonerates the keeper of the keys, so that Ah Sing, as he has long hoped, can return to China. “I envy you,” Chan says. “You will walk again on the streets of the village where you were born. You will supervise the selection of your own burial place.”8 Such a long-awaited homecoming did not seem to lie in the future of Charlie Chan or of his real-life double, Chang Apana.

  Unable to loll around at home, Apana soon went to work as a watchman at the Hawaiian Trust Company, for he had a large family to support. Oddly, he was now making more money than he ever could as a detective, and he was lucky to find a job at the height of the Depression, when the national unemployment rate spiraled out of control to 23 percent.9 But the detective-turned-watchman soon received very sad news.

  On April 5, 1933, two days before the ban was lifted on beer and light wines, signaling the end of Prohibition, Earl Derr Biggers passed away in Pasadena after suffering a massive stroke. He was a mere forty-eight. As his wife, Eleanor, described, “I was right beside him from Sunday until Wednesday afternoon and although he could not speak he did emerge from a coma several times on Tuesday and gave me that radiant smile we all knew so well. The end came gradually and quietly.”10

  Major newspapers and journals ran obituaries lamenting the passing of the celebrated, best-selling author. The Los Angeles Times wrote: “All America mourns the death of Earl Derr Biggers. Since his first great story, Seven Keys to Baldpate, he never fell below the standard which makes his books rank with the greatest of mystery stories. Biggers not only gave us fascinating mystery, but delightful humor.”11 The liberal Nation commended Biggers for aiding the cause of international understanding by creating a Chinese hero, which must have been a revolutionary concept in the age when most Asian characters, if they appeared at all in American fiction, resembled Fu Manchu. Other periodicals praised him for paying tribute to the Chinese role in building the cities, orangeries, and vineyards of the Pacific Coast. An editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer called Chan “the most appealing of any supersleuth since Sherlock Holmes.”12 The Honolulu Star-Bulletin called Biggers “one of Honolulu’s most distinguished citizens,” and the Honolulu Advertiser stated on its editorial page, “The death of Earl Derr Biggers is a distinct loss to American letters and to Hawaii in especial…. As the creator of Charlie Chan, delightful Chinese detective, he did much to spread Hawaii’s fame to the world.”13 Of course, there had been no such tributes for twenty-year-old Joseph Kahahawai, who had been killed only two years earlier.

  The Biggers funeral was held at Neighborhood Church in Pasadena. The pastor, Dr. Theodore G. Soares, told the mourning crowd about two telegrams of condolence that had arrived for Mrs. Biggers: one from a famous American personage whom Soares did not name, and the other from a bellboy at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. “He was a very human man,” said Soares of the deceased novelist, “and it is very great to be human.”14

  After cremation, Biggers’s ashes were scattered over his beloved San Gabriel Mountains.

  PERHAPS THE IDENTITIES—some might say “souls”—of Biggers and the Hawaiian detective he had immortalized were more linked than one might have imagined. In late 1933, Apana, according to Gilbert Martines, “developed an infection on his left leg,” which was worsened by his diabetes. Even as the infection slowly spread, he “refused standard medical aid at first, and relied instead on remedies provided by a Chinese herbalist.” But the infection grew worse. On December 2, the day the Mauna Loa volcano erupted, Apana was admitted to Queen’s Hospital “with a very severe case of diabetic gangrene. Apana objected to his physician’s suggestion that his left leg be amputated. He believed in the Chinese notion that if he lost a leg in this life, he would also be minus a leg in the afterlife” hence, he would be an invalid for all eternity. Earlier in his career as the humane officer, he had had to work against the Chinese belief in reincarnation, but now, in the twilight of his life, he showed that he had never totally forsaken the folkways of his people. Five days later, over Apana’s vehement objections, the doctor ordered the amputation. But it was too late; even blood donated by fellow police officers was not able to save his life.15

  On December 8, 1933, as “Madame Pele” (the local epithet for the volcanic crater) spread ashes all over the islands and into the sea, Apana, the proud native son, died—only eight months after the death
of the Ohio mystery writer who had turned him into a legend for the ages.

  Apana’s death, understandably, failed to garner the widespread attention of the American press that Biggers’s death had received, but newspaper headlines flashed through Honolulu. One such was “Black Camel Kneels at Home of Chang Apana,” referring to the Chinese saying made famous by Charlie Chan: “Death is the black camel that kneels unbid at every gate.”16 The molten lava spewing forth from the volcano was, as Martines puts it, “Madame Pele’s way of shedding black tears of anguish over the passing of Apana.”17 In Chinese, it is called tian ren gan ying—the sympathy between heaven and human.