Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (41 page)

It can almost be said that from this time on the tongs became poker,
pai gow
and pinochle societies. Families became the rule rather than the exception in Chinatown. Americanized Chinese were displacing the old-timers in positions of influence, as well as in sheer numbers. By 1910, American-born Chinese numbered 14,935—a thousand more than the entire population of Chinatown of 1900. They were now the distinct majority in Chinatown and they asserted their rights. Merchants no longer felt it necessary to become (grudging) members of tongs for reason of “protection.” The tongs had to be content with the leavings of their former illegal empire—largely
do far
(lottery), fan-tan and
pai gow
parlors.

As early as 1909 the Six Companies began to foster tourism in the new Quarter. During the city’s Portola Festival of that year their guidebook,
San Francisco’s Chinatown,
was published. The editors assured travelers of their personal safety. “Visitors in Chinatown need fear no harm from members of the Chinese race. As to members of other races who often haunt Chinatown’s streets, the visitor must use ordinary prudence.” Tourists were urged to see (and smell) Fish Alley, off Washington Street just below Grant, but were warned, “Visit this part only in the daytime, as white ‘sporting women’ live on this street in considerable numbers.” Although the Six Companies had to admit that some tongs had come back, it was no longer afraid of them—“There are some highbinder societies, which the better class of Chinese regret.” The editors boasted of how clean Chinatown had become. “San Francisco’s
reconstructed
Chinatown is composed of modern sanitary and attractive buildings. A Chinese lodging house recently constructed by Chinese owners on Clay Street has bathtubs on each floor—something novel in Chinatown.” The editors added, “There are no underground opium dens in Chinatown—haven’t been any since the fire.” Opium had been practically taxed and priced out of existence by the time of the Opium Act of 1923. The State Legislature’s Red Light Abatement Act of 1914 was practically the death blow for the singsong girl industry, although the last slave-girl raids were not made until 1925.

After the fire all of the major newspapers ran articles urging the resettlement of the city’s Chinese elsewhere than in their old area along the Street of a Thousand Lanterns (Dupont). But nothing came of this idea. The Chinese were obstinate in their desire to return to their old precincts and they did so. Students of Chinatown like Hartwell Davis soon noted that: “Since the great San Francisco fire, a change has come over the Chinese in San Francisco. The merchant, realizing that this fire has removed much of the filth incidental to the Chinese section, has turned his face against the re-establishment of the sinister and crime-breeding conditions.”

The
coup de grace
was administered to the fighting tongs by a now legendary figure—Inspector Jack Manion, who died in 1959 at the age of eighty-two years. Born in Ross, Marin County, he moved to San Francisco, joined the force in 1907, and served in the police department until his retirement in 1946. From the moment he took over the Chinatown squad on March 28, 1921, he became the unofficial chief of police of Chinatown. The last six tongs—the Hop Sings, Suey Sings, Suey Dongs, Sen Suey Yings, Jun Yings and Bing Kongs—were trying to turn back the clock to a time when assassinations, slave girls and gambling were the rule. But Manion would have none of it. “No more killings; no more shakedowns; no more opium or slave girls.” These were his orders. But six men were killed. Manion put pressure on the tongs. He got their heads to meet together in an unwilling peace conference and bulldozed them into signing a treaty pledging peace. He threatened them with deportation if they did not sign. Manion’s firm but fair methods worked and it was he who finally pacified Chinatown. There were no more tong killings after 1922 (and few murders or manslaughter cases of any kind), although in the rare crimes of violence in later years the newspapers could be counted on to rush a headline on the streets reading TONG KILLING! no matter how far from the truth it might be. (This was even the case in 1961.)

Manion won the nickname
Mau Yee,
the Cat, because of his cunning and apparent knowledge of everything that went on in the Quarter. The last of the hatchet men were convinced that he not only had eyes in the back of his head but that he never slept. He used to fool them by standing in a crowd, reading the Chinese newspapers posted on the walls, apparently studying and digesting the calligraphic information. Actually he could read hardly a word of Chinese, but the highbinders did not know this. All of his psychology was simple but effective. When a show of force was needed he had only to march into a tong headquarters, listen silently and intently to what was but gibberish to him (though never showing this), then violently whip out his handcuffs and slam them on the table in front of the startled tong officers. Manion had a temper too. More than once he returned the thinly veiled bribes of costly presents by flinging them at the donors before kicking them out of Chinatown. One such gift was a complete dinner set in gold plate—the cups and bowls stuffed with currency.

But he was liked, even loved, by the common people of Chinatown, the merchants, and especially by the children. They did not call him
Mau Yee
but
Min Bok,
Old Uncle. The Americanized children liked him for the kindness beneath his rough exterior. Small Orientals would cry out as he passed. “Hello, Daddy!” He was repeatedly asked to be a best man or a godfather. For twenty-five years he headed the Chinatown squad and only once asked for a transfer to other duty. When the word got around, a large crowd of Chinese gathered with petitions demanding that “Sergeant Jack” stay on where he belonged. Although no braggart, Jack Manion did allow himself one boast in the beginning: “Ours will be the cleanest Chinatown in the United States.” He was right, because he saw to it himself.

By 1925, when the last slave-girl raids were made in Portola Alley (renamed Cameron Alley, renamed Old Chinatown Lane), Manion’s firm policing had paid off. He could explain why there were no more tong wars: “You see, there can’t very well be any tong killings unless there are tong gunmen on hand to make them. The first thing I did when I took over the Chinatown detail was to make it hot for gunmen. All those without visible means of support I arrested on charges of vagrancy. The gunmen had social clubs and hang-outs. I arrested them for loitering around these clubrooms. I wasn’t always able to secure convictions or sentences that amounted to very much. But I kept on arresting them and I gave them to understand that things would continue to be hot for them in San Francisco indefinitely. I succeeded in driving them out of the city and I’ve kept them out. I closed up the hang-out places and I’ve kept them closed.”

By suppressing gambling and prostitution, Sergeant (later Inspector) Manion deprived the tongs of their last sources of revenue and power. This crippled them. He put the fear of God into the
boo how doy
by telling them, face to face, when he heard a rumor of a war between tongs, that he would try every one of them for conspiracy in murder should a single man be killed. He thought nothing of dropping through skylights or shinnying down ventilator shafts to rescue slave girls or seize hatchet men. Donaldina Cameron, his firm friend, said of him, “He has the support of the better elements in Chinatown and I think he has the respect of the worse elements.”

For all its dark alleys, there is nothing sinister about modern 1962 Chinatown. Only on foggy nights when veils of sea mist obscure Spofford Alley and Waverly Place does the Quarter assume something of an air of mystery and an evocation of its turbulent past.

There is overcrowding in Chinatown, TB, and ironically, a tendency toward juvenile delinquency as today’s Chinatown children become so completely Americanized. But little psychological damage appears to have been done by the years of persecution—internal and external. The long suffering, patient community has overcome its legacy of violence in magnificent fashion. Other than the deeply ingrained love of gambling, the almost sole survivor of tong-days traditions is a sort of secretiveness, perhaps a vestigial remnant of the conspiracy of silence of a century ago. Chinatown still keeps its own counsel as a community, perhaps for fear of embarrassing a citizen of Grant Avenue by causing him to be confronted unexpectedly by a tax collector or an immigration inspector.

But Chinatown is no longer the chaotic no man’s land of a ghetto in transition. The quarter is so law-abiding today that sociologists study it in hopes of finding a cure for the increasing lawlessness of other areas of the city, state and nation.

According to the 1960-1961 annual report of Chief of Police Thomas J. Cahill, only one of 26 men arrested during the year for murder or manslaughter was an Oriental. (The statistics do not distinguish between Chinese and others of Oriental descent.) Of 22 rape arrests none was of Chinese, of 243 robbery arrests only 2 were of Orientals. The Quarter which once had a monopoly on street warfare was represented in the fiscal year of 1960 by only 7 cases of assault with a deadly weapon of the city’s total of 177. There were no arrests of Orientals for prostitution and only 30 (out of 652) on narcotics charges. Only in terms of gambling is Chinatown well represented in Chief Cahill’s reports. There were 276 such arrests of Orientals in 1960-61, for the Chinese still love the clatter of
pai gow
tiles and the clink of silver dollars.

Chinatown today remains the most colorful district of a colorful city. And few if any lament the passing of the lawless city within a city of yesterday. Most of us are content to accept the obituary which Donaldina Cameron pronounced, with no regret for its demise, back in 1906: “The strange, mysterious old Chinatown 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.”