9780824882402

Sojourners and Settlers
CHINESE MIGRANTS IN HAWAII

Sojourners and Settlers
CHINESE MIGRANTS IN HAWAII
Clarence E. Glick
HAWAII CHINESE HISTORY CENTER

AND
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF HAWAII
Honolulu
COPYRIGHT © 1980 BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF HAWAII
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Glick, Clarence Elmer, 1906–

Sojourners and settlers: Chinese migrants in Hawaii.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Chinese Americans—Hawaii—History. 2. Hawaii—Foreign population. 1. Title.
DU624.7.C5C46 996.9 004951 80-13799
ISBN 0–8248–0707–3
The jacket photo of a Honolulu Chinese family, circa 1912, is reproduced courtesy of Helen Kam
Fong and the Hawaii Multi-Cultural Center.
Contents
Title Page iii

Copyright 4
Tables vi
Maps vii
Preface viii
Acknowledgments xii
1. The Cycle of Migration 1

2. On the Sugar Plantations 20
3. On the Rural Frontier 40
4. On the Urban Frontier 60
5. Settlement, Investment, Entrenchment 92
6. Urbanization 118
7. The Migrants’ Chinatown 127
8. Migrant Families 149
9. Group Identity and Early Migrant Organizations 170
10. Migrant Organizations and Community Crises 191
11. Differentiation and Integration 215
12. From Familism to Nationalism 242
13. Personal Prestige 278
14. Group Status 294
Appendix: Population of the Hawaiian Islands by Racial and Ethnic Groups:

1853–1970 319
Glossary 367
Index 378
Authors Cited in Notes 392
Plates 395
v
Tables
1. Arrivals of Chinese in Hawaii: 1852–1899

2. Chinese Men Engaged in Rural Occupations in Hawaii:
1884–1930
3. Percentage Distribution of Chinese Men Employed in
Hawaii by Occupational Class: 1890–1970
4. Occupational Indices of Chinese Men Employed in Hawaii
by Occupational Class: 1910–1970
5. Occupational Indices of 1.0 or Over for Chinese Men Em-
ployed in Hawaii: 1950
6. Occupational Indices of 1.0 or Over for Chinese Men Em-
ployed in Hawaii and the Continental United States: 1930
7. Percentage Distribution of Chinese Women Employed in
Hawaii by Occupational Class: 1890–1970
8. Number and Occupational Indices of Chinese Women Em-
ployed in Hawaii by Occupational Class: 1930–1970
9. Occupational Indices of 1.0 or Over for Chinese Women
Employed in Hawaii: 1930 and 1950
10. Chinese in Honolulu and the Hawaiian Islands:
1853–1970
11. Chinese Employed in Honolulu and in the Hawaiian Is-
lands Exclusive of Honolulu, 1884–1970
12. Relatives Listed by Thirty-Six Hawaii-Born Chinese: 1937
13. Origin of Chinese Contract Laborers (1895–1897) and
Chinese Women (1893–1898) Granted Permits to Land in
Hawaii
14. Chinese Newspapers Published in Honolulu
15. Relief Projects in China Carried Out by Hawaii Chinese:
1930–1935
vi
Maps
1. Kwangtung Province
2. Chung Shan District
vii
Preface
AMONG the many groups of Chinese who have emigrated from their ancestral
homeland and settled overseas, none has been more remarkable or created more
interest than the Chinese in Hawaii. Typical of this interest is an inquiry I received
from an ethnologist in Leningrad who wrote to ask what accounted for the way
Chinese in Hawaii have fitted in so well with the Hawaiian-American society of
the Islands. This book does not pretend to answer that question completely, but it
does present evidence that the Chinese migrants who came to Hawaii, especially
those who stayed and established families in the Islands, laid the foundations for
the incorporation of Hawaii-born Chinese into the economic, political, cultural,
and social life of Hawaii’s multiethnic community. Coming from South China,
largely as laborers for sugar plantations and Chinese rice plantations, but also as
independent merchants and craftsmen, the migrants found themselves in a land of
open opportunity. In making the most of this opportunity, the migrants not only
contributed to the Islands’ economic development, but many were themselves
transformed from villagers bound by ancestral clan and tradition into participants
in a mobile, largely Westernized social order.
The study on which this book is based was originally concerned with the or-
ganizations established in Hawaii by the migrants during the second half of the
nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. Chinese societies in the
Islands were of particular interest because they had not been characterized by
the open and sometimes violent conflict which had brought so much attention to
“tongs’’ in San Francisco, New York, and other large cities in various parts of the
world where there were colonies of overseas Chinese. To understand the diverse
character and functions of the over two hundred organizations founded by Chi-
nese migrants in Hawaii, it was necessary to consider the migrants’ background
in China, the circumstances under which they came to the Islands, the economic,
cultural, and social adjustments they made, and the factors that led so many of
them who had come as sojourners, intent on “making their fortune” and returning
to China, to become settlers in Hawaii.
The original study dealt primarily with the estimated 46,000 migrants who
viii
Preface
came to the Islands before Hawaii was annexed to the United States in 1898. All
but a hundred or so had arrived during the last half of the nineteenth century, all
but some 2,500 between 1875 and 1898. About 95 percent were males, mostly
young adults, and during the early 1880s they made up more than half of all the
adult males in Hawaii. It was not until the decades of 1890–1910 that any con-
siderable number of Chinese women came to the Islands and the Hawaii-born
Chinese population began to multiply. At the time the original study was com-
pleted in 1938, about 3,500 of the migrant men who had come to Hawaii before
Annexation were still living in the Islands; many heads of families were still ac-
tively engaged in their businesses or other occupations, others had retired, and
some, comparatively few, were single, older, indigent men dependent on more
prosperous Chinese or on public welfare. Most of the societies organized by the
migrants were still led by members of the migrant generation.
In the present work I have followed the migrants on through the 1940s up
to 1950. By that time only a tiny fraction of the pre-Annexation migrants were
still alive, and the organizations they had founded that were still in existence were
being led by Hawaii-born Chinese and some of the thousand or so Chinese who
had entered Hawaii after 1900. Hawaii-born Chinese made up nearly 90 percent
of the Islands’ Chinese population in 1950 and controlled almost all the Chinese
businesses. Occupational data from the 1950 census demonstrated the favorable
economic position migrants had made possible for their Hawaii-born children and
grandchildren, a position that 1970 census data confirmed.
By 1950 the People’s Republic of China controlled Kwangtung province,
and the land and buildings in which migrants had invested in their home villages
and districts were being absorbed into communes. The last few migrants who had
clung to their dream of retiring in their home villages now concluded that this
plan was no longer feasible. Most of the pre-Annexation migrants remaining in
Hawaii after 1930 had become permanent settlers; even those who kept in touch
with their kinfolk in China were more interested in the future of their American
children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, most of whom were in Hawaii,
than in the villages of their childhood.
The first section of this book deals with the several streams of migration from
China, beginning with the pioneer merchants and entrepreneurs who came during
the first half of the nineteenth century and helped initiate the economic develop-
ment that was eventually to attract thousands of migrants during the second half
of that century. It is commonly assumed that the present-day Hawaii-born Chi-
nese are descendants of sugar plantation workers, but that assumption is far from
accurate. Several thousand migrants did work on the sugar plantations as contract
or as “free” day laborers. Other thousands, however, came to work as free day la-
borers in Chinese-controlled agricultural enterprises, especially rice plantations.
Hundreds of other migrants, especially those who came to work in firms owned
by relatives and other Chinese, never had any plantation experience. It might have
ix
Preface
been expected that since most of the migrants came from a rural background in
China they would have remained concentrated in agriculture, especially since that
was the main source of income in the Island economy during the period of the
migrants’ occupational careers. Nevertheless, large numbers of them moved from
agricultural work into urban occupations. Occupational mobility among the mi-
grants in Hawaii was far greater than among the Chinese in the continental United
States or in many overseas Chinese colonies.
Later chapters discuss the movement of the migrants and their children into
the economic mainstream of Hawaii, their concentration in Honolulu, the evolu-
tion of Chinatown as the nucleus of the urban Chinese community, the opposition
the migrants encountered from other groups, and the complex of organizations
they developed in coping with this opposition and other problems that arose as
they made their adjustment to the migrant situation. As a collection of people with
a great many differences stemming from their old-world origins, and at the same
time treated categorically as a single group by others, the Chinese community
was a product of both differentiation and integration among the migrants. The
last chapters deal with the changing relationships between the migrants and their
homeland and examine how the shift from sojourner attitudes to settler attitudes
influenced the personal and group orientation of the migrants and their Hawaii-
born children.
It still remains for someone to make a study concentrating on the Islands’
Hawaii-born Chinese, who are now mostly third, fourth, and even fifth-gener-
ation descendants of early migrants. In addition to an account of the economic
prosperity of the Hawaii Chinese community as a whole and the political and
cultural achievements of many of its members, there should be an analysis of
the survival of over fifty of the societies the migrants organized between 1880
and 1930, as well as of the scores of organizations formed by second- and third-
generation Chinese. Attention should be paid to the membership of Hawaii-born
Chinese in the whole gamut of multiethnic and nonethnic organizations in the
Islands. The increasingly high rate of outmarriage among Hawaii-born Chinese
men and women, now above 60 percent according to official reports, should be
examined. It would be important to describe the renewal of interest in Chinese
culture and in their migrant forebears’ experience among Hawaii Chinese, but no
one could responsibly say of the Hawaii Chinese, as a recent sociologist said of
Chinese in the mainland United States, that they “provide a living museum of
nineteenth-century Cathay” or that they “live much of their lives out of touch with
the host society.” If there is a “host society” in Hawaii, the Hawaii-born Chinese
are part of it.
Changes in the United States immigration laws since 1950, especially those
made in 1965, have resulted in a new influx of several thousand Chinese immi-
grants, mainly from Hong Kong and Taiwan and mainly into Honolulu rather than
the rural areas or the other islands of Hawaii. They now make up about 10 per-
x
Preface
cent of the Islands’ Chinese population. The experiences of these new migrants
are very different from those of the earlier migrants discussed in this book. Some
theses have already focused on these new migrants; but more research, especially
into their relations with Hawaii-born Chinese, would be enlightening.
My original study was conducted during the years 1929–1932 and
1935–1937 while I held combined teaching and research appointments in the
Department of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. I learned to speak a few
words of Chung Shan Cantonese and Hakka, the two main languages spoken
by Hawaii’s Chinese migrants, but by that time many of the migrant leaders in
Honolulu, especially those who had come as youths, could be interviewed in Eng-
lish. Chinese students and friends served as interpreters with those who could not
speak English or preferred to speak Chinese. I learned to read enough Chinese
characters to identify the subjects of documents and articles written in Chinese
pertaining to the migrants, and Chinese university students employed through the
National Youth Administration made translations and collected data from Chi-
nese society records. Two China-born friends, Young Hing Cham and Wing-Iu
Leung, with whom I had lived for some months in Honolulu, were my guides
when I spent the summer of 1932 in China, with my headquarters in Choy Hung
village in Chung Shan district. I traveled through much of that district and into
the See Yup districts as far as Toi Shan city, talking to returned migrants and ob-
serving the impact of the wah kiu (“overseas Chinese”) on their home villages
and districts.
The Transcription of Chinese

The reader will find inconsistencies in the romanization of Chinese words. In the
text an attempt has generally been made to romanize Chinese words as closely
as possible to their pronunciation by Chinese migrants in Hawaii, primarily fol-
lowing the Chung Shan Cantonese spoken in the Islands. The same words in See
Yup or Sam Yup Cantonese may be spelled slightly differently, still more differ-
ently in Hakka. No attempt has been made to include Mandarin equivalents; for
readers familiar with Chinese dialects or speech groups other than those used by
the migrants in Hawaii, a glossary has been included. The spellings of Chinese
words included in quotations add to the inconsistencies but have been maintained
as found in the original sources. Most Chinese proper names—of individuals,
organizations, places, and the like—are not in italics; Chinese terms and phrases
have generally been italicized and translated in the text when first used.
xi
Acknowledgments
MANY people have helped in many ways—supplying information, making trans-

lations, offering personal insights, giving professional assistance, and providing
financial support for the project.
When my original study was underway in the 1930s, several faculty mem-
bers and students were most helpful, especially Romanzo Adams, Andrew W.
Lind, Tin-Yuke Char, and Bung Chong Lee. Chinese students in my classes added
much to my understanding of the changing Chinese community. Members of
Chinese societies whom I interviewed were cooperative and generous with their
time. Hawaiian government offices and private agencies gave access to their files.
Throughout the course of the work, librarians at the University of Hawaii and the
Archives of Hawaii have been exceptionally patient and helpful.
Leaders of the Hawaii Chinese History Center encouraged me to extend the
original study and prepare it for publication. Among them, Irma Tarn Soong, ex-
ecutive director emeritus, Puanani Kini, president, Tin-Yuke and Wai-Jane Char,
Wing-Tek Lum, and Larry F. C. Ching have been particularly helpful.
I am indebted to Irma Tarn Soong for preparation of the Chinese glossary.
Norma A. Lum and Karen A. Motosue, director of the Hawaii Multi-Cultural
Center, aided in selection of the pictures; Wayne Warashina, also of the Center,
did repographic work for several pictures; Gene Kassebaum assisted in producing
the index; Freda R. Hellinger typed the manuscript.
Most of all I am indebted to my wife, Dr. Doris Lorden Glick. Her training in
sociology and her experience teaching English and sociology have been applied
extensively, imaginatively, and productively to the preparation of the manuscript
for publication, most importantly through editorial work. Without her assistance
and encouragement the book would never have been completed.
I appreciate greatly the efforts of the Hawaii Chinese History Center in ob-
taining financial support from the following sponsors:
Larry and Beatrice Ching Foundation

Senator and Mrs. Hiram L. Fong
xii
Acknowledgments
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Inn

Chinn Ho Foundation
Puanani Kini
Mr. and Mrs. Leong Hop Loui
Louise and Y. T. Lum Foundation
Kee Fook Zane
Hawaii Chinese History Center
United Chinese Society
xiii
CHAPTER 1
The Cycle of Migration
CHINESE colonization in the Hawaiian Islands falls entirely within the period of
European developments in the Pacific Basin—the two centuries since the Western
world first learned of the existence of the Hawaiian archipelago and its Polyne-
sian inhabitants. During the first third of this period only a few Chinese, probably
less than a hundred, migrated to the Islands; for the most part Chinese coloniza-
tion in Hawaii was a phase of the era of Chinese migration overseas that began
near the middle of the nineteenth century. This era was characterized by a vast ex-
pansion of the area of the globe to which Chinese emigrated, by the impetus given
to emigration by the contract labor system, and by an enormous increase in the
numbers of Chinese overseas. Chinese migration to Hawaii was largely a conse-
quence of the development of plantation agriculture in the Islands, a development
which led to the assisted immigration of laborers from Asia and other parts of the
world. An account of the whole cycle of Chinese migration to Hawaii, however,
requires some attention to the few Chinese pioneers who came to the Islands be-
fore the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Pioneers
Shortly after the Western world came to know of the Hawaiian Islands through
Captain Cook’s discovery in 1778, Hawaii became important to ships trading be-
tween South China and the northwest coast of America. The Islands provided
welcome ports for securing fresh water and provisions as well as harbors in which
to spend the winter months. Not surprisingly, Hawaii soon became known in
China; Chinese began to appear on ships calling in the Islands,1 and one Chinese
was reported to be living there even as early as 1794.2 It is more remarkable that
by 1828 between thirty and forty Chinese were among the four hundred foreign-
ers estimated to be living in Honolulu,3 because this was still during the period of
a Chinese imperial edict forbidding Chinese subjects to leave China.
During the first half of the nineteenth century a few more Chinese ad-
1
venturers defied the edict in order to come to Tan Heung Shan (“Sandalwood
Mountains”), as Hawaii was called by the Chinese. The name had its origin in
the sandalwood trade between Hawaii and China through which Hawaii made its
first strong impression upon the Chinese. As early as 1792 foreign traders were
bargaining with Hawaiian chiefs for sandalwood to take to China,4 and before the
forests were depleted, about forty years later, several million dollars worth of this
fragrant wood had been sold in the Canton market. Even though this trade ended
before most of the Chinese migrants came to Hawaii, Tan Heung Shan remained
a Chinese name for Hawaii.
The activities of the early Chinese pioneers foreshadowed the settlement pat-
terns which developed among later Chinese migrants. Some of them attempted
to make their fortunes in agriculture, especially sugar production, but by far the
larger number were businessmen and artisans who found economic opportunities
in the principal island ports.
Commercial sugar production in Hawaii, although eventually taken over
entirely by American and European companies and management, was first un-
dertaken by Chinese entrepreneurs. It was, at the same time, the first occupation
specifically known to have been followed by a Chinese in Hawaii. Hawaiians en-
joyed the juice of sugarcane flourishing in the Islands but did not know about
making sugar. Several Westerners speculated about the commercial possibilities
of a sugar industry, and word of this reached South China where sugar had been
made for centuries. According to an account published in 1852, the first Chi-
nese sugar maker, Wong Tze-Chun, arrived in 1802 with a village-type sugar mill
and boiling pans on a ship engaged in the sandalwood trade. Unfortunately Wong
chose to start his enterprise on Lanai, a dry island not well suited to sugar. A year
later he gave up his unprofitable venture and returned to China.5
In spite of this unpromising beginning, by the 1830s sugar production was
undertaken with somewhat greater success by Chinese-owned companies which
had established businesses in Hawaii and which provided both capital and Chi-
nese personnel skilled in sugar making. One such firm, Samsing & Co., although
based in Honolulu, was manufacturing sugar at one time or another at Waimea,
Kohala, and Hilo on the island of Hawaii and at Lahaina on Maui, with tong
see (“sugar masters”) brought from China.6 In the 1840s and 1850s at least half
a dozen Chinese sugar masters were producing sugar on the island of Hawaii.
These men, who were engaged in enterprises with the Hawaiian governor of
the island, became citizens and landowners, married Hawaiian women, some of
them of very high rank, and settled on that island.7 Even after traditional Chi-
nese methods of making sugar could no longer compete with new processes
using steam-powered machinery imported by Caucasian planters, Chinese entre-
preneurs on various islands continued for some time to raise sugarcane and sell it
to Caucasian-owned mills.
The most famous of the early entrepreneurs was Chun Fong from Chung
2
Shan district in Kwangtung province, whose career in the Islands extended from
the 1840s to 1890. Afong, as he was known locally, had many business inter-
ests in Honolulu where he married a Hawaiian woman of noble lineage by whom
he had twelve daughters and four sons. He became the largest shareholder in
Peepeekeo Plantation near Hilo. In 1888, with 326 laborers and about 1,200 acres
in sugar, this plantation ranked twelfth among seventy-nine plantations and mills
in “number of hands.” Afong is reported to have received $600,000 for his share
in the firm when he retired to China in 1890.8
Sugar production was only one of many economic opportunities open to the
early Chinese. A report by the marshal of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1852 stated
that thirty-seven Chinese were in business in the vicinity of Honolulu.9 Samsing
& Co., with several partners, operated a general merchandise store, a bakery, and
other enterprises. The Tyhune Store, apart from handling Western and Chinese
dry goods and similar merchandise, had a wholesale business in wines and spirits
as well as owning vessels and boats. In the 1840s Tyhune (Wong Tai-Hoon) had
started a branch store in Koloa, Kauai, and in 1852 he applied for a retail store
license in Lahaina, Maui.10
Chinese business pioneers in the Islands not only formed companies among
themselves, but some of them joined other foreigners in commercial enterprises.
Atai, one of the two founding partners of Hungtai Co., was in business with
William French, a New Englander who first came to Hawaii in connection with
the sandalwood trade. Atai and French owned the Canton Hotel in Honolulu dur-
ing the 1830s, and Atai also assisted French in the latter’s unsuccessful attempt to
establish a sugar plantation at Waimea, Kauai, with Chinese sugar-making equip-
ment and Chinese employees brought by Atai from China in 1835. In the 1830s
Tyhune, even while engaged in his own business, was a part-time employee of an
American firm, Ladd & Co., which with a few other Chinese employees brought
from China was establishing a sugar plantation at Koloa, Kauai.11
Early Chinese businessmen in Hawaii recruited other Chinese from China to
join them as partners in their business and also as employees. Some were rela-
tives who became part of the original firm or who started related businesses in
other parts of the Islands. Ahung, Atai’s partner in the firm of Hungtai Co., had
three relatives who worked at one time or another in the firm’s Honolulu store.
One of them later went into business in Lahaina, Maui. Tyhune turned over all
his businesses in 1853 to a brother, Achun, who had himself been in business in
Lahaina at least as early as 1833. Other Chinese, such as the sugar masters, were
recruited as employees because of their special skills. One document mentions a
Chinese employed by Hungtai Co. as a bookkeeper; Chinese were brought in to
open French’s tannery at Waimea, Hawaii; Chinese carpenters were employed in
1829 on a building for French in Honolulu; and Chinese cooks and waiters were
brought in for the Canton Hotel.12 This recruitment of Chinese workers by Chi-
nese businessmen in the 1830s and 1840s established a pattern that was followed
3
by the Caucasian members of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society who in

1852 began recruiting laborers from South China for their sugar plantations.
Plantation Expansion and a New Era of Colonization

It is one of the odd twists of history that even though Chinese were pioneers in
Hawaii’s sugar industry, Caucasian planters, rather than Chinese, were respon-
sible for recruiting and employing the largest number of Chinese brought in to
work the Islands’ sugar plantations. This is readily understandable when one
considers the circumstances under which the Hawaiian sugar plantations devel-
oped. As a profit-making venture, large-scale agriculture for the world market
requires a combination of resources: long-term control of land suitable for the
desired crop; large amounts of capital; entrepreneurial and technical skills; an ad-
equate, stable labor force; and access to markets where the crop is in demand
at prices high enough to provide a return on investment. The failure of many
early Western-owned sugar ventures, as well as the short lives of most of those
undertaken by Chinese, shows how risky it was to try to meet all these require-
ments. Beginning in the 1840s, however, a series of events on the American
mainland and the growing influence of Westerners, especially Americans, in the
Hawaiian kingdom produced a situation favorable to American and European
capital investment but of less advantage to Chinese in the sugar industry. Demand
for sugar on the American mainland, particularly California, though fluctuating
wildly for several years, finally created an American market for Hawaiian sugar.
In the 1840s Hawaiian rulers under American influence were persuaded to aban-
don the traditional control of land by kings and chiefs for the Western system
of landownership. The Great Mahele (land division) with its enabling legislation
permitted foreigners to own or lease land with more security than under the old
system, lessening the risk of long-term investment in the sugar plantations. Al-
though Chinese, like other foreigners, were permitted to buy land, the American
and European businessmen were able to get control of larger tracts and more cap-
ital for plantation development.
The stage was almost set, then, for Caucasion-controlled sugar firms to play
a major role in Hawaii’s new economy. Very early, however, the planters faced
the problem of securing an adequate, stable labor supply which for a long time re-
mained one of their most worrisome concerns. Hawaiian sugar planters were not
alone in this predicament—sugar, copra, coffee, tea, and rubber planters in Fiji,
Ceylon, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other tropical areas during the postslavery era
were having to cope with the same problem. They had to find laborers willing to
do the heavy, dirty, and monotonous work of premechanized field labor at wages
low enough to enable the plantations to return a profit to their investors.
In Hawaii, as elsewhere, planters first turned to the indigenous population for
4
labor, but they soon concluded that a more satisfactory body of workers should be
imported. There were the familiar assertions of the “natives’ natural indolence”
and their “inconstancy,” “caprices,” “licentious and indolent habits.”13 While it
has been common to cite these charges, often summarized as the “Hawaiians’
laziness,” as the sole cause for the Hawaiians’ inadequacy as a plantation la-
bor supply, the situation was not that simple. Hawaiians were not unaccustomed
to hard work. In their traditional economy Hawaiian commoners had probably
worked as hard for their chiefs as they were required to work in the cane fields,
but on the plantations they were not working under the traditional system for
people to whom they owed loyal service. Hawaiians also had other opportuni-
ties—some of them could remain on their kuleanas (small properties they had
received in the Great Mahele), they could find work in the port towns and in Cal-
ifornia, or they could go to sea. Nevertheless, Hawaiians were the largest element
in the plantation labor force until the late 1870s. In 1873 nearly four-fifths of
the laborers on thirty-five plantations were Hawaiian. About half of all Hawaiian
men were working on plantations, but even if every able-bodied adult Hawai-
ian male had done so there would still not have been enough of them after the
mid-1870s to meet the planters’ needs.14 The Hawaiian population had been ter-
ribly diminished by disease and continued to decrease while the plantations were
expanding and requiring more and more workers.
Recognizing the limitations of the Hawaiian labor supply, sugar planters in
Hawaii followed the common pattern of looking for workers in those areas of
the non-Western world which were not yet becoming industrialized, where there
was a plentiful supply of low-skilled, manual labor, and where the wages offered
by the plantations were attractive in contrast to what the workers could get in
their native lands. Among various possible sources of labor, China seemed most
promising to Hawaii’s planters. There were favorable reports on Chinese contract
laborers from Amoy, Fukien province, who had been imported by sugar planters
on Reunion Island in 1845 and into Cuba in 1847. After China was defeated in
the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1858 the Chinese government tolerated the recruit-
ing of Chinese as contract laborers; widespread poverty and the turmoil in South
China caused by the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) contributed to the willing-
ness of Chinese to seek their livelihood overseas.
Plans by Caucasian planters in Hawaii to import labor from China crystal-
lized in 1850. The Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, organized that year,
regarded this as its most important and pressing task. However, the Society’s first
attempt to carry out such a plan was a fiasco. In September 1850 a shipowner who
agreed to bring in a boatload of Chinese laborers was given a sum reported to be
about $10,000; he sailed off toward China and was never heard of again.15 The
second try was more successful. Captain John Cass, out of London on the 460-ton
bark Thetis, put in at Honolulu in April 1851 while en route to San Francisco from
Hong Kong with Chinese passengers attracted to California by the Gold Rush.
5
The following August he signed a contract in Honolulu with the Society to re-
cruit and bring to Hawaii 200 laborers. He returned on 3 January 1852 with 175
men to be employed as field laborers and 20 who were to work as “houseboys.”
Each of these men, when recruited in Amoy, had been advanced six dollars to be
refunded later out of their wages. The contracts field workers had signed stipu-
lated that they were to work for a period of five years at wages of three dollars
per month in addition to their passage, quarters, food, and clothes. The laborers
were sent in groups of about twenty-five to sugar plantations on three islands.
Captain Cass apparently had found his contract with the Society profitable.
He remained in Honolulu for nearly six weeks, during which time he placed
advertisements in Honolulu papers inviting orders for laborers whom he would
recruit in China. He did not receive orders for as many men as before, but he left
for China on 12 February and returned on 1 August 1852, bringing back ninety-
eight men, presumably again recruited in Amoy.16
These first imported Chinese laborers were received with general favor and
encouragement. The first newspaper account of their arrival expressed the hopes
and cautious optimism with which this “experiment” was being tried:
The subject of cheap labor is one which has for a considerable period en-
gaged the attention of the planters here, as an indispensable requisite to
successful competition with Manila and China, in the production of sugar
and coffee. The scarcity of native laborers … induced those engaged in agri-
culture to make the experiment of introducing from overflowing China a
class of laborers which, it was believed, would combine a good service with
economy….
The experiment to be thus tried is one of considerable moment to the
islands, and we are glad to see it tested…. The result will be watched with
great attention by all interested in the success of agriculture here. Should
it prove successful, still larger numbers will doubtless be brought from that
populous empire, where a mere existence, under a grinding despotism, ren-
ders such an escape to a more favorable land a boon readily seized by these
industrious people…. We sincerely hope that their introduction here may
prove, not only serviceable to the islands, but also to themselves; and that
they have exchanged want and oppressions for a comfortable home and the
protection of a government and people actuated by Christian principles.17
The planters themselves praised the men as well as the scheme of using imported
labor on the plantations:
The Chinese brought here in the Thetis have proved themselves quiet, able
and willing men, and I have little doubt, judging from our short experience,
that we shall find coolie labor to be far more certain, systematic, and eco-
6
nomical than that of the natives. They are prompt at the call of the bell,
steady in their work, quick to learn, and when well-fed will accomplish more,
and in a better manner, than any other class of operatives we have. The cost
of importing coolies is fifty dollars per man, and it has been estimated by
those who employ them that their wages and support amount to a trifle under
seven dollars per month. … To all those planters who can afford it, I would
say procure as many coolies as you can, and work them by themselves, as
far as possible separate them from the natives, and you will find that, if well
managed, their example will have a stimulating effect on the Hawaiian, who
is naturally jealous of the coolie and ambitious to outdo him.18
A few months later, after some difficulties with the newly imported Chinese,
a speaker addressing the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society pleaded for “pa-
tience,” “good sense,” and a “parental attitude” in dealing with them:
The introduction of Cooly labor is as yet an experiment, but a very important

one. It promises well, and its success depends on the judicious management,
and comfortable treatment they may receive. It is an entire change—in lan-
guage, manners, dress, modes of living, and doing: and your own good sense
will teach you to forbear, and while it requires patience on your part, it can
be no less trying to them, untaught as they are. You must have sympathy with
honest labor. It is not enough that you fulfill the contract to the letter, but
the relation to them should be parental—mind always governs—and where
there is a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood it is sure to rule. This Chinese race next
to our own are destined to figure in the drama of the Pacific; and I regret
that the authorities of California should undertake to make any discrimina-
tion between them and other foreigners. They are industrious, economical,
and careful, filling a space for which our people are not adapted. That they
can be made useful on the continent and here, there can be no doubt, and
to accomplish this the only sure way is, so far as compatible, to exercise a
parental control over them. They should not be left to the care of indiscreet
agents. They will obey one master cheerfully, more they dislike; not differing
in this particular from all the rest of the world. It is an interesting combina-
tion of the ancient nation, with the new.19
It was not long, however, before there were complaints about the laborers.
Prince Liholiho referred to “their faults and a considerable disposition to hang
themselves” but nevertheless maintained that “they have been found very use-
ful…. Some of our largest sugar and coffee plantations are now chiefly dependent
on them.”20 A planter claimed that “among themselves, they are quarrelsome and
passionate and have many dangerous fights.” Although the men had been inden-
tured for five-year periods, there were complaints in 1854, two years after the
7
first importations, that they were leaving the plantations and becoming vagrants
in Honolulu. At the same time some of the planters were undoubtedly glad to be
relieved of their obligation to pay the wages and other expenses of men who left
their plantations—sugar in this decade was not as profitable for the Island pro-
ducers as had been anticipated. Neither the Society nor the government undertook
to import more laborers until 1864.
Little is known of what happened to these men brought from Amoy. As soon
as they arrived it became clear that the Chinese dialect they spoke was unintel-
ligible to the Chinese from Kwangtung province already living in the Islands.
An article in the Polynesian included a list of words in the Fukienese dialect
(in romanized spelling with English equivalents) that would be useful in giving
directions to these workers.21 An American who had been a missionary in Can-
ton and who visited Chinese “camps” on Maui in 1856 wrote that the Cantonese
Chinese storekeepers and the Fukienese laborers found it easiest to communicate
with each other in the Hawaiian language.22
Very few people in Hawaii, even or perhaps especially those of Chinese an-
cestry, realize that there was a time when Fukienese-speaking Chinese in the
Islands outnumbered those speaking a Cantonese dialect. Since almost all later
Chinese migrants were from just a few coastal districts of Kwangtung and spoke
one or another Cantonese dialect or Hakka, the early role of the Fukienese in
the Chinese colonization of Hawaii has been little known. No Fukienese soci-
eties, such as those formed among the Cantonese and Hakka migrants in Hawaii,
were ever organized. Although the majority of the Fukienese laborers probably
returned to China, a few Fukienese, presumably from among those who were
imported in 1852, did settle down in Honolulu.23 So far as is known, no more
contract laborers were brought to the Islands from Fukien.
During the dozen years before aided importation of Chinese laborers for
Caucasian-owned plantations was resumed, some Chinese migrants came to the
Islands in connection with various Chinese enterprises. Between 1853 and 1864
officials reported the arrival of 411 Chinese, an average of only 34 per year.24
Some of these came to Hawaii from California and other parts of the West Coast.
The situation changed when the Civil War in America brought new prosper-
ity to Hawaiian sugar planters. Sugar, which had brought seven cents a pound in
1860, had advanced by 1864 to seventeen cents. In response to renewed clamor
for imported laborers, the government took steps to facilitate further immigra-
tion, but under greater control.25 A Board of Immigration was organized early in
1865 and the Commissioner of Immigration, Dr. Wilhelm Hille-brand, himself
was sent to Hong Kong (not to Amoy) to arrange for recruiting about 500 “strong
and healthy” Chinese, 20 to 25 percent to be married women.26 During 1864 only
9 Chinese had arrived; 615 landed in 1865. Of these, 522, including 52 women
and 3 children, came on two boats chartered for the Board. Chinese entrepreneurs
probably brought the other Chinese laborers who arrived during this year. Some
8
117 Chinese reached Hawaii in 1866, some 210 in 1867. Sugar exports jumped
from less than 750 tons in 1860 to over 9,000 tons in 1868, but ups and downs
in business conditions in the United States in the late 1860s and early 1870s,
together with the duty collected on sugar in American ports, slowed plantation
expansion and reduced the need for imported laborers. In 1870, however, the gov-
ernment, responding to renewed demands from planters, did assist in bringing in
188 Chinese, only 2 of whom were women.
Successful negotiation of a Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, per-
mitting Hawaiian sugar to enter American ports free of duty, brought new pros-
perity to the sugar industry. By 1896 Hawaii was exporting seventeen times as
much sugar as in 1876. Even more important in its effects on Chinese immi-
gration, the Reciprocity Treaty also exempted Hawaii-produced rice from duty.
Exports of rice from Hawaii, almost all to the Western United States, quadrupled
within six years.27 During this period and for the next two decades rice was grown
in Hawaii almost entirely under Chinese management by Chinese labor.
The simultaneous expansion of sugar and rice cultivation during the late
1870s and 1880s created an unprecedented demand for laborers. Importation
was greatly accelerated with government support or acquiescence—primarily of
Chinese and Portuguese but also of several hundred Norwegians, Germans, and
South Sea Islanders. From 1874 to 1877 the Board of Immigration gave active
and financial assistance to a few Chinese entrepreneurs who especially wanted
Chinese laborers for their plantations. In 1876, for the first time, the number of
Chinese migrants arriving in Hawaii exceeded one thousand. At least a thousand
of the 1,283 Chinese arrivals during that year came through the enterprise of three
Chinese firms in Honolulu with a certain amount of financial aid from the Board
of Immigration.
From this date onward the Hawaiian government’s concern was not to stim-
ulate and subsidize Chinese labor migration but to regulate it. The great accel-
eration of Chinese immigration is evident in Table 1 showing the yearly number
of Chinese arrivals from 1852 to 1899.28 During the decade preceding 1876 an
annual average of only 130 Chinese had landed in Hawaii, but the decade from
1876 to 1885 had an average of 2,596 Chinese arrivals per year. To understand the
fluctuations during this latter decade—as well as the reduced migration between
1885 and 1895 and the surge of Chinese arrivals just prior to annexation—we
must turn to other forces operating in the Hawaiian kingdom.
Agitation against Chinese Immigration

Anti-Chinese feeling, especially as expressed by the relatively small Caucasian
population, paralleled the stream of Chinese migration—developing slowly at
first, rising to its greatest intensity during the late 1870s and the 1880s, and
9
then diminishing. (See population data in the Appendix.) Early contacts between
Caucasians and Chinese in the Islands were generally quite superficial, and the
Caucasians were more likely to have a sense of superiority toward the Chinese
than a feeling of antagonism. Visitors to the Islands, writing about their impres-
sions of the Chinese they saw there, usually focused on what they considered the
bizarre appearance of “this most peculiar people.”29 Francis Olmsted, a Yale sci-
ence professor who stopped briefly in Honolulu in 1841, wrote:
Among the foreigners resident in Honolulu, are several Chinese, the singu-
larity of whose costume cannot fail of attracting one’s attention. It consists of
a large frock with ample sleeves, reaching down about midway between the
waist and the knee. For the lower dress, they wear a pair of pantaloons made
very full, and these together with peaked shoes having thick, wooden soles,
complete their costumes. Their black hair is braided in a tail, a yard long,
which usually hangs down the back and vibrates from side to side, like a pen-
dulum, as they walk through the streets; a loss of these tails, which many of
them coil up around their heads, would be regarded as a great disgrace.30
Table 1
Arrivals of Chinese in Hawaii: 1852–1899
Year Number of Year Number of

Arrivals Arrivals
1852 293 1876 1,283
1853 64 1877 557
1854 12 1878 2,464
1855 61 1879 3,812
1856 23 1880 2,505
1857 14 1881 3,924
1858 13 1882 1,362
1859 171 1883 4,243
1860 21 1884 2,708
1861 2 1885 3,108
1862 13 1886 1,766
1863 8 1887 1,546
1864 9 1888 1,526
10
1865 615 1889 439

1866 117 1890 654
1867 210 1891 1,386
1868 51 1892 1,802
1869 78 1893 981
1870 305 1894 1,459
1871 223 1895 2,734
1872 61 1896 5,280
1873 48 1897 4,481
1874 62 1898 3,100
1875 151 1899 975
Total 56,720
Note: Data for 1852–1878 are taken from the Report of the President of the Bureau of Immigration,
1886, pp. 266–271. Data for 1879–1899 were compiled by the writer primarily from the Annual Re-
port of the Collector-General of Customs (Honolulu, 1880–1900). Slight differences appear in the
annual reports of different branches of the Hawaiian government with regard to the number of Chi-
nese arrivals. Several thousand duplications are included in the number of arrivals due to the reentry
of migrants who had temporarily left the Islands.
Diaries and journals of Caucasian residents of Hawaii during the first half of the
nineteenth century—the trading, preplantation period—show that although Cau-
casians tolerated, patronized, and made use of Chinese traders and artisans, there
were few social relationships between the two groups. An 1842 entry in the jour-
nal of a New Englander who was one of the few Caucasians on intimate terms
with the Chinese in Honolulu shows that other Caucasians frowned on social con-
tacts with the Chinese: “A Ball was contemplated by Mr. Marshall and others at
the Chinamen’s Hall, BUT, some of the nobility, Yankee Women, could not think
of going to the Chinamen’s Hall to dance!!! O mores—Temporum!!!”31 In con-
trast, many Chinese had quite close social relationships with Hawaiians. Most
Chinese residents during this early period learned enough of the Hawaiian lan-
guage to be able to communicate in it and many had Hawaiian wives and families.
Whatever anti-Chinese feeling did appear later among Hawaiians was as likely to
be a reflection of, if not actually instigated by, Caucasian agitation as the result of
any grievance toward the Chinese.32
Through most of the latter half of the nineteenth century Caucasians who
were influential in Island affairs were divided on questions concerning Chinese
immigration. Some who were concerned about the continuing depletion of the
11
indigenous population contended that Chinese were a “cognate race” of the

Hawaiians who would “revitalize” and “rebuild” that group. This, in fact, was
one of the early arguments in favor of subsidizing Chinese labor importation.
The offspring of early Chinese immigrants and Hawaiian women were generally
regarded very favorably. Chinese with Hawaiian wives were commonly said to
“make good husbands and fathers.”33
From the 1860s onward, however, some Caucasians who were inclined
against the Chinese contended that the predominantly male Chinese group com-
ing to the Islands to work on both the sugar and rice plantations was “a corrupting
influence on the native female population” and was promoting the “demoraliza-
tion of the natives.” The Hawaiians were “victims of coolie debauchery”; “few
marry native women, a much larger number take them without marriage.” One
clergyman asserted that the “wifeless Chinese” had a “pernicious” effect upon
the social life of the natives and that “there is no doubt but that many native
households in all parts of the country are maintained in comparative affluence by
the intimacy of Chinese with their females.” He felt, however, that this “corrupt-
ing” influence was “not more than the presence of a similar number of unmarried
whites would be.” Another less moderate view was that the Hawaiian “should be
protected from this pig-tailed invasion which threatens him with nothing less than
destruction and extinction.” The spread of smallpox among Hawaiians from ships
bringing new Chinese immigrants in the early 1880s added support to opponents
of Chinese immigration. One editor referred to the Chinese as “these beasts in
human form” who brought “their unmentionable diseases, opium pipes, and the
accursed leprosy.”34
Antislavery sentiment in America intensified the concerns of those who had
doubted the wisdom of using contract labor in Hawaii. When the Hawaiian gov-
ernment, under pressure from planters, recruited over five hundred Chinese in
1865, voices were raised against the “coolie trade,” calling it a “slave trade”
promoted by a “pro-slavery ring” and proclaiming that “coolieism” was “more
damnable than any southern slavery ever was.”35 In 1868, not long after the U.S.
Congress in a resolution condemned contract labor importation, the Hawaiian
government did moderate the terms of the Masters and Servants Act by assuring
contract workers additional rights and prohibiting flogging, but legal and penal
sanctions for enforcing the contracts were retained. Despite the critics’ opposition
to the system, the government recruited 188 additional Chinese contract laborers
in 1870.
During the 1870s and early 1880s another theme in the opposition to Chinese
immigration was the undesirability of admitting migrants who were predomi-
nantly adult males, especially after the 1872 census report showed that Chinese
males outnumbered Caucasian males. Expression of opposition was somewhat
subdued, however, by the realization that if the anticipated Reciprocity Treaty
brought a boom in sugar production, additional laborers would be needed.
12
Planters continued to favor importing Chinese male workers, willing to come

without wives and children, as the cheapest source of labor. Nevertheless, the op-
position was sufficient to lead the government, with the planters’ acquiescence, to
begin, in 1877, a much more costly importation of Portuguese families for planta-
tion labor. During the period this importation continued (1877–1888) only about
30 percent of the eleven thousand Portuguese immigrants were adult males. In
1877 the government also stopped paying subsidies for Chinese male importa-
tions, but it continued for a while to subsidize immigration of Chinese women in
the interest of balancing the Chinese population, though without much success.36
Chinese male immigration increased even without government subsidy. By
the late 1870s enough Chinese from South China villages had been successful
enough in the Islands to convince thousands of relatives and neighbors in their
home districts of the desirability of migrating to Hawaii. Money remitted by Chi-
nese already in the Islands bought passages for new migrants. Perhaps even more
important was the growth of a group of wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs in Hawaii
who saw the profits that could be made by advancing money at high interest rates
to penniless kinsmen and former fellow villagers who wanted to emigrate37 and
by employing some of these newcomers at low wages, especially in their own
agricultural enterprises.
The situation was already growing tense when an unprecedented wave of
Chinese migrants struck the Islands. In 1878, some 2,464 Chinese, nearly all
men, arrived. This was almost twice the number of Chinese who had reached
the Islands in any previous year. An additional 3,812—98 percent of them
male—landed in 1879, then 2,505 in 1880, then 3,924 in 1881. That the circum-
stances of this migration were questionable is indicated by this excerpt from an
ordinance issued by King Kalakaua on 24 December 1880: “Evils have arisen
from the conduct of unauthorized and irresponsible persons acting as brokers,
runners or shipping-masters between immigrants arriving in the Kingdom, but
who are not under contract for service, and persons desiring to employ them…,”38
The year 1883 brought another wave, the greatest yet, of Chinese migrants.
In a three-month period over 3,600 Chinese men were added to an adult male
population of about 35,000. Of the 15,846 Chinese arrivals during the five years
1879–1883, over 98 percent were males. The census of 1884 reported 17,068
Chinese foreign-born males as compared with only 871 females. The same census
enumerated only 12,412 Hawaiian males between the ages of fifteen and fifty;
Chinese adult males made up nearly half the entire adult male population.39
Anti-Chinese feelings burst out more bitterly than before. Newspapers, letters,
pamphlets, sermons, reports, and other documents which appeared during the rest
of the 1880s record the intensity of the antipathy and the nature of the accusations
against the Chinese male immigrant. It was charged that he “is not a genuine im-
migrant”; he “does not settle down to make a home”; “his sole object is to save
himself enough money to get back to China”; “every spare dollar that a China-
13
man saves goes to China”; he “is clannish, and insists on living in communities
of other Chinamen”; he “despises our customs and manners and maintains his
own.”40
It was along economic lines, however, that anti-Chinese agitation was most
effective. Occupational changes among the Chinese migrants created tensions
that were related to conflicts between different segments of the Caucasian popu-
lation. The Islands’ basic source of income during these decades was plantation
agriculture, and everyone was fairly well agreed that this enterprise depended
on laborers with a low plane of living and willing to work cheaply. Chinese on
the plantations did work which Caucasians did not want; they were no threat,
therefore, to the security of Caucasians who were entrenched in the preferred po-
sitions in the plantation system or in the towns. It was the nonagricultural Chinese
workers, men seeking positions above those of domestic service and manual la-
bor in the towns, who were likely to compete directly with Caucasian artisans
and tradesmen and to be regarded as a threat to the latter’s occupational secu-
rity. What irritated their Caucasian competitors was that the Chinese who worked
cheaply on the plantations were still willing to work cheaply in other occupations.
It was fair enough for Chinese to do this on menial jobs; it was “unfair competi-
tion” when Chinese accepted lower pay for work Caucasians and others wanted
for themselves.
Even as early as the late 1860s the increasing visibility of Chinese doing the
work of artisans in the towns brought protests. One newspaper was so success-
ful in arousing the skilled-labor class of Caucasians and Hawaiians against the
government’s encouraging Chinese labor importation that interests friendly to the
planters and the government’s policy took over the paper as a defense move. In
the early 1880s there were more forceful protests against Chinese who were not
working in agricultural jobs and were moving by the hundreds into artisan and
commercial occupations. In 1882, during a period when hundreds of the Chinese
immigrants were not signing contracts with sugar plantations, the minister of a
leading Honolulu church saw the Hawaiian and “white mechanic” (Caucasian
skilled-worker) losing out to the “Chinese bachelor”:
Everywhere the Chinaman is quietly, peaceably, smilingly but persistently

displacing the Hawaiian. Nothing is more absolutely sure, which is not
already an accomplished fact, than this: That as a laborer, small farmer, shop-
keeper, and tradesman the Chinaman will crowd the native Hawaiian to the
wall, and will take his place….
The Chinaman is a bachelor. More than that, he will herd like a beast,
with his fellows, to save rent, and live on rice and refuse from the butcher’s
stall. If necessity compels he can exist, and work, on 25 cents a day. We
cannot afford to bring our white mechanics and small tradesmen into com-
petition with Chinese bachelor wages. We cannot afford to so reduce the
14
earnings of this class of our white men that they can no longer afford to
marry, or, being married, cannot properly support their families and educate
their children. Here is a phase of this Chinese question, which is already be-
ing felt in Hawaii, and is certain to be increasingly felt in the future. In it
there is the promise of a conflict. And in that conflict, my sympathies are
with the white mechanic, and his family, as against the Chinese bachelor.41
The minister continued:
If you will ride slowly through the Chinese quarter with your eyes open, you
will go to your home with food for thought. You will find watchmakers’ and
jewelers’ shops, tinshops, shoe shops, tailor shops, saddle and harness shops,
furniture shops, cabinet shops and bakeries all run by Chinamen with Chi-
nese workmen. You will find anything from a stove, or a shawl down through
drugs, groceries, notions and whatnot.42
Three years later the editor of The Friend warned:
Five years residence on the Pacific Coast taught us this fact: No nation can
afford to have its white mechanics and working-men brought into competi-
tion with the Chinese.
Such is the case in Hawaii, and she is paying the penalty: her white
small-tradesmen, mechanics and working-men are steadily, remorselessly
being driven out of the kingdom. It is only a question of time when of these
classes all who remain will be a few master-mechanics….
We cannot afford to have our white mechanics live as the Chinese do.
Civilization and religion both forbid it. Brought into competition with cheap
Chinese labor, marriage, and a home, and a family is an impossibility to the
mechanic and working-man. Such a state of things means immorality and ut-
ter demoralization….43
The writer’s reference to five years on the Pacific Coast indicates that
some of the opposition was a carry-over to Hawaii of the anti-Chinese views so
widespread among Caucasians in California during this period. It is also likely
that the Workingman’s Union, an anti-Chinese political group formed in 1883,
was patterned after the vehemently anti-Chinese Workingmen’s Party organized
in California in 1877. The Workingman’s Union carried on vigorous propa-
ganda through open meetings and pamphleteering.44 Sometime after this group
disappeared it was succeeded by the Mechanic’s and Workingman’s Political Pro-
tective Union. After the “Reform Constitution” of 1887 took away the franchise
from naturalized Chinese migrants, there was an election in which the major
political parties appealed to Caucasian and Hawaiian voters with anti-Chinese
15
proposals.
Through the 1880s and 1890s government policy was probably most influ-
enced by a change in the Caucasian planters’ attitudes toward the Chinese. They
were coming to realize that they were not going to enjoy the benefit of plentiful,
cheap Chinese labor which might have been expected from the great influx of mi-
grants from China during the late 1870s and early 1880s. Nearly 14,000 Chinese
men had entered the Hawaiian Islands during the five years ending with 1882,
but only 5,037 Chinese were working on the sugar plantations in 1882.45 Chinese
who had been brought earlier by the Hawaiian government could hardly evade
signing contracts with the planters. However, the influx of the early eighties was
largely unstimulated, unfinanced, and relatively uncontrolled by the government.
It was manipulated largely by none-too-scrupulous captains of tramp steamers
and by Chinese entrepreneurs, thoroughly familiar with the local situation, who
maneuvered to get the men into the country without being forced to sign contracts
of indenture to the sugar plantations. This strategy soon brought from the planters
such protests as the following:
We are the party to dictate the terms…. A Chinaman once at large in the
country is a different man to deal with than when he is seeking admittance.
We desire Chinese to come here in suitable numbers, bringing their
wives, and submitting to the restrictions of enlightened government. But we
do not wish unlimited numbers of males, unregulated, and defying our laws.
Chinamen are cunning, and quick to perceive their advantages, and to
avail themselves of all the protection which civilized law affords, but they
are able to evade the restraints of the laws as no other people can. Their
clannishness and secret organizations give them a power which is difficult to
meet. They are good servants but undesirable masters.46
Prompted by complaints about the Chinese, the government turned to Japan

for contract laborers. By 1896, only ten years or so after Japanese immigration
began,47 Japanese males outnumbered Chinese males and had become, indeed,
the most numerous group of men in the Islands. A larger number of Japanese men
arrived in the single year of 1899 than the entire population of Chinese men in
Hawaii after a century of immigration. Hundreds of these Japanese left the planta-
tions, as the Chinese had done, and forged their way into semiskilled, skilled, and
commercial occupations. “Unfair Chinese competition” became “unfair Japanese
competition” or “unfair Asiatic competition”; now the Japanese were the main
object of hostility. The following example is from a U.S. government report on
labor in Hawaii in 1905:
A prominent builder and official of an employers’ organization in Honolulu

said: “White men have left the country by hundreds on account of the compe-
16
tition of Asiatics.” … Many large employers are decidedly opposed to having

a Japanese on their force for the very reason that they realize that they are
training up future competitors in their business. “I won’t teach men to cut
my throat,” was a typical expression from a large employer…. Many small
merchants are now feeling the effects … of encroaching Asiatic competition
and are doggedly carrying on a struggle which they believe to be hopeless,
but still unable to bring themselves to the point of sacrificing their stock and
withdrawing from business.48
With Annexation Chinese labor immigration ended but Japanese laborers, as

well as Korean laborers, were allowed to come in for several more years. As the
Chinese migrant group declined both in actual and relative numbers, expressions
of anti-Chinese feeling also diminished.
From Regulation to Exclusion

After anti-Chinese agitation in the West led to America’s Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882, some Chinese migrated from the West Coast to the Islands, and others
who had been on the way to the West Coast came to Hawaii instead. One rea-
son they chose to come to Hawaii was that most migrants already in the Islands
came from the same districts of Kwangtung province as most of those migrat-
ing to the United States. Many of the 3,600 Chinese who arrived in Hawaii in
the early months of 1883 had undoubtedly been recruited by Chinese entrepre-
neurs in those districts for migration to the United States; when hundreds of these
men, unexpected and unsent for by the Hawaiian government, refused to sign
plantation labor contracts, the government ordered that departures of Chinese
from Hong Kong for Hawaii be stopped. Later in 1883 the government permitted
limited immigration of Chinese laborers because of renewed demands from the
Caucasian sugar planters and Chinese rice planters.
The regulations concerning entry of Chinese male laborers were changed
many times during the succeeding decade. For the most part no restrictions were
imposed on the entry of Chinese women and bona fide children—this in response
to protests against the predominantly adult male composition of the Chinese
group in the Islands. Once importation of Japanese plantation laborers was well
under way, the government’s policy became essentially that of restricting Chi-
nese immigration so that Chinese arrivals would not exceed Chinese departures.
The effectiveness of this policy is indicated by Custom House statistics which
show that during the nine years between 1886 and 1895 the departures of Chinese
men actually exceeded the number of arrivals by 1,988—and probably as many
as half of those arriving during this period were men who entered on return per-
mits or permits for nonlaborers. The total number of Chinese foreign-born males
17
in Hawaii dropped from 17,068 to 14,522 in the six years between the censuses
of 1884 and 1890.
By 1894, Japanese laborers outnumbered Chinese on the sugar plantations
by 21,294 to 2,734.49 In fact, scarcely ten years after Japanese labor importations
were started the labor force had become so predominantly Japanese that planters
wanted to restrict the “inundation” of the Islands by Japanese migrants.50 A
committee of the Planter’s Labour and Supply Company complained of the dan-
gers faced by planters when they hired a labor force preponderantly Japanese;
the committee claimed that the best policy was to have a labor force made up
of workers of different nationalities. Some planters asked that Chinese labor
importation be renewed. Legislation in the early nineties had allowed limited im-
migration of Chinese laborers provided that they engaged only in agricultural or
domestic service.
The Republic of Hawaii, which replaced the Hawaiian monarchy overthrown
in 1893, was more plantation-oriented than the monarchy had been and responded
willingly to the planters’ demands for imported Chinese labor. During 1895, some
1,087 Chinese “agriculturalists” were admitted under contract, most of them go-
ing to sugar plantations and a few to the Chinese rice plantations. Early in 1896
the government announced its policy requiring plantation agents who applied for
laborers to ask for twice as many Chinese as Japanese: “This was an effort on
the part of the Executive to more evenly balance the immigration of plantation
laborers.”51 Anticipating that annexation to the United States might stop Chinese
immigration, 6,277 additional Chinese contract laborers were brought in during
1896 and 1897. At the same time, the incipient annexation stimulated immigra-
tion of other classes of Chinese. More nonindentured Chinese males arrived in
1898 than in any year since 1885, more Chinese children than since 1891, and
almost twice as many Chinese women as had entered during any year of the half
century of Chinese immigration.
Custom House data show that between 1852 and 1899 Chinese arrivals to-
taled more than 56,000 (Table 1). These figures, however, include the returning
entries of Chinese residents who had made trips to China and other parts of the
world. The actual number of individual Chinese migrants who came before An-
nexation can only be estimated. The estimate offered here, 46,000, is one that
other analysts have also used.52 Annexation formally took place on 12 August
1898; on 24 November an American official took over the duty of controlling
Chinese immigration. With the application to Hawaii of the Chinese Exclusion
Act, the pioneer era of Chinese migration to Hawaii drew to a close. The expe-
rience of the pre-Annexation migrants, as individuals and as members of formal
and informal groups, is the primary concern of this study.
Migrants who remained in the Islands as residents became involved in
establishing a community which was to become part of Hawaii’s multiethnic
society. Chinese who entered from the mid-1880s onward in one or another
18
exempt category played a disproportionate role in this process. They included

merchants, bankers, newspaper editors, Chinese-language-school teachers, physi-
cians, Christian ministers and priests, priests of Buddhist and Taoist sects, profes-
sors, artists. Merchants were the most numerous of the men in these categories;
there were probably no more than a few hundred in all the other categories com-
bined. Men in these categories could bring their wives, even after Annexation,
and their children born in Hawaii qualified for American citizenship under the
principle of jus soli. These families helped to reduce the preponderance of males
in the Hawaii Chinese population and to provide a broader basis for the perpetu-
ation and ultimate growth of a Chinese ethnic group in Hawaii.
After Annexation various attempts, all unsuccessful, were made to renew
importation of Chinese laborers, especially by sugar planters and Chinese rice
planters, before Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924. This act, which
came at the height of anti-Japanese agitation on the West Coast, effectively lim-
ited immigration from Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and India to 105 a
year, apart from those who could qualify for entry under one of the exempt cat-
egories. Early in 1944, after repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, China
was given the same quota of 105 per year in addition to those in exempt cate-
gories, and Chinese migrants were granted the right of naturalization. After World
War II immigration from China was further opened up by such congressional leg-
islation as the War Brides Act of 1946, the Walter-McCarran Act of 1948, the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, the
Refugee Escape Act of 1957, and, most important, the amended Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965. One effect of these laws has been the arrival in Hawaii,
since World War II, of a very different group of about five thousand Chinese mi-
grants concentrated in Honolulu.
19
CHAPTER 2
On the Sugar Plantations
OF the estimated 46,000 Chinese migrants who came to Hawaii before Annex-
ation, probably two-thirds to three-fourths began as laborers on sugar or rice
plantations, with the larger number working initially on sugar plantations. Hawai-
ian sugar plantations during this period, though having some unusual features,
shared the basic characteristics of the plantation system as it was developing in
many parts of the nonindustrialized world.
In the premechanized era, sugar plantations needed not only a large supply
of laborers willing to work at wages low enough to return a profit to investors,
but also a stable force of workers remaining on the plantation long enough to pay
for the costs of recruiting and importing them and to carry through from one crop
to the next. To keep imported laborers on the plantation for at least a minimum
period, sugar planters in Hawaii during the latter half of the nineteenth century
availed themselves of two legal measures that were generally integral parts of the
plantation system: first, a form of indenture or contract binding the laborer to the
plantation for a stated period under stipulated conditions; second, legal sanctions
with judicial machinery to enforce the contract.1 The indenture system lessened
the risks incurred by entrepreneurs who undertook plantation agriculture on eco-
nomic peripheries by assuring them labor over a given period. The legal basis for
this arrangement in Hawaii was the Masters and Servants Act which had been
enacted two years before the first Chinese laborers were imported to Hawaii in
1852. It applied not only to plantation labor but also to other types of employ-
ment such as domestic service. In fact, the original intent of the act was to protect
Hawaiians who were going to sea on whalers. It had its greatest significance,
however, in the development of the sugar plantations.
The Contract Labor System

From a purely utilitarian point of view the Chinese imported workers had char-
acteristics which made them one of the most satisfactory labor groups in the
20
early phases of plantation development. Their industriousness, perseverance, and

adaptability became proverbial. The willingness of Chinese workers to endure
hardships, undergo the physical risks of penetrating and opening up undeveloped
areas, and put up with the minimum essentials of living accommodations became
well known. Employing them was profitable not only because they were willing
to work for low wages but also because the cost of their maintenance was mini-
mal since they rarely brought families with them. Even during the height of the
anti-Chinese agitation in the 1880s the vital role played by Chinese laborers in
plantation development was recognized:
That the Chinese are in most respects undesirable is a fact of which the
present Government is and has always been convinced. But that they were
necessary in the beginning, to give an impetus to agriculture, to supply labor
not obtainable elsewhere cannot be denied.
Relying upon their work, at cheap rates, planters were enabled to pur-
chase machinery, erect buildings, irrigate and drain on a large scale, all of
which they would not have been able to do, nay would not have dared to at-
tempt, had they not been able to count upon steady labor, at moderate rates,
and for a stated term.2
The characteristics that made the Chinese so attractive to plantation manage-

ment must be understood in the context of the situation from which the migrants
came. It was this situation which produced both their qualities as workers and
their willingness to sign contracts to work as laborers overseas. Some excerpts
from the autobiography of one of the less fortunate Chinese who came to Hawaii
illustrate how meager was the life of many villagers in South China and how des-
perately hard they had to struggle for a bare subsistence:
In a small crowded village, a few miles from Hong Kong, fifty-four years
ago I was born [1882]. There were four in our family, my mother, my father,
my sister, and me. We lived in a two room house. One was our sleeping room
and the other served as parlor, kitchen, and dining room. We were not rich
enough to keep pigs or fowls; otherwise, our small house would have been
more crowded than ever.
How can we live on six baskets of rice which were paid twice a year for
my father’s duty as a night watchman? Sometimes the pea-sank have a poor
crop; then we go hungry. During the day my father would do other small
jobs for the peasants or carpenters. My mother worked hard too for she went
every day to the forest to gather wood for our stove….
Sometimes we went hungry for days. My mother and me would go over
the harvested rice fields of the peasants to pick the grains they dropped. Once
in a while my mother would go near a big pile of grain and take a handful.
21
She would then sit on them until the working men went home. As soon as
they go we ran home. She clean and cook the rice for us two. We had only
salt and water to eat with rice….3
While it is generally true that poverty at home and the hope of economic bet-
terment abroad were basic in bringing thousands of Chinese to the plantations,
many different circumstances and motivations led individual Chinese to migrate.
The following cases show how the context varied:
Mr. Lum, born in 1869, was the only son and oldest child in a family of
seven children. His early life was one of poverty and hardship. His father
used the larger, middle room of their three room house for a store, selling
foodstuffs and a few necessities. The people in the village, however, were
poor and bought the goods “on account.” Often these bills remained unpaid.
Money became scarce, and debts were incurred. Suddenly the father died,
leaving debts and the support of the family to his wife and thirteen year old
son. An uncle who returned to the village about this time from the Hawaiian
Islands, where he was a partner in a sugar plantation, finally persuaded the
widowed mother to let her young son go with him to Hawaii. The boy made
a contract with his uncle whereby he was to work on his uncle’s sugar planta-
tion on the island of Hawaii for ten years at ten dollars a month. His passage
was to be paid by the uncle, but upon reaching the Islands an amount of his
monthly pay was to be taken until the passage expenses were refunded. With
his [clothing] in a small bamboo valise, he left his native land, in 1882, for
Hawaii.4
Wong Wai was born in 1871 in a village in Duck Doo, Chung Shan district.
He comes from a family of four children, being the second son and child. His
parents were rice farmers and were of the poorest class of laborers. Although
it is customary for a boy to marry early, he could not afford this because of
extreme poverty. He did not go to school…. Wong heard stories of the bet-
ter conditions [in Hawaii], told by returning laborers. Seizing the opportunity
in 1894, he signed up with the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association as an
immigrant laborer to work on the sugar plantations and was brought to Hon-
olulu, to be immediately assigned to the —— Sugar Company on Maui….5
A weak government and local instability in South China during the latter half
of the nineteenth century added to the conditions which led some Chinese to sign
contracts for plantation work in Hawaii:
We came as contract laborers through lack of steamer fare…. You see, al-
though we belonged to a family of wealth we were impoverished by feud.
22
Our family owned 40 to 50 mou … and dozens of workmen were hired during
the harvesting season. We had two steady watchers of the fields the year-
around…. In a bloody feud between the Chang family and Oo Shak village
we lost our two steady workmen. Eighteen villagers were hired by Oo Shak
to fight against the huge Chang family, and in the battle two men lost their
lives protecting our pine forests. Our village, Wong Jook Long, had a few
resident Changs. After the bloodshed, we were called for our men’s lives,
and the greedy, impoverished villagers grabbed fields, forest, food and every-
thing, including newborn pigs, for payment. We were left with nothing, and
in disillusion we went to Hong Kong to sell ourselves as contract laborers.
We were very young then. I was 22, and my brother was four years younger.6
Most of the Chinese migrants came from villages in delta regions south and
east of Canton or from the central coastal districts of Kwangtung province. In
order to reach the ports from which the emigrant ships sailed—chiefly Canton,
Whampoa, Hong Kong, and Macao—the men usually started out in groups,
walked to the inland ports, and traveled by small vessels, along canals or rivers,
through districts which were unfamiliar and sometimes unsafe. Chinese migration
to Hawaii was not characterized by the atrocious and harrowing experiences of
kidnapping and shanghaiing, imprisonment behind barracoons in the port cities
of South China, maltreatment on shipboard, or inhuman dealing in “coolie flesh”
which have blackened accounts of the “coolie trade” to many other areas. Hawaii
was renowned for the generally humane way it imported Chinese labor. Dr. Hille-
brand, the commissioner of immigration who was sent to China in 1865 when
importation of Chinese labor was reopened, was a respected Honolulu physician
who supervised the negotiations and shipment of the men. Advertisement for
workers was directed by a German missionary; within a few weeks more than
enough men had applied. Each man who embarked was to be given a free passage
to the Hawaiian Islands, a present of eight dollars, two suits of clothing, a win-
ter jacket, a pair of shoes, a bamboo hat, a mat, a pillow, and bed covering. The
vessels were prepared for a 56-day passage and fitted out with berths, water, fire-
wood, cooking utensils, Chinese provisions, medicines, and a “hospital” on deck;
an interpreter and a Chinese doctor were to be provided on each vessel; twenty of
the passengers were to act as cooks for the five hundred immigrants, six as over-
seers and two as stewards, each to receive payment in advance for such services.
And a rail partition was to be erected on the vessels to separate the “male and fe-
male passengers on board.”7 Contracts signed in 1870, like the one quoted later,
had similar stipulations.
Even with such provisions, the passage, some four thousand miles by the
most direct route, was long, tedious, and often trying. Before 1880 most of the
migrants came on sailing vessels which sometimes took as long as seventy days
for the trip. Conditions on the ships were crowded and uncomfortable; there was
23
much uneasiness, even near panic when contagions broke out. One Chinese mi-
grant recalled the discomfort and uncertainties of his passage to Hawaii and his
arrival in the Islands:
Like most immigrants, Mr. Lum had the idea that from the moment he caught
the boat there would be comfort and happiness. But all seemed the oppo-
site. As he was going on board, he had to struggle his way through a huge
crowd. Everyone was afraid that he would be left behind, so as soon as the
way was opened everyone just rushed to get on board and when he was fi-
nally aboard he was all out of breath. The next disappointment came soon
after. Mr. Lum expected to find a room with a bed like the ones which he had
seen in the Hongkong hotels but which he had never lain on; at home he had
always slept on a hard, board bed; in Hongkong he had slept many a night
on the hard, cold, stone sidewalks. On the boat he found himself standing in
one room crowded with hundreds of other Chinese laborers, and when night
arrived he found himself sleeping on a mat which was placed on the deck.
Then too when supper was served he had the same things that he ate at home
and at Hongkong with the exception that on board he had melon and cabbage
in addition to rice and salt fish.
To add to all this disappointment he was seasick. He found the room to
be very stuffy with so many people that the steamer smell made him sick. As
the voyage continued he wished more and more that he had stayed at home.
One day a person who slept next to him was sick with smallpox. This
fact frightened him very much, but his fright was dismissed for this man was
taken to another part of the ship so as to be away from the rest of the crowd.
Mr. Lum was then confident that it would not be so easy for him to get the
disease. It was very fortunate for them all that this man was quickly removed
for no one else caught the disease….
On their arrival in Honolulu several white men came on board and eyed
them. They spoke to his uncle in a language that Mr. Lum didn’t under-
stand…. At last the door opened and he stepped on the solid ground of the
Hawaiian Islands…. His uncle told him that they were taking another boat to
a nearby island within two hours. Mr. Lum was disappointed for he thought
he had reached his destination. He was not keen about this idea for he de-
tested sea life. However, he did not say anything in objection for he knew
that he should obey his uncle….8
Precautions by immigration authorities to minimize the danger of introduc-

ing contagious diseases proved as obnoxious to the Chinese as such efforts have
been to steerage immigrants elsewhere. After several epidemics in the early
1880s had caused many deaths, chiefly among the already diminishing Hawaiian
people, quarantine facilities were set up on an island near the mouth of Honolulu
24
harbor, where Chinese immigrants were landed and kept under the observation
of physicians for a few days. Chinese residents and others protested this proce-
dure and some even compared the quarantine to the barracoons of Macao. True
enough, landing on the quarantine island instead of disembarking in Honolulu
prevented men who had promised to ship to the plantations from evading con-
tracts. At the same time it facilitated the indenturing of many free immigrants.
An 1881 ordinance required free immigrants who did not “make engagements
for their services” to furnish “satisfactory evidence that they will not become va-
grants or a charge on the community for their support.” Being held in quarantine
hindered the newcomers from arranging with Chinese residents to meet the de-
mands of the ordinance instead of signing with plantations.
Even though the government tried to avoid the worst abuses of laborer re-
cruitment, some migrants were disillusioned after reaching Hawaii. Men who had
agreed to ship to the plantations often came to feel that they had been exploited
and deceived by government officials or by Chinese who assisted the planta-
tions in securing contract laborers. One Chinese recruiter narrowly escaped being
killed by an angry mob of some two hundred Chinese who charged that he had
deceived them when they signed their labor contracts.9 On one plantation it was
revealed (in 1897) that Chinese recruiters soliciting laborers in villages of South
China had received so many more applicants than could be assured passage to
Hawaii that they had charged the men twelve dollars—about one full month’s
wages—for the chance to be selected.10 And it may be added that the Chinese
agents licensed by the government to assist in indenturing Chinese at the quaran-
tine station in Honolulu were cordially disliked by the newcomers.
The contracts under which the Chinese migrants entered the plantation sys-
tem varied in details from period to period but the following example shows their
general features. The monthly wage was gradually increased, the length of the
contract was reduced to three years, and contracts signed in the 1890s did not per-
mit the migrant to remain in the Islands except in agricultural work or domestic
service.
LABOR CONTRACT11
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands
________1870
I ____________ Party of the first part, a native of China, a free and voluntary
Passenger to the Sandwich Islands, do bind myself to labor on any of the said
Islands, at any work that may be assigned me, by the Party of the Second
part, or their agents, upon the terms and in the manner within specified, for
the term of Five Years from this date.
_________ Party of the second part, do agree and bind themselves, or
agents, to conform fully to the within Agreement,
Signed_________
25
Witness_________
Signed_________
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT by the Agent of the Hawaiian
Government.
No Contract can be made in Hongkong.
All Emigrants must go as Free Passengers.
Each Emigrant shall be given him, 1 heavy Jacket, 1 light Jacket, 1
Water-proof Jacket, 2 pair Pants, 1 pair Shoes, 1 pair Stockings, 1 Hat, 1 Mat,
1 Pillow, 1 Blanket.
A present of Ten Dollars to be paid the day before the ship sails. In no
instance will any deduction from wages be made for Clothes or Money ad-
vanced in Hongkong.
A free passage to Sandwich Islands, with food, water, and Medical care,
given each Emigrant.
The Master to pay all Government personal Taxes.
All Children to be taught in the Public Schools, free of any expense to
the Parents.
Each Man to receive $6 for each month labor performed of 26 days.
Each Woman to receive $5 for each month labor performed of 26 days.
The wages to be paid in Silver, upon the first Saturday after the end of
the month.
No labor shall be exacted upon the Sabbath, only in case of emergency,
when it shall be paid for extra.
All emigrants who are employed as House Servants, when their duties
compel them to labor Sundays and evenings, shall receive for men, 7 dollars
per month, for women 6 dollars per month.
Three days Holiday shall be given each Emigrant at Chinese New Year
and a present of $2.
These three days time to be counted the same as if employed.
In all cases, the Master to provide good and sufficient food and comfort-
able House Room.
In case of Sickness, Medical attendance and care free.
No wages during illness.
Each Emigrant to find his own Bed clothing.
Each Emigrant, upon arrival in the Sandwich Islands, to sign a con-
tract (to work for such Master as may be chosen for him by the Government
Agent) for the term of Five Years from the time of entering upon his duties,
to work faithfully and cheerfully according to the laws of the Country, which
compel both Master and Servant to fulfill their Contracts.
Families shall not be separated; the Government particularly desire that
men will take their wives.
Every Emigrant shall have all the rights and protection under the law
26
that are given to any Citizen of the Country.

At the expiration of the five years each Emigrant has a right to remain in
the Country, or to leave it.
SAML. G. WILDER.
H.H.M. Commissioner of Immigration.
Hongkong, April 18, 1870.
Although the provisions of the contract might seem to imply that the men
were assigned more or less arbitrarily, with no regard to personal relations among
the laborers themselves, this was not always the case. Planters requested laborers
in large lots. A group of young Chinese relatives, villagers, or shipboard friends
could almost certainly be assured of being sent to the same plantation by obtain-
ing contracts numbered serially one after another. Once contract migration was
well established, workers already on the plantations sent back letters telling in-
coming clansmen and fellow villagers which plantations to avoid and which were
the best to ship to.12 Moreover, immigration authorities helped make it possible
for Chinese who had become Christians in China to concentrate in certain planta-
tion communities.
The Plantation Experience

Caring for and handling Chinese contract laborers, once they arrived on the plan-
tations, posed several problems which were complicated by the differences in
race and culture between planters and workers. One of the first problems had to
do with food. In the early decades of Chinese importation the contracts required
the planters to furnish food for the laborers. At that time most workers already
on the plantations were Hawaiians whose diet consisted primarily of such local-
ly available foods as poi (made from taro), fish, and sweet potatoes—a diet quite
different from that of the South Chinese for whom the staple food was rice. Until
locally produced rice became plentiful and cheap, stinting on the amount of rice
provided Chinese workers was a source of complaint. The position taken by one
planter is suggested by a notice posted in 1866:
The owner of the Waihee Plantation wishes to inform his Chinese laborers
that he intends strictly to fulfill his part of the contract and expects his la-
borers to perform theirs. He will provide comfortable lodging and sufficient
food—i.e., as much as his laborers can consume without waste—but he will
not nor has he agreed to give as much of any one kind of food as his laborers
choose to consume. Hitherto he has indulged their choice on the rice ques-
tion till most of his laborers have learned to eat other kinds of food grown
in this country. He now intends to allow each man and woman for the pre-
27
sent year at least 1 pound of rice each day [and] the customary allowance of
meat or fish and kalo [taro] and sweet potatoes without stint except to pre-
vent wanton waste. He also gives a piece of ground to his laborers and has
provided them with vegetable garden seeds—and a separate cooking place
for the preparation of such food as they may wish outside of that prepared by
the plantation cook.
The people of this country are not ignorant of the manners and customs
of the people in China—and it is well known yams which are somewhat sim-
ilar to our kalo and sweet potatoes are articles of food in China.13
The housing furnished by the plantations, though simple, seems to have

caused few problems. Men were usually housed in long, unpainted, frame build-
ings. The Chinese were accustomed to sleeping on a mat thrown over a wooden
platform, and plantation houses usually had wooden ledges, two or three feet
from the ground and about three feet wide, where the men could place their mats
and, if they wanted to, hang mosquito nets. From six to forty men would be as-
signed to a single room.14
Since the Chinese were brought to the plantations primarily for unskilled
manual work in the fields and around the mills, no complicated or extensive com-
munication between them and their employers was expected. Even the simplest
tasks called for some directions, however. A pioneer planter and his secretary, in-
terviewed in 1930, were asked how the first workers were told what to do. The
secretary answered, “By the toe of the foot. They could point and use the boot to
the seat of the pants.” The crude brutality implied in this remark was not com-
mon, though, and in fact much more useful ways of giving directions quickly
developed. Chinese workers who became familiar with Hawaiian or pidgin Eng-
lish commonly acted as interpreters. The planter said that “it didn’t take long for
some of the Chinese to pick up Hawaiian. Hawaiian was the first language they
learned here. Some people are naturally gifted in picking up languages. There was
one of our men—Tai Fu. He picked up Hawaiian in no time. We made him one of
our interpreters.” Later the migrants contributed Chinese words and syntax to the
pidgin English that spread throughout the Island plantations.
On a large plantation the contract laborer actually had little direct contact
with the Caucasian owner or manager. On the job he was supervised by, and at the
orders of, a luna (overseer) who was generally of a different ethnic group—in the
early days a Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian, later on perhaps a Portuguese, Norwe-
gian, or German imported migrant—someone who did not know his language, his
cultural background, or even the extent of his agricultural knowledge and skills.
Probably the greatest single source of trouble on plantations was friction between
field workers and lunas, certainly not unusual in worker-supervisor situations but
exacerbated here by cultural differences.
Apart from field work under the direct supervision of a non-Chinese luna,
28
two other systems of sugar cane production developed that gave Chinese workers
more discretion and independence: the ukupau (Hawaiian for “job done”) and
the “contract.” Under the ukupau system a certain quantity of work was set by
the plantation as a day’s job. The laborer could work as rapidly or as slowly as
he pleased and could quit when the stipulated work was completed. The planter
quoted above said that in his long experience the ukupau system had proved to
be the best to use with Chinese labor. Under the contract arrangement a group
of Chinese laborers worked under a Chinese who contracted with the plantation
to carry out a given undertaking at a stipulated sum per acre, per ton, or per job.
At one time more than three hundred Chinese laborers were under the control
of two Chinese contractors on one of the larger plantations on Maui. It was ex-
pected that Chinese laborers would be more content to work under this system
than under the more impersonal control of non-Chinese lunas; they could work
under arrangements which took account of the demands and values of their cul-
tural background. Sometimes the contractor, with plantation approval, recruited
his laborers from among his own clansmen or fellow villagers in the expectation
that they would compose a more stable group because of their traditional ties and
would work harder because of their personal obligations to the contractor. The
system also lent itself to cooperative arrangements by which the laborers could
share in the profits with the contractor.
Another type of cooperative scheme worked out among the laborers them-
selves was described by the same planter:
The Chinese usually made one of their gang the cook. He would fix their
breakfast, and then cook their dinner and bring it hot to the field. They had to
have hot dinner and hot tea to drink. The man who was made the cook usu-
ally shared just the same as the rest of the men. They would divide up what
they made, so that all got the same…. Another thing was the dope. Y——Fat
was the one I learned this from: He told me that when he went to the field to
work, and the cook brought his meals to him, he found that in the top of the
bucket was a little paper or envelope with the dope in it. All the men, he said,
took their dope that way with their dinner. The cook would have to see about
getting the stuff and fixing it up the same as the rest of the meal.
On some Hawaiian plantations the daily life of the workers was closely reg-
imented in the interest of maintaining an efficient work force. The nature of
this regimentation was implicit in the rules that plantations usually drew up and
posted. In 1866 Waihee Plantation established the following rules, which were
probably stricter than those that became customary later:
1. Laborers are expected to be industrious and docile and obedient to

their overseers.
29
2. Any cause of complaint against the overseers, of injustice or ill

treatment, shall be heard by the manager through the interpreter, but in no
case shall any laborer be permitted to raise his hand or any weapon in an
aggressive manner or cabal with his associates or incite them to acts of in-
subordination.
3. The working hours shall be ten each day, or more, if by mutual con-
sent, in which case they shall have extra pay, but when work is not pressing,
laborers will be allowed to stop on Saturdays at 4 o’clock.
4. When laborers desire to have a stint for the day’s work, the overseer
shall be the judge of the amount required, then laborers shall have their
choice, to accept [the stint] or to work their usual 10 hours; on this subject
there shall be no appeal.
5. Laborers are expected to be regular and cleanly in their personal
habits, to retire to rest and rise at the appointed hours, to keep their per-
sons, beds, clothing, rooms, enclosures, and offices clean, and are strictly
forbidden to enter that part of the cook house set apart for plantation cooking
arrangements. A fire place will be provided for the latter purpose and per-
mission given to cut indigo for firewood.
6. Rooms will be set apart for married laborers, and a separate bed will
be provided for each male unmarried laborer, which they are expected to oc-
cupy except in case of continued illness—no two men shall be permitted to
occupy the same bed.
7. No fires will be allowed after 6½ p.m. and no lights after 8½ p.m.;
every laborer is required to be in bed at 8½ p.m. and to rise at 5 a.m., the
hours before breakfast being devoted to habits of cleanliness and order about
their persons and premises. During the hours appointed for rest no talking
permitted or any noise calculated to disturb those wishing to sleep.
8. A separate lodging house will be provided for those whose sickness
or inability to labor shall last over 24 hours and all persons on the sick or dis-
abled list are required to submit to such treatment and obey such directions
as are given by the medical attendant and manager.
9. It is required that laborers sick or unable to work shall immediately
report themselves through the interpreter to their overseer or to the manager
as any person absent from work without permission shall be considered and
punished as a deserter.
10. Each laborer shall be held responsible for any sickness or inability
to work which shall result from breaking the laws of this land or the sanitary
rules of this plantation.
11. Gambling, fast riding, and leaving the plantation without permission
are strictly forbidden.
Working and living conditions varied widely during the decades when the
30
largest numbers of Chinese were in the plantation work force. Some plantations,
such as Grove Farm on Kauai, are remembered as having considerate manage-
ment with concern for the workers’ welfare and respect for their customs.15 On
others where management was more impersonal there was less regard for the
workers as human beings. The prevalence in Hawaii of resident planters man-
aging their own plantations contributed to more paternalism than in most other
plantation areas where absentee ownership was common. Although the time came
when this paternalism was resented, it at least ameliorated the harsher aspects of
plantation life and work.
The Masters and Servants Act had provisions not only for enforcement of
contracts on behalf of the employer but also for recourse to officials by laborers
who felt themselves abused or unjustly treated. Although whipping was prohib-
ited by the act, complaints were occasionally filed with the government. Wray
Taylor, secretary of the Board of Immigration in 1897, reported to the board
on visits he had made to several plantations on the islands of Kauai, Maui, and
Hawaii to investigate complaints and recommend action to resolve them. After
inquiries about mistreatment of Chinese laborers at Lihue Plantation he recom-
mended that the head luna be discharged and that the manager “be reprimanded
and held to strict account for the better treatment of laborers in the future. This
was done and since then no further complaints have come from Lihue.” At the
same time, fifteen of the Chinese laborers who were considered ringleaders in the
riot on Lihue Plantation that had led to the investigation were “by order of the
Court, returned to China.”16
Workers felt, with some cause, that the laws were more readily enforced for
the employers than for themselves. There is some evidence to support complaints
about collusion between the planters and the legal authorities to the disadvantage
of the laborers. A sheriff on the island of Hawaii, writing in 1897 about Chinese
plantation workers who resisted the efforts of police to serve warrants of arrest
sworn out by the plantation manager, reported to the marshal of the Hawaiian
government:
The P — [Plantation] Chinese were vigorously prosecuted for their riotous

conduct in resisting the Police. Their two most prominent leaders were sen-
tenced to one year each at hard labor. Eight of the next worst were given six
months each. Ten of the next worst were given four months each. Twenty-
three of the next worst were given three months each, and the balance were
prosecuted for deserting contract service and sentenced to pay costs and or-
dered to return to work, which they have done, and are now working better
than they have ever done before since they came to the Plantation.
I got the Manager to give me the names of the men who had made
the most trouble on the Plantation, and then asked the Judge to grade their
sentences so that they would be coming back little by little the worst ones
31
coming back after the others, so as to have the Plantation work going on
smoothly. I trust that this action will work well for I am convinced that Mr.
M —, the Manager, has been too lenient with his Chinese….17
In a report on labor in Hawaii in 1899, Wray Taylor gave “a general view of

the real state of affairs” on the plantations:
Every labor camp is a busy hive. Work is going on, and work is paid for and
is what the men come here for.
Now, what are the hardships? The main one is compulsory work under a
master. Here the law compels. At home, need held the whip. They expected
to work when they came; but the comparison with free men makes compul-
sion seem a hardship. Generally they are contented. The sewing machine is
common in every camp. The tailoress plies her trade. The petty shopkeeper,
with his room nearly filled with goods, drives his bargains with his country-
men…. There is food enough and a place to eat and sleep and live in, equal
in comfort to that they have left behind…. Sunday is a day for rest in most
cases. The barber is in demand. Clean clothes are donned, and pipe and cig-
arette lend solace. No one would dream of hardship to look in their faces….
But let some real or fancied grievance break the monotony, and the scene
changes. A tin pan is beaten noisily to alarm and summon the camp. The
motley crowd gathers, generally at night. The leaders harangue their follow-
ers, and the mob, most of them ignorant of the real cause, rush off to demand
redress or punish the offender.
The grievance is generally an assault by the overseer upon some laborer,
a fine considered unjust, a compulsion used to obtain unwilling work, or a
privilege withdrawn. The grievance is to the individual, and the crowd make
it their own. It is not generally felt very deeply, and in most cases a little tact
smooths out everything, and the even flow of events is again attained….
It may be gathered that, as a rule, plantations furnish all that the law
demands, but are not carried on primarily for the purpose of elevating the la-
borer to the standard of western civilization and morals any more than other
corporations….18
Most contracts in the nineteenth century stipulated twenty-six working days of

ten hours. Work started early, and even though men worked overtime during busy
seasons there was a good deal of free time in the late afternoons and evenings and
on Sundays and holidays. Until about 1910 most of these men were young—of
6,894 Chinese entering contracts in 1895–1897 almost half were under twenty-
five years old, three-fourths under thirty, and nine-tenths under thirty-five.19 As
Taylor implies, the plantations provided little for these men to do when they were
not working. Most plantations, during the years most Chinese were employed on
32
them, were quite isolated and the laborers under contract seldom got into town.
Since there were few Chinese women and families, and on some plantations none,
there was little semblance of the stabilizing family and clan life these young men
had left behind.20 There were no clan or village elders to exert control. Usually
the plantation did house Chinese workers separately from those of other ethnic
groups in what was generally called “the Chinese camp,” with an older Chinese,
who had several years’ experience on the plantation, as “headman” or manager.
Sometimes he was responsible for order in the camp, collected rents from the day
laborers living in the camp, assisted in paying wages, and served as interpreter,
labor contractor, labor recruiter. Commonly the headman operated a store selling
the men Chinese and other goods. This store was a common meeting place for
workers with nothing else to do. Sometimes the headman had his wife and family
with him; if so, they helped tend the store and often made and mended clothes for
the bachelor laborers.
One spare-time activity was gardening. Most of the workers had been farm-
ers at home, and on the plantation they cultivated plots where they grew the
vegetables favored in Chinese cooking. Growing bananas and raising pigs, ducks,
and chickens were other ways laborers could supply themselves with the kinds
of food they liked to eat and at the same time reduce their food costs. This ar-
rangement became more prevalent when contracts no longer required planters to
supply food to the laborers and also when Chinese remained on the plantations as
day laborers.
Nevertheless, the young men who lived in the camps were often bored with
the monotonous plantation life. It is little wonder that vices spread as they usu-
ally do in frontier communities with an abnormal preponderance of males. Opium
smoking was widespread. An elderly Chinese addict explained to a social worker
in the 1930s that “there was very little to do when work was over, and the other
fellows who were having a good time smoking asked me to join them, so to be
a good sport I took up opium smoking, not realizing that I would probably have
to die with it.”21 During the year 1873, with less than two thousand Chinese men
in the Islands, the Custom House reported the arrival of more than 2,700 pounds
of opium and 900 “pills”; it was asserted that three-fourths of the Chinese at that
time were addicts.22 Opium smoking seems to have gone on fairly undisturbed
on many plantations, especially during the three decades preceding Annexation,
even though rules against the practice were commonly posted. The cook who
included “dope” in the field workers’ lunches, for example, was apparently not
stopped from doing so. In the 1930s several Chinese migrants, too old or too in-
capacitated for work and seeking help from social welfare agencies, were victims
of the opium habit they had acquired as young men on the sugar or rice planta-
tions.
Gambling flourished on the plantations. In 1882 Frank Damon, a missionary
working among the Chinese in Hawaii, commented on this widespread practice
33
as he observed it while visiting plantation camps:
Here we found quite a company of Chinamen. As we came into the main

room of their house I was led to feel that to some at least we were not
very welcome guests. There had arrived before us, one of those gambling
“tramps,” who earn an infamous livelihood by going around from plantation
to plantation, leading the laborers to waste their hard earned wages in gam-
bling. This vice seems to have a tremendous power over the Chinese. It
is especially prevalent on the sugar plantations—where the men are left to
do pretty much as they list, after they have left the field and mill…. We
had the pleasure at Hanamaulu of breaking up an evening’s sport. The men
themselves seemed kind and received us pleasantly—while the disappointed
“Gambler,” left us the field….23
According to Chinese informants, lotteries—chee fa—were widely patron-

ized by Chinese both on and off the plantations, and an elaborate system facil-
itated the betting. Runners would visit a district and collect money for placing
bets. The money would be passed to agents higher up in the business until it fi-
nally reached Honolulu, where it would be placed in Honolulu-based lotteries.
Notices of winnings would be relayed in the reverse order and commissions taken
by each middleman involved.
During most of the decades that Chinese migrants entered Hawaii as contract
laborers, the plantation work force also included a large number of Hawaiians,
both men and women. As indicated in the previous chapter, some Caucasians
encouraged liaisons between Chinese men and Hawaiian women as a way of
“rebuilding the native race”; others concluded that such relations were “demor-
alizing the natives.” In any case, numerous migrants did associate freely with
Hawaiian women, some casually, others establishing permanent family ties. The
migrants’ relations with Hawaiian women were a factor in some of the anti-Chi-
nese feelings among Hawaiian men.
Getting Off the Plantation

Although several hundred Chinese workers brought to the plantations as contract
laborers remained on them throughout their working life in Hawaii (as day la-
borers after they were no longer on contracts), by far the greater number left the
plantations when their contracts expired. In spite of the arrival of over 14,000
Chinese during the six years prior to 1882, only 5,007 of the plantations’ 10,253
workers in 1882 were Chinese. During periods when importation of Chinese con-
tract laborers was restricted—roughly from 1886 to 1895 and from 1898 on—the
number of Chinese plantation employees diminished rapidly. Less than half as
34
many were on the plantations in 1892 as in 1888, and of the 8,114 Chinese work-
ing on sugar plantations on 31 December 1897 over half had left by 1902.
Some of the reasons for this exodus were related to the reasons why laborers
had to be brought in under indenture. Other reasons are apparent in the causes of
dissatisfaction with plantation life, including the regimentation and subordination
to non-Chinese lunas who offended or at times actually mistreated the workers.
Taylor singled out “compulsory work under a master” as the main hardship felt
by the workers. The problem of workers leaving the plantation at the end of their
contracts, if not before, was a matter of constant concern to management. As early
as 1869 one planter in Hawaii said of his Chinese contract laborers: “I find them
good servants…. One objection I have to this class of labor is that although of-
fered double their present wages to renew their contracts they refuse to do so.”
This problem was not peculiar to sugar plantations in Hawaii; it has been
characteristic of the contract labor situation everywhere. In some other parts of
the world planters and governments collaborated to keep imported laborers on the
plantation by deporting those who refused to renew their contracts. No such mea-
sure was used in Hawaii, although in the 1890s the Republic of Hawaii adopted
regulations under which Chinese who left agricultural work were to be returned
to China. This was a fairly elastic provision since there were many other types of
agriculture developing in Hawaii which Chinese could and did go into.
One important reason for leaving the plantation was the feeling that there
was little opportunity for promotion in the plantation hierarchy.24 The ratio of su-
pervisory and skilled jobs to unskilled on the plantation in the premechanized era
was very low, so even if they had been given their share of such jobs few Chi-
nese could have moved into them. Moreover, many Chinese felt that they were
not given an equal opportunity with part-Hawaiians and Portuguese who were
promoted to lower management and skilled jobs. Census returns from eighty-four
plantations in 1882, more than a generation after the first Chinese labor impor-
tations, showed that only 3 of the 5,007 Chinese male employees held preferred
positions—as sugar boilers—the others being listed as “laborers.”25 Seventeen
years later, in 1899, only 94 of the 5,969 Chinese workers were among the
2,019 plantation employees in skilled positions; of these 94, there were 6 sugar
boilers, 4 bookkeepers and clerks, 16 engineers and firemen, 31 carpenters, 2
blacksmiths, and 1 painter. If Chinese skilled employees had made up the same
proportion of the total skilled employees that the Chinese composed of the total
on the sugar plantations’ payrolls, they would have held almost four times the
number of preferred positions actually reported for them.26
Connected with this inability to secure the better-paying preferred positions
was discontent with wages. Although plantation labor in Hawaii at any given date
has been better paid than labor on sugar plantations almost anywhere else in the
world, and although wages down into the 1940s were much higher than payment
for similar types of work in South China, the Chinese laborers generally came to
35
feel that plantation wages were too low. The wages stipulated in contracts ranged
from the $3 a month plus board offered in 1852 to $15 a month without board in
the late 1890s—with deductions for those who did not work the standard month
of twenty-six working days. Actually, most Chinese laborers on the plantations
after 1888, except for the years 1896–1899, did not work under indenture but as
“free” or “day” laborers. Nevertheless, their wages did not average much above
those of the contract laborers. During the 1870s day laborers received about $10 a
month; in 1886 Chinese plantation workers averaged $13.56 a month.27 The aver-
age monthly wages for Chinese day laborers in 1892 were reported to be $17.62
while the average for all day laborers was $18.83 a month.28 Chinese “skilled
hands” were reported to receive an average daily wage of $1.22 in 1902 and $1.11
in 1915.29
Added to dissatisfaction with plantation life and work was the discovery of
more appealing opportunities in the Islands. Wages offered to the plantation re-
cruits might have seemed very high before they left China, but before long many
of them became convinced that they could earn more money, under more sat-
isfying conditions, off the plantation. Plantation development itself, of course,
stimulated other enterprises which multiplied job opportunities. Between 1882
and 1930, while the total number of gainfully employed persons in Hawaii rose
from 39,531 to 154,270, sugar plantation employees increased only from 10,243
to 49,532. Off-plantation workers, therefore, had multiplied from nearly 30,000
to over 100,000 in this period. Chinese leaving the sugar plantations moved into
these rapidly expanding occupational opportunities as laborers. Eventually many
of them became entrepreneurs who themselves employed migrant laborers.
The Plantation as Haven

Even with the general movement of Chinese workers off the plantations, several
hundred Chinese did remain there for many years, continuously or intermittently,
and some of them never left. Ten years after the final Chinese importations in
1897 there were still more than 3,000 Chinese sugar plantation workers, and
twenty years afterward more than 2,000.30 As late as 1930 some 570 alien Chi-
nese remained on sugar plantation payrolls. A survey in March 1936 of the
Chinese clients of the Old Age Department of a Honolulu social agency showed
that 78 of the 490 men on relief reported that they had been employed on sugar
plantations for twenty years or more. Several plantations continued to care for
their old Chinese laborers who were no longer able to work after having spent
most of their adult years in the fields or sugar mills.
Aside from the tiny minority who worked into preferred positions on the
plantations, many of those who remained were the more improvident, less capa-
ble, less ambitious migrants who found in the paternalistic plantation system a
36
degree of security and protection they could not find elsewhere in the competitive
Island community. In 1930 George N. Wilcox told the writer about an old Chi-
nese retainer on his plantation:
I don’t know just when Ahee came to Hawaii, but he came here from Cali-
fornia. I remember that he was with us in 1880; when I came back from the
legislature that year I was going about the various camps on the plantation,
and as I came along one of the water ditches, there was Ahee lying on the
ground, kicking his feet up in the air like some baby. He has been with me
ever since. He must be nearly eighty years old now.
He has lived up at P — camp for the last fifty years and in all that time,
up till four years ago, he had never been down to Lihue, some four miles
away. Four years ago some of the men took him down to Lihue to show him
how the town had changed since 1880. He’s still a “water luna” up in that
section of the plantation.
An elderly Chinese, living in a Chinese society building in one of the sugar-

growing areas of Hawaii in 1935, admitted to being an opium smoker. He told
about his life in Hawaii through an interpreter:
Chan says that he is about sixty years old and that he has not had any work
for over a year now. He wishes he could get work to do. He receives about
six dollars a month from the relief funds, through the Chinese woman at the
Fook Yum Tong.
Chan came to Hawaii in 1897 from Hoi Ping district as a contract
laborer on the sugar plantations. He worked on the sugar plantations for over
thirty-five years but never saved any money. Chan thought the work on the
plantation was not too hard for the pay he got. The money, however, was al-
ways spent in having a good time, and now he is old, has no money, cannot
go back to his village in China, has nothing to live on here except what he
gets from relief funds.
Chan has never been to Honolulu since he came to Hawaii thirty-eight
years ago. He hears that it is now a big city. Of course, he has never made a
visit back to China. Nor has he received any letters from the home village for
several years. He has not written any letters to relatives either, for they ex-
pect him to send them money when he writes. He does not know whether his
father and mother are still living or not; he was a younger son in the family
and never married. His life, he says, has been wasted. “Take the advice of an
old man and don’t do the same thing.”31
Another improvident plantation worker gave his life history to a Hawaii-born

Chinese social worker in 1936:
37
Lum Tai was born in Lung Doo, Chung Shan district, in the year 1873. He
was the second child in a family of six children. Early in childhood he had
been taught to till the soil. The family was too poor to send any of the chil-
dren to school…. His father urged him to come to the Hawaiian Islands to
work so that money could be sent home to provide better care for the younger
children. The family had heard through returning laborers that living condi-
tions were better with good pay and shorter hours. It was Lum’s intention
to return some time to his native village and buy himself a wife and settle
down to the life of a Chinese farmer. Taking all the money the family could
get together, which meant much sacrifice on the part of his father, he paid his
passage on a steamer from Hongkong to Honolulu. He had forty-two dollars
in American money upon his arrival.
Soon after landing in the Islands he received a letter from his father stat-
ing that he had been married by proxy. He knew who the woman was, but as
was the Chinese custom, the matchmaking was done by friends of both fam-
ilies. The woman died a few months after the marriage ceremony.
After spending a few weeks in Honolulu, he went to the sugar planters’

employment agency and was immediately given work at W— plantation,
where he signed a three-year contract. He worked in the fields and received
nineteen dollars[?] a month, plus a “turnout” bonus. Just about this time large
groups of Chinese laborers were drifting to the —— Sugar Co. because the
arrangement of the camps was better and because of the laxity of the camp
police in matters of gambling and opium smoking. He followed suit and got
a job at that plantation, remaining there, off and on, for the past thirty years.
Lum applied at the plantation for a pension but was refused because his work
record is poor. He has done only an average of twelve days of work per
month for the past five years. He was described as not dependable and of-
tentimes more independent than the management liked. The plantation social
worker stated that she knew the man and considered him as being of the va-
grant type. He will try and get by with what he can as long as he can….
Lum claims that he has no insurance, does not belong to any Chinese
society, has no other resources. He is without relatives in the Territory or in
China. Arrangements were made to transfer the man to the agency’s board-
ing home for aged Chinese men in Honolulu.32
New Opportunities
At the end of his contract period the ambitious Chinese who came to Hawaii as a
contract laborer to make his fortune was a free man in a land of opportunity. The
next chapters consider the occupational adjustments, patterns of economic enter-
38
prise, forms of settlement, and occupational movements of the migrants who left
the sugar plantation labor force, as well as those who were never a part of it.
39
CHAPTER 3
On the Rural Frontier
SINCE Hawaii’s primary attraction for the nineteenth-century Chinese migrants

was the chance it offered them to improve their personal and family fortunes,
thousands of them were alert to the opportunities offered by Hawaii’s open re-
sources. They undertook a large number and variety of enterprises and in doing
so expanded the frontier economy beyond the limits of its development by the
politically and economically more influential Caucasians.
Chinese Rice Plantations

As the first plantation labor group to be imported into Hawaii, the early Chinese
lived and worked under conditions that would not be tolerated by Hawaii’s work-
ers today. Yet they had one significant advantage: arriving at a time when the
Hawaiians were rapidly declining in numbers and there were relatively few other
foreigners to compete with them, Chinese had the chance to enter, almost unhin-
dered, a number of occupations for which their experience and skills fitted them.
The most important of these occupations for several decades was rice production.
Rice growing was the basic agricultural activity in the delta regions of
Kwangtung province from which nearly all the migrants came, and most of them
were familiar with the age-old methods of rice production. Climatic and other
agricultural conditions were even more favorable for rice production in Hawaii
than in the immigrants’ home districts. Land easily convertible into rice fields
was readily available, since along with the depopulation of Hawaiian districts had
gone a decline in the cultivation of taro, a crop the Hawaiians raised by wet-farm-
ing methods in low-lying or terraced patches. Rice growing had been started in
1858 by H. Holstein, horticulturist of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society,
and Caucasian rice planters were able in 1862 to export about three hundred tons
of cleaned rice. Chinese moved into the industry and developed it rapidly. They
were responsible for making rice production the second most important source of
income in Hawaii’s economy through most of the rest of the nineteenth century.1
40
As migrants intent upon accumulating wealth, Chinese would not have

grown rice in Hawaii for mere subsistence as in China; they grew it for a market.
The rapid growth of the Chinese immigrant population on the Pacific Coast of
North America (United States, Canada, and Mexico) created a demand which
Hawaii could supply more profitably than could any other rice-growing area of
the time. Increasing numbers of Asian immigrant groups in Hawaii also brought
about a large local demand. During the 1860s Chinese growers introduced the
Chinese varieties of rice in greatest demand on the Pacific Coast and, for nearly
half a century, virtually monopolized rice production in Hawaii.2
Within a few years after Chinese entered the industry, those parts of the Is-
lands suitable for the crop were in rice production. Abandoned taro lands were
taken over, swamps and marshes were reclaimed, tiny terraces were built far up
ravines. By 1875 about 1,000 acres were in rice, mostly on Oahu. This total area
had risen to 7,420 acres by 1890; to 9, 130 by 1900; to 9,425 by 1909.3 Frank
Damon, in his account of “Tours among the Chinese” in 1882, described the rice
growing he observed on Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii and the transformation
of the land by the industrious Chinese migrants. On traveling west toward Ewa
from Honolulu, he remarks:
Though there are but twelve or fourteen thousand of this race scattered over
our Islands, no very great number, still when you come to consider that they
are nearly all strong, healthy working men, in the prime of life, possessed of
all the “push” and energy and tireless industry, for which these people are
famous you can form some idea of how even this number must make them-
selves felt in this kingdom. All are at work, in motion on the road, in the
field….
A few miles out from town the rice plantations begin, and form a fringe
bordering the shore for a long distance. This is the season for planting the
rice, and the men are busy in the marshy fields from early morning till
evening. The wide expanses lying at the foot of the valleys are just now be-
ginning to be covered with the tender shoots of the rice, which in a few weeks
will grow into a swaying luxuriant mass of verdure. It requires a steady hand
and considerable balancing to run along the narrow foot paths separating the
fields, for every available inch of ground seems to be utilized….
But for the Chinese, Ewa would be indeed a desolate place. The natives
seem to have disappeared from the face of the land. But the former national-
ity have entered in most emphatically to possess the land and their rice fields
stretch in every direction. The large native Church stands sad and solitary on
the hill, a mute and eloquent reminder of other days.4
Land for rice growing was generally acquired peacefully, although there
were occasional fights between Chinese rice planters and Hawaiian taro cultiva-
41
tors, or between different groups of Chinese, over such matters as water rights.5
Some Hawaiians had an interest in the rice industry because they could rent aban-
doned taro lands or other unused land to Chinese rice growers—leases might
bring as much as thirty-five dollars an acre annually. The large sugar plantations
also subleased land that was unsuitable for sugar to rice growers.
As rice production prospered, a plantation system developed which differed
from both the rice economy of the Chinese village and the sugar plantation sys-
tem. Indicative of the sojourner outlook and dominant profit motive was the
temporary character of most of the ventures. Little effort was made, at first, to
buy the land, even when that was possible: land was usually leased. The general
flimsiness of the buildings on the rice plantations showed that at the outset the
rice planter did not expect to settle permanently on the land.
Unlike the sugar plantations, rice plantations were usually small and made up
of tiny patches. They averaged twenty-five to thirty acres, although a big planter
might control a few hundred acres. Chinese methods of rice growing required
insignificant amounts of capital for equipment as compared with the huge invest-
ments which became necessary on the increasingly mechanized sugar plantations.
Cultivation was intensive and called more for painstaking handwork than for ma-
chines. Even transportation was customarily handled by the Chinese laborer and
his carrying pole rather than by animal or machine. A number of Chinese pooling
their small savings could therefore undertake to raise rice.
Moreover, rice plantations did not require highly trained and highly paid
managers. Little of the work demanded any more skill or knowledge than the
average immigrant had acquired in his own home village. Nevertheless, the rice
industry shared with the sugar industry the problem of getting an adequate labor
supply. As early as the 1860s Chinese entrepreneurs were importing laborers for
both types of agriculture. Some labor for rice cultivation was obtained through
government assistance. From 1874 to 1877 Chulan & Co. and other Chinese
firms secured financial advances from the government in order to bring in labor-
ers—with the agreement that these firms would try to get the men to pay back the
money advanced.
Another source of workers was the sugar plantation labor supply. Some Chi-
nese who came to Hawaii under indenture to sugar plantations bought releases
from their contracts with money supplied by Chinese employers. Others deserted
during their periods of contract.6 Planters often suspected that deserters and their
subsequent Chinese employers had prearranged to use the sugar plantation inden-
ture system as a device to secure free passage to Hawaii for the laborer. The social
distance at the time between Chinese on rice plantations and other ethnic groups
in the Islands, except Hawaiians, tended to protect deserters from detection. Most
commonly, however, Chinese laborers went into the rice industry after fulfilling
their contracts on the sugar plantations.
“Free” migrants, those who did not come in under written contracts, were
42
an important source of laborers for the rice industry. Most of these free migrants
were heavily indebted to relatives, to Chinese brokers, or to Chinese employers
in Hawaii. Excerpts from documents on Chinese in the 1930s illustrate how this
free migration was related to the labor force on rice plantations:
Probably the oldest survivor of the days of huge rice plantations and mills in
Ewa is Ho Yee [born in 1851]. He is seventy-nine years old and is a mem-
ber of that group of Chinese immigrants who came here in the seventies as
independent laborers. Under no obligations of contract, except to pay off the
steamer fare, paid for them by village relatives already here, Ho Yee and
his brother Ho Leong, when they first arrived here in 1876, plunged into the
work they were most prepared for…. In Ewa, Ho Yee remained fifty-one
years doing rice mill work, first as laborer, then luna, and in later years as
manager. His brother remained in the city to do business. It was only six
years ago that Ho Yee moved into town for the better opportunities for work
and education it had to offer for his children.7
Wong Chiu was born in 1871 near Shekki, Chung Shan district. He was the
oldest child and had three sisters and two brothers. The family owned its own
home, but the boys all had to work at herding water buffaloes, and later as
laborers in rice fields near the village. Wong had no opportunity to secure
any formal education. Wong’s father left the family in the village and went to
Sydney, Australia, to seek a “fortune.” He lived there many years, returning
home when he was about seventy. Wong Chiu, after listening to many immi-
grants who returned to the district, decided that a better living could be made
in Hawaii. With money which he secured from his father he came to the Is-
lands in 1895 with a group of immigrants. His passage cost him sixty-three
dollars gold. His first employment was on a rice plantation in Manoa Val-
ley, which was managed by a “cousin” of his. He worked on this plantation
for three years at thirteen dollars per month plus board and lodging. Then he
went to Kauai to help start a rice plantation leased by Wong Sang….8
Lum Kwan’s native village was in Lung Doo, Chung Shan district. In 1891,
at the age of twenty-one, he came to Hawaii, his brother having sent him
money for the passage. He went to work for his brother who had a share in
a rice plantation at Moanalua, Oahu. At the end of six years, the brother sold
his interest in the plantation and they both returned to China. During the year
Lum was there, he was married to a girl who was then eighteen years of age.
A daughter who was born has now married but has no children. The wife still
lives in the village, although Lum has not seen her since 1899. Upon his re-
turn to Hawaii, Lum again went to work on a rice plantation.9
43
While the workers’ needs may not have been supplied any more amply on
the rice plantations than on the sugar plantations, they were undoubtedly handled
in a way that was closer to the migrants’ customs and expectations. Manager and
workers sometimes lived together in a single building; some large plantations had
a building where the manager lived with his family along with a few frame struc-
tures housing the laborers, a cook house, and the mill. Frank Damon described
one rice plantation he visited in Honouliuli, Oahu, in 1882:
A company of fifty or sixty men assembled in the main room of one of the
houses…. This was one of the largest plantations we visited. Sometimes two
or three men only, have a few fields which they cultivate for themselves, and
we often came upon houses where there were eight or ten men working their
own land. But the larger plantations are owned by merchants in Honolulu,
who have a manager acting for them. The houses are destitute of all but the
barest necessities of life, except those of some of the more wealthy planters.
The woodwork is unpainted. The beds are arranged around the rooms like
berths in a ship. Sometimes these are quite prettily ornamented with a border
above the netting of Chinese silk, on which graceful sprays of flowers are
painted and Chinese characters written. In the center of the room is a large
table where the meals are taken in common. They never need lack for rice,
and of this most excellent article of diet they seem never to weary. In many
of the houses we saw large pictures of their favorite God, with joss-sticks
sometimes standing before it. As this was shortly after their “New Year,”
the vermilion colored visiting cards, received at that season, were arranged
in rows on the walls. Over all the doors and windows were pasted slips of
the same brilliant paper, on which a variety of propitious wishes for the oc-
cupants of the house and their visitors were written. Many of these were in
reference to becoming rich, enjoying length of days, etc. One was, I thought,
a very pleasant one to have over any door. “Out-going. In-coming. Peace!”10
The number of workers on even the larger rice plantations was smaller than
on the sugar plantations; all the workers would be Chinese, often relatives, heung
li (“fellow villagers”), or migrants from the same small district of South China,
all speaking the same dialect. Life was not so highly regimented; instead of being
controlled by rules and overseers, police and judges, men on the rice plantations
were involved in a set of mutual obligations built up from the closeness in which
they lived. Desire for gain was shared by rice planters and workers alike, but per-
sonal ties tempered any tendencies to put the concerns of efficiency and profit
before everything else.
On some rice plantations the workers were hired at stipulated wages with
board and shelter—wages which tended to average about the same as those of-
fered for day labor on the sugar plantations. More commonly, however, rice
44
plantation development, like so many other forms of economic enterprise by

Chinese immigrants, was carried on by systems in which the workers shared
cooperatively in the returns from the crop produced. The two most common sys-
tems were known among the Chinese as fun kung (“divide work”) and hop pun
(“partnership”).11 The former was a modified “cropper” arrangement between a
landlord and an organized group of workers. A man wanting to undertake the job
of manager would make an agreement with the landlord and gather together a
group of laborers; or a group of men who wanted to undertake the raising of a
crop of rice at a given place might select one of their number as a manager who
would then work out an arrangement with the landlord. Apart from furnishing the
land, which he might himself hold only on a lease, the landlord usually provided
all the tools, machinery and draft animals. The agreement was usually concerned
first of all with the ratio at which the crop or income was to be divided at the end
of the season. For superior rice land the landlord might demand 60 percent of the
crop; on less choice land, 50 percent. If fertilizer had to be used, he might furnish
60 percent of it. He agreed to make reasonable advances of money to the men
as the season progressed, part of which would be necessary for the men’s food
and other living expenses, part to be sent to relatives in China. The agreement
might also stipulate a minimum price the landlord would guarantee to pay for
each bag of paddy produced. In the earlier days of the industry and in the smaller
deals, such agreements were only verbal or recorded informally in the Chinese
language. Later, after bitter experiences taught some of the Chinese migrants that
they could not always trust their countrymen in Hawaii, agreements were drawn
up in contracts recognized in the local courts.
The laborers who were partners under this system were usually organized
rather loosely under the manager who made decisions after discussion with his
partners. Since all were taking a chance on the success or failure of the crop,
the manager could not be dictatorial, but he assumed responsibility for assign-
ing partners to jobs such as cooking, gardening, caring for the draft animals, and
raising pigs and poultry. Unless there was a bookkeeper he recorded expenses,
advances to each man, the days each man failed to work. He hired extra day la-
borers as needed during planting and harvesting. He might also be responsible for
checking the irrigation and drainage of the fields and protecting the grain from
birds, as well as supervising the harvest and disposing of the crop.
At the end of the season the group and the landlord made a settlement in ac-
cord with their agreement. Joint expenses were deducted from the group’s share
of the income together with an extra payment to the manager. In larger under-
takings with an assistant manager and bookkeeper, these men also received extra
payments, smaller than that of the manager. The partners divided the remainder
equally among themselves, each man receiving his share after his advances had
been deducted.
The fun kung system became more common after Annexation when no more
45
laborers could be obtained from China and those in the Islands became less
willing to work as day laborers and more insistent upon sharing the profits. In
the later years of the rice industry, when there was less trust in an immigrant’s
word—and also more risk, as the industry declined, that a partner might try to
evade his share of losses—it became common to require each man to make a de-
posit, usually twenty-five dollars, when he joined the partnership. A man who
quit lost his deposit.
In the hop pun system a few Chinese, usually not more than three or four,
would set up an independent rice farm. Each man advanced his share of the
money necessary for the undertaking; shares might range from one hundred
to several hundred dollars, according to the size of the venture. One man, as
spokesman, would arrange for the lease of the land, often through some Chinese
agent or rice factor. The men would provide their own food, shelter, the necessary
tools and perhaps a draft animal, seed, fertilizer, and so forth, and would perform
the labor involved in producing the crop. At the end of the season they would
divide the earnings proportionately. These small independent farms, which were
likely to lie on marginal rice land, were rather like the small rice farms in South
China—more of the work was done by hand than on the larger plantations.
Some Chinese migrants used rice plantation employment as a stepping stone
to more profitable occupations; others returned to China after a few years on the
rice plantations; others shifted to one type of work after another—leaving the rice
fields for the sugar or pineapple plantations, for some other type of agriculture
being undertaken by a Chinese migrant, for work in the towns (often, however,
returning to rice cultivation). And still others spent a lifetime in Hawaii in the rice
industry as laborers or moving up to the status of a rice planter. Ho Yee, whose
experience was referred to earlier, spent fifty-one years in the rice industry, rising
from ordinary laborer to manager. Other migrants who spent years on rice plan-
tations in Hawaii were less successful, as the following excerpts from three life
histories obtained in the 1930s show:
Yuen Bow’s father had been a plantation laborer in Hawaii. In 1888 Yuen
Bow left his village near Nam Long and came to Hawaii. For three months
he worked on a rice plantation at Heeia, Oahu. Then followed eight years
of labor on four different sugar plantations on Oahu and Kauai, where he
earned from fifteen to seventeen dollars a month. Several years were spent
on a Kauai rice plantation, with occasional work on a nearby sugar plantation
during the latter’s “grinding season.” A little over a year was passed on still
another Kauai sugar plantation at eighteen dollars a month. Yuen returned to
Honolulu and finally secured a job in connection with a fish pond which a
Chinese operated in Pearl Harbor. Here he received twenty-two dollars per
month, board and lodging. He left this position to work for the Hawaiian
Pineapple Company at Wahiawa, at $2.50 per day. At the end of two years
46
and two months he quit and loafed for a time in Honolulu. His last work was
with another pineapple plantation where he received $1.50 per day. For the
past five years Yuen has been a casual laborer in Honolulu.12
Chang Wah was born in 1866 in Lung Doo, Chung Shan district. He was the
sixth son in a family of fourteen children. Early in childhood he had heard
his parents speak of selling the children in the family…. As soon as he was
old enough, which was ten years, he started working in the neighbors’ rice
fields…. When he heard of the better conditions in Hawaii, in 1890, he …
approached his parents and other members of the family, suggesting that they
pool their resources so that he could be sent here to make more money in
order to make life easier for those at home. He was given a hundred dollars
which, however, was not obtained until several water buffalo and many of
their chickens had been sold. Buying his steamer ticket, he arrived here in
1890….
En route to Hawaii Chang Wah met several other Changs on the boat
and through them he heard that a Chang from his village was operating a rice
plantation at Mokuleia, Oahu. He started with this man as a laborer at nine
dollars a month, plus board and lodging, and he remained with him for ten
years. The work was hard but he felt at the time that he was well paid. On
this plantation there were no beasts of burden to do the hard work, and he
and the other men had to pull the carts themselves and carry the rice from
the field to the threshing floor. His relative finally sold out his business and
returned to China. Chang Wah then worked for another planter, at Waialua,
earning nine dollars a month for the next five years.
Wages on the sugar plantation seemed more attractive, so Chang went
to work for the —— Plantation on Oahu, working as a cane cutter and doing
piece contract work for which he averaged about a dollar a day. The work
was very hard, but he managed to hold on for ten years, after which, due
to his diminishing strength, he was forced to seek lighter work with the rice
planters near Waipahu.
By this time he had saved a little money, and entering into a partnership
with a Chinese friend, started a rice plantation of their own. As a result of this
partnership, which lasted fifteen years, Chang enjoyed considerable finan-
cial independence and came to be regarded by the Chinese in the district as a
“rich man,” since … at that time any Chinese was called “rich” who had ac-
cumulated a few thousand dollars. The decline in the price of rice, however,
forced him out of business and caused him to lose all his money. Chang’s
chief regret now is that he did not sell out and return to China when he had
enough money to have lived comfortably for the rest of his days. He is now
unable to make a living … and must depend upon relief.13
47
Pang Gum arrived from Lung Doo, Chung Shan district, in 1888, paying his
own passage. For a year and a half he worked for a sugar plantation on Oahu
for $11.50 a month. For at least twenty-five years Pang worked for a number
of rice plantations, among them being Hop Suck Wai, Chu Chong Wai, See
Sung Wai, and Hee Hoi. Leaving rice growing, he worked for a pineapple
plantation on Oahu for three years, averaging $1.50 a day. Since his last reg-
ular employment Pang has been a transient rice laborer in the Koolau district,
working about nine months out of the year, spending the other three months
in “gambling, drinking, or smoking opium.”14
Hundreds of men like these three did not establish families in Hawaii. The
Chinese who became the eminent rice planters, interested often in other forms of
agriculture and in business as well as in rice production, commonly married and
reared families. Wong Loy was one of these:
Wong Loy was born in Lung Doo, Chung Shan district, in 1846. A brother
who preceded him to Hawaii became a partner in a Chinese firm which was
among the most active in the development of the sugar and rice industries,
particularly during the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Wong Loy came to
Hawaii in 1876 and went immediately into rice cultivation. Rice growing
remained his main concern for the next half a century, and before his retire-
ment he had bought considerable rice lands on Oahu and had for many years
owned and operated rice plantations and rice mills. Together with two broth-
ers, Wong Loy developed the growing of rice near Kaneohe, on windward
Oahu. In 1897, after twenty-two years in Kaneohe, Wong Loy sold out both
rice plantations and rice mills and moved to Heeia, Oahu, where he bought
rice lands. He did not give up rice farming and rice milling until about 1923.
In 1890, Wong Loy, then well past forty, made a trip to China and on his
return to Hawaii brought his bride with him. Mr. and Mrs. Wong have reared
ten children, seven boys and three girls. The children received part of their
education in Honolulu, although the family continued to live at Heeia. Some
of the children were sent to college, at least one of them to a university on the
mainland. The oldest son became secretary of a Chinese firm which for three
decades, among other things, operated a rice mill in Honolulu and acted as a
rice factor. The other sons have become established in other businesses and
in the professions.15
Chinese agents and factors played a significant part in rice plantation devel-
opment, much like that of agents and factors in the sugar industry. The export of
rice produced in the early days provided opportunities for middlemen who helped
the rice planters dispose of their crop. Sing Chong Co. of Honolulu, founded in
the 1870s, became one of the most important of these factors. At one time this
48
firm handled the rice production on about four thousand acres, about half the
acreage in rice on Oahu, as the agent for planters or managing its own rice planta-
tions. It was also agent for rice growers on other islands, including Leong Pah On,
the largest rice grower on Kauai. At the same time it was serving as agent to Chi-
nese sugar planters and, as one of the largest importers of general merchandise,
was agent and supplier for many Chinese stores throughout the Islands.16 Later,
when more rice was consumed in the Islands than was exported, rice distribution
in Hawaii was handled by both Chinese and Caucasian firms. Large quantities
were sold directly to the Caucasian-controlled sugar factors which supplied rice
to Caucasian-owned plantations for their Asian laborers. Chinese stores on the
plantations and in the villages and towns were the main distributing points for the
cleaned rice.
Chinese rice factors made additional profits by processing rice—hulling,
cleaning, and polishing. The rice mills and granaries needed for these processes
required investments which few planters could, or dared, make. The first rice
mills were built during the 1860s, one by a Caucasian, another by Chun Fong. In
1873 Chulan & Co. put up a water-power mill which could turn out two tons of
cleaned and polished rice daily.17 Steam-driven mills which were built later were
located more conveniently on Honolulu’s waterfront. Chinese-owned City Mill,
today one of Honolulu’s largest lumber and builders’ supply firms, was organized
in 1899 to set up a rice mill as one of its major investments. As late as 1929
it was milling 25,000 to 30,000 bags of paddy from independent rice growers
on Oahu as well as handling paddy from growers on Kauai.18 Outside Honolulu
many smaller mills were built in the chief rice-growing areas, usually under the
control of Chinese rice factors and large rice planters.
The factors controlled several rice plantations directly and many others in-
directly. Indirect control was exercised mainly through leases on rice lands and
financing of rice growers in return for a lien on the crop. Financing was done
directly with the growers or indirectly through credit to stores which made ad-
vances of goods and money to the growers.
Two accounts of rice agents and factors illustrate the careers of migrants
associated with the development of this industry in Hawaii. First the career of
Young Ah In:
Young Ah In (Y. Ahin) came to Hawaii from Chung Shan district in 1872
at the age of nineteen. For a while he worked as a truck gardener near Hon-
olulu. Rice cultivation appeared to be more profitable, however, so he started
the Tung Sun Wai Plantation at Palama with a number of relatives who had
come from the same village. Young is said to have imported the first pair of
water buffaloes from China to use as draft animals in the rice fields, being fi-
nanced in his venture by a Haole [Caucasian] whose Hawaiian princess-wife
owned the land which Young leased for rice.
49
From this beginning his interests in rice growing increased until he con-
trolled several hundred acres of rice, including about seven hundred acres at
Waikiki and Pawaa alone. Rice plantations which he controlled or for which
he was agent were located on Oahu at Palama, Waikiki, Moanalua, Halawa,
Waipio, Kalauao, Waipaau, and Kawaihapai; and on Kauai, at Hanalei. Two
rice mills were established, one in Palama and the other at Ewa. During the
eighties Young organized Chin Wo Co. in the Chinatown of Honolulu, a firm
through which the rice was exported or distributed to stores throughout the
Hawaiian Islands. This firm was one of the chief Chinese stores in Hon-
olulu for several decades and did an immense importing business, especially
of Chinese provisions and merchandise. Young also owned several smaller
stores in the vicinity of his rice plantations as well as one in Hilo, Hawaii.
Young’s wealth was increased by real estate activities, the building and
renting of stores and homes, located in districts in Honolulu into which the
Chinese were moving. At one time these rentals were said to amount to about
two thousand dollars per month. In his later years Young held interests in
many other businesses and enterprises and was once reputed to be among the
wealthiest of the Chinese in Hawaii.19
Another leading Chinese figure in the rice industry was Ching Shai:
Ching was a native of On Ting village, Chung Shan district, where he was
born in 1869. Several years before his birth an uncle, Wong Kwai, came to
Hawaii where with several Chings he formed a partnership which became the
eminent firm of Chulan & Co. Starting as a merchandising establishment this
company developed an immense importing and exporting, wholesaling and
retailing business. In addition it developed considerable interests in sugar
plantations and became one of the largest rice factors in the Islands.
Ching Shai came to Hawaii in 1882 and went to work as a field laborer
at ten dollars a month on a sugar plantation in Kohala, Hawaii, which at that
time was being operated by Chulan Kee. Two years later he was made a field
foreman, with a raise in pay to twelve dollars per month. His uncle found
him a promising youth and gave him hopes of rapid promotion in the firm. In
order to prepare for this possibility, he attended a night school conducted by
missionary workers in Kohala. His immediate interest in the school was to
learn English, since the Chulan Company’s plantation sold all its sugarcane
to a nearby mill owned by Americans.
Two years later he was taken into the office as a bookkeeper and
arrangements were made so that he could attend day school and do his work
in the office at night. Much of the money he earned during those early years
was sent back to the village to help his widowed mother and two sisters.
Late in 1890 Ching became a naturalized citizen of the Hawaiian king-
50
dom and shortly afterward he married a Chinese-Hawaiian girl, the daughter

of one of the assistant managers of the Chulan plantation.
After ten years in Hawaii, Ching visited China to see his mother, who
was ill, and to transact business for his uncle’s firm. During his stay, mar-
riages were arranged for his two sisters. A marriage was also arranged for
Ching. Upon his return to Hawaii in 1894, his Chinese wife was left in the
village with his mother.
Ching found that during his absence the plantation had been sold to the
American firm which owned the mill, and his uncle was heavily engaged in
the rice industry on Oahu. Wong, who was getting along in years and wanted
to retire, asked Ching to take over the management of his rice plantations and
rice mill at Punaluu, Oahu. The industry was prosperous and in addition to
sending money to his mother and wife in China, Ching was able to put aside
considerable savings. He opened a small grocery store in the Palama district,
carrying mainly Chinese goods which were sold to the large settlement of
Chinese farmers there. A trusted elderly Chinese man was put in charge of
the store. Some years later another store was opened in the Kakaako sec-
tion of Honolulu. Provisions and merchandise for the stores were imported
directly from China together with similar goods which were ordered for the
Chulan Company’s rice plantations, some of which were located on Oahu,
others on Kauai.
Ching’s largest and most successful undertaking was the establishment
of the Oahu Rice Mill, in Honolulu’s Chinatown, in 1908. Four relatives
were the other partners in the company. Starting on a moderate scale, the
firm rapidly grew until it became one of the controlling rice factors in the
whole industry. In an effort to deal more effectively with problems facing
the rice industry in Hawaii, Ching became one of the founders and most tire-
less workers in the Anglo-Chinese Rice Merchants’ Association. In 1915 he
made a trip at his own expense to Washington, D.C., to plead for a change
in the immigration laws enabling the entrance of Chinese who would work
on the rice plantations. During World War I, he served as a member of the
rice-distributing commission. His death occurred in 1919 while on a trip to
China with his family.20
A government official who surveyed the rice industry in 1890 estimated that
during the busy seasons one Chinese was employed for each two acres of rice,
concluding that 3,710 men were employed on the approximately 7,420 acres in
rice cultivation. Shortly after the turn of the century 5,643 Chinese were reported
to be engaged in rice production.21 This was at or near the peak of Chinese em-
ployment in this industry. After 1909 rice cultivation in Hawaii declined rapidly;
from 9,424 acres in rice in 1909, there were only 5,801 in 1919.22 In the 1916 pe-
tition of the United Chinese Society to the U.S. Congress to allow 30,000 Chinese
51
laborers to enter Hawaii, it was said that 7,098 acres of rice land had been aban-
doned for lack of labor.23 Even if Congress had acceded to the request, however,
competition from rice agribusiness in California would ultimately have forced the
additional laborers to go into other occupations or return to China. By 1933 over
45,000 tons of rice were imported from mainland United States—almost thirty
times the Hawaiian rice crop that year, and about twice the size of the largest
amount Hawaii had ever produced in one year.
By the late 1930s rice growing in Hawaii, so far as the Chinese were con-
cerned, was mainly a thing of the past. A few old Chinese men, here and there,
could still be seen planting, cultivating, harvesting, even flailing rice in the an-
cient way. A few believed that the old days when Chinese made so much money
in rice would return. In 1936 one elderly Chinese rice planter said that he had
learned at a Chinese temple that by 1939 rice would again be profitable; incense
burned daily before the shrine in his house. In the meantime, he was trying his
luck at raising taro.
Even before competition from California rice had made rice growing in
Hawaii unprofitable, Chinese rice planters had been subleasing or selling their
land to Japanese rice growers. A 1932 survey showed that 62 percent of the
Hawaii-grown rice was being cultivated by Japanese. At first the Japanese sold
their paddy to Chinese-owned rice mills; then, gradually, they took over the mills
too. Rice land that Chinese had leased from sugar plantations went mostly into
sugar production. Some rice land was used for taro growing and truck garden-
ing.24 Chinese who had been fortunate or foresighted enough to buy land for their
rice fields or mills and to hold on to it eventually found it profitable to put the
land to nonagricultural uses—especially land in the Waikiki, Manoa, Palama, and
Kakaako sections of Honolulu and areas bordering on Pearl Harbor.
Other Forms of Rural Enterprise

No other agricultural activity was so lucrative for the Chinese as the rice industry,
which in prosperous years produced a crop valued at more than $3 million. Nev-
ertheless, hundreds of Chinese immigrants engaged in many other agricultural
enterprises throughout the Islands. Near the towns, along the shore, in the low-
lands, up in the valleys, far up on the cooler, more temperate-climate slopes of
the mountains, the “ubiquitous bands” of Chinese farmers sought to wrest from
the land the wealth which had lured so many of them to Hawaii.
Plantation systems with agents and factors were developed in connection
with some of these activities, much as in the rice industry but on a smaller
scale. Some enterprises producing export commodities were brief episodes in the
general economic expansion, exploited temporarily and abandoned when the re-
sources or market failed. In 1847 Chinese farmers produced twenty thousand
52
barrels of Irish potatoes on leased land at Kula, on the cool slopes of Haleakala,
for export to California; but by the mid-1850s the potato boom had faded.25 In the
1850s other Chinese who had found an edible mushroom growing on dead tree
branches in rainy mountain areas began exporting this delicacy to Chinese buyers
in California and later to China. This enterprise lasted until the late 1880s; at its
peak in 1864 nearly 180 tons, valued at about $35,000, were exported.26 About
the same period Chinese were also involved in a brisk trade in pulu, a fibrous
material secured from the tree fern and certain other ferns and used especially in
mattresses until it was replaced by cotton.
A few other export commodities lasted longer and played a larger part in the
fortunes of the Chinese. Two of these were coffee and bananas. Throughout the
nineteenth century most attempts to grow coffee commercially in Hawaii, nearly
all failures, were made by Caucasians using Hawaiian, Chinese, and Japanese la-
bor. Gangs of Chinese laborers contracted to clear land for coffee planting. An
1898 report states that “the prevailing labor is Japanese, though natives, China-
men, and Portuguese are employed…. I found the planters preferred the Chinese
to the Japanese, because they are more tractable and work better without oversee-
ing.”27
By 1910 most coffee production had become concentrated in the Kona sec-
tion of the island of Hawaii; independent farmers, mostly Japanese migrants and
their families, were handling from five to fifteen acres of coffee on leased land.
Most of the storekeepers in Kona at this time were Chinese and a mutual arrange-
ment developed in which the farmers, low on capital, got their goods on credit
from the storekeepers, paying off their debts at the time of harvest.28 Into this
setup came the Hawaii Coffee Mill, established about 1906 by Chinese partners
in the Wing Hing Company, an import-export firm in Honolulu’s Chinatown. One
of Wing Hing Company’s main businesses became that of roasting, packaging,
and marketing coffee; in 1934 the firm was renamed Wing Coffee Company “to
give the cosmopolitan buyers an easier time with the name.”29 A branch of the
firm was opened in Hong Kong to assist in the import-export business. Hawaii
Coffee Mill, with its parent firm in Honolulu, was an important link in the chain
of business arrangements. Like other coffee mills of Kona it also supplied goods
on credit to stores in Kona dealing directly with coffee farmers—with the lien on
the crop bringing the green coffee to the mill and in turn to the coffee roasting
and marketing firm. Hawaii Coffee Mill, which was only one of several compet-
ing mills, went out of business in the early 1970s, although coffee is still packed
and sold under the Wing label.
Like coffee, bananas were at one time grown in Hawaii for export as well as
for local consumption, and for several years Chinese were active in producing,
exporting, and distributing this fruit locally. Chinese migrants, familiar with ba-
nana growing in their home villages,30 were employed as laborers on banana
plantations established in the 1880s and 1890s by Caucasian planters who were
53
taking advantage of the demand for bananas by California’s growing urban pop-
ulation. Nearly 20,000 bunches were exported in 1880; this output increased to
more than 120,000 bunches in 1896 and 280,000 in 1915.31 Competition from
Central American producers brought a decline in Hawaii’s banana exports, but
this was more than made up for by the local demand as Hawaii itself was rapidly
growing in population. Chinese were employed by Caucasian export firms as well
as by Caucasian-owned banana plantations. Lum Hoon, who worked for one of
the most successful of the banana exporters, E. L. Marshall, selected and marked
the banana bunches in the fields on Oahu to be exported, saw that they were
delivered to the warehouse in Honolulu in time to be loaded on ships for San
Francisco, and supervised the work at the warehouse.32 Most Chinese in the ba-
nana industry, however, simply leased plots of a few acres to grow bananas to be
peddled from house to house or sold to local stores. By the 1920s banana produc-
tion and marketing were being taken over largely by Japanese migrants and their
families.
During the twentieth century pineapples have been Hawaii’s second most
important agricultural export and the pineapple industry the second largest em-
ployer of agricultural laborers. This industry developed after Annexation had
cut off immigration of laborers from China, but a few hundred Chinese workers
who had come in during the 1880s and 1890s did move from sugar to pineapple
plantations during the early decades of this century. The boom in pineapple pro-
duction which came with the development of mechanized canning procedures
expanded the market of Chinese farmers who had been selling fresh fruit to local
consumers, for now they could readily sell much larger quantities to Caucasian-
owned canneries. Perhaps the most successful of these farmers was Au Young
(also known as On Young), who came from Toi Shan district to Hawaii in 1897.
By the 1920s, besides operating a general merchandise store at Wahiawa on
Oahu, he was producing pineapples on several hundred acres in that area. He ulti-
mately sold his pineapple holdings to California Packing Company for a reported
$350,000, as this firm moved toward controlling enough plantation acreage to
supply its pineapple cannery with all the fruit it could process.33 The pineapple
boom also resulted in one of the greatest business reverses experienced by Chi-
nese migrants. A wui (hui) of Chinatown businessmen decided in 1919 to get a
share in the pineapple boom by buying a cannery, obtaining control of several
hundred acres of land, and growing pineapples for their cannery. These ventures
failed and one man alone lost several hundred thousand dollars.34
Supplying the Local Market

As the Islands’ population grew, Chinese migrants took over or developed other
agricultural enterprises to meet local demands. One product in increasing demand
54
was poi made from taro. The basic food in the Hawaiians’ diet, it became popular
among residents of other ethnic backgrounds. Almost as soon as poi became a
marketable commodity, Chinese where active in cultivating taro, converting it
into poi, and distributing it to the stores.
Small partnerships of Chinese, mostly working under the fun kung and hop
pun systems, secured hundreds of acres of taro land which had been cultivated
for centuries by Hawaiians and prepared new paddies on low land that had previ-
ously been of little value. Chinese taro raisers and poi manufacturers were on all
the main islands, but most numerous on Oahu where the largest urban Hawaiian
population lived.
Few data are available concerning the total production and value of this com-
modity. For the years immediately preceding World War I the annual output of
taro was estimated at a value of from $400,000 to $500,000. In 1930, some 775
acres were in taro, with an output valued at $500,000 or more.
The following biographical sketch of a Chinese who rose from the position
of a taro cultivator to “Taro King” illustrates the development of the taro industry
by the Chinese and its relation to other enterprises undertaken by Chinese in
Hawaii:
Lum Yip Kee first came to Hawaii in 1884, at the age of nineteen, from Koon
Fah village in Duck Doo, Chung Shan district. For three and a half years he
worked as a taro planter in Manoa and Palolo valleys, sections of the Hon-
olulu district which did not develop as residential areas of the city until many
years later. Lum then returned to China in 1887 and shortly afterward was
married. A few years were spent in Saigon, in connection with a Chinese
firm there.
At the age of twenty-seven, Lum returned to Hawaii and engaged again
in the taro and poi business. During the next seven years he became the op-
erator of two taro plantations, one in Manoa Valley on the present site of the
University of Hawaii, the other nearer the sea, in Moiliili district. Relatives
and fellow villagers came from China and worked on his plantations. A “poi
factory” was set up on the Moiliili taro plantation. An importing and gen-
eral merchandise firm, Wing Tuck Chong, was also established with the main
store in the Chinatown of Honolulu and with two outside branches. During
the Chinatown fire following the 1899 plague, the main warehouse of the
firm was destroyed at a loss of $30,000, only some $10,000 of which was
returned by the government during the settlement of damage claims. About
this time Lum made his second trip to China, in order to transact business
with firms from whom he secured Chinese merchandise and to visit his wife
and family. The latter finally came to Hawaii in 1902.
A new store was established in the Aala section of the old Chinatown.
Being the only store in Honolulu run by a person from Koon Fah village, it
55
became a popular gathering place for Chinese from this and the neighboring
villages of Duck Doo district. Mrs. Lum was also of the Chang clan, which
was the most powerful clan of the district, and many of the clan members had
come to Hawaii. Later this store was moved into the heart of old Chinatown,
on Maunakea Street, where in 1925 it was destroyed by fire.
In 1905, together with a Chinese who became one of the leading figures
in the poi industry, Lum established the Oahu Poi Factory, by the 1930s the
largest in the Territory. With other Honolulu Chinese, he also set up the Hon-
olulu Poi Factory in 1913, and in 1915 founded the See Wo Poi Factory,
which at one time was the largest in the Islands. Through these three large poi
factories, Lum and his associates attained virtual control of the Honolulu poi
market. Several hundred acres of taro land at one time were under his con-
trol, either directly or indirectly through financial advances to Chinese taro
growers in return for a promise of their crop at harvest time. The taro lands
which he controlled were located mainly in Manoa Valley, Palolo Valley,
Moiliili—all in the Honolulu district—and at Kahaluu on windward Oahu.
Lum’s interests were not limited, however, to the taro and poi business
and to his stores. He acquired large interests in the rice industry. From 1913
to 1918 the Lung Doo Wai, which had large rice plantations and which acted
also as a rice factor, was managed by Lum and Yee Yap, who after several
years as a rice planter had become a prosperous merchant in Honolulu. Some
seven hundred acres of rice land in the Waikiki area of Honolulu were un-
der the control of the Lung Doo Wai, as well as other rice lands on Oahu.
Lum became one of the organizers and directors of the Chinese American
Bank in 1916; in 1922 he was the chief organizer of the Liberty Bank and
served as its president for eight years. He was one of the founders and for
years treasurer and director of the Aala Market, Ltd., where stalls were rented
to Chinese and Japanese butchers, fish dealers, grocers, and fruit and veg-
etable dealers. Capital in this market was held by both Chinese and Japanese.
Lum at one time was also treasurer of the Hawaii Suisan Kaisha, a Japan-
ese fishing organization started in 1922, two years after the founding of the
Aala Market. Other businesses in which Lum became especially interested
included the Hawaii Sales Company (musical instruments), L. Koon Chan
Building Co., Wai Yip Building Co., Toon Fat Building Co., Kauluwela Cot-
tage Co., United Chinese Trust Co., and Lum Yip Kee, Ltd., the latter a real
estate, investment, and holding corporation. Many acres of the land acquired
for taro and rice farming within Honolulu later became extremely valuable in
the family realty business as residential and commercial Honolulu extended
into these areas.35
By the 1930s taro growing had been taken over largely by Japanese and Ko-
rean migrants, but Chinese continued to receive income from taro by leasing land
56
to these new growers. During the thirties Chinese still controlled most of the poi
factories and the marketing of poi; the poi factories, however, were subsequently
taken over by others, mainly Japanese.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s Chinese throughout the Islands largely
controlled the production and sale of fruits and vegetables which were marketed
locally. Their truck farms, like the banana farms, were usually on small plots of
land in various locations suited to the growing requirements of different plants.
Many fruits and vegetables which Westerners desired could only be grown in
cooler climates such as those of Kula, Maui and Waimea, Hawaii; others could be
grown successfully in the warmer and wetter areas of the lowlands. In the latter
districts Chinese farmers could also grow the vegetables and some of the fruits
they had grown in their home villages, the demand for which increased as the
Chinese population grew. In time, other Asians and ultimately residents of all eth-
nic identities in Hawaii incorporated many of these vegetables into their diets.
Much the same sequence applied to the fruits which came into the market, such
as litchis, longans, pomelos, white limes, kumquats, loquats, and Chinese vari-
eties of mangoes and persimmons. Several flowers introduced from China were
also grown and marketed commercially for lei-makers and florists—the Chinese
jasmine (pikake), Chinese violet (pakalana), narcissus, lotus (and lotus root), and
Chinese varieties of chrysanthemum and gardenia.36
These commodities were not usually marketed through Chinese factors or
agents, since they required small capital and little credit; they did not have to
be processed before marketing and were often sold by peddlers, frequently the
farmers themselves, going from door to door. Nevertheless, storekeepers near
truck-farming areas located far from consumer centers (which might be on other
islands) commonly served as middlemen, giving credit as in the coffee industry.
Outside the towns Chinese found several other ways to try to make their for-
tune. Most widespread, on all the islands, was the raising and marketing of pigs,
chickens, and ducks and the sale of chicken and duck eggs. A few with the nec-
essary capital and initiative acquired ranch land on which they raised horses and
mules for sale and produced beef cattle for the meat markets; still others pros-
pered by operating dairies. Several hundred who came from coastal villages and
had experience as fishermen went into this occupation, catching and peddling
fish, eels, crabs, and lobsters. The more enterprising migrants eventually operated
stalls in the fish markets, sometimes employing other migrants to do the fishing.
Some, having more capital, bought or leased the fish ponds that had been built
along the shores hundreds of years earlier by the Hawaiians and had fallen into
disuse. These ponds were generally stocked with mullet—highly prized by Chi-
nese and in demand in the Chinese restaurants.
In still other ways migrants tried to wrest a good living, if not a hoped-for
fortune, from the resources of rural Hawaii: the agricultural lands, the mountains,
the sea. Many of them failed; some succeeded for a while until the natural re-
57
sources were exhausted or the markets disappeared; others got their start in these
ventures and moved on to more lucrative and longer-lasting enterprises. The va-
riety is quite impressive—it includes growing tobacco or cotton; making honey;
producing awa, the narcotic drink used by Hawaiians and others; making fire-
wood for sale to townspeople; digging wells; boring for artesian water; catching
whales off the Kona coast; catching sharks off Oahu. One very successful en-
terprise developed when a Chinese businessman, who had acquired a ranch of
several thousand acres for raising beef cattle, found an ohia forest on the property
and made a large amount of money from logging operations.37
Table 2 gives some indication of the extent to which the Chinese worked
at nonurban pursuits during the forty to fifty years when Chinese migrants were
most involved in them.38 These data do not differentiate between the migrant
and Hawaii-born generations of Chinese, but during the first three census peri-
ods, at least, almost all of those enumerated were migrants; moreover, migrants
still constituted a large proportion of those in nonurban agricultural and other
rural occupations in the later census periods. Table 2 shows that in 1884 some
13,200 Chinese were in rural occupations, and during the 1890s four-fifths of the
employed Chinese males were engaged in developing Hawaii’s rural resources.
But at these same times less than half the rural Chinese workers were on sugar
plantations. Following Annexation, with the subsequent decrease of the Chinese
migrant group and the increase of the Hawaii-born Chinese group, the total num-
ber and also the proportion of Chinese in these nonurban occupations showed a
steady decline. By 1930 they made up only about a fourth of the total Chinese
males employed.
Table 2
Chinese Men Engaged in Rural Occupations in Hawaii: 1884–1930
Year Number of Chinese Number of Chinese Percentage Number of Chinese

Male Agriculturists and Males Reporting Employees on Sugar
Rural Laborers a Occupations Plantationsb
1884 13,200 — — 5,600
1890 10,400 13,067 80 4,000
1896 13,300 16,610 80 6,000
1910 7,216 13,742 53 2,800
1920 5,026 11,110 45 2,300
1930 2,143 8,571 25 800
Note: Unless otherwise specified, data for this and subsequent tables are based on government cen-
58
sus reports for the Hawaiian kingdom (prior to 1896), the Republic of Hawaii (1896) and the United
States (from 1900 onwards). Classification of occupational data reported in tables prior to 1940 was
compiled by the writer and Dr. Doris L Glick. Since comparability of totals from census period to
census period is at best approximate, percentages should be regarded as suggesting general trends
only.
a Data are allocated in terms of the treatment in the text. Allocations are made as consistently as
possible from census to census.
b Data are approximated from nearest dates available to correspond with the month each census
was taken.
A typical pattern of these rural enterprises was a growth in the number of

Chinese engaged in them, achievement of dominance in the market, and then a
decline in the number of Chinese participants as other ethnic groups succeeded
them, especially in production of the commodity. Some migrants spent a whole
lifetime at these pursuits; in some cases the children of migrants continued the
nonurban occupations in which their fathers had been successful. But data in the
table indicate that by 1920 the majority of the Chinese in the Islands had turned
to other occupations. It becomes appropriate, therefore, to consider the urban oc-
cupations which replaced those followed by so many of the migrants in the rural
areas of the Islands.
59
CHAPTER 4
On the Urban Frontier
CHINESE who migrated to Hawaii before Annexation could not have imagined
the variety of occupations the Island economy would offer them. Nor indeed was
it possible for most of those on the Hawaiian frontier in the nineteenth century
to foresee the complex occupational structure that would develop with the ex-
pansion of Hawaii’s economy, its eventual incorporation into the economic and
political system of the United States, and its integration into a world economy.
Compared with more developed industrial areas, the occupational structure
on the Hawaiian frontier was simple. Fully four-fifths of its workers during the
1880s were employed in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, mostly in rural areas.
Above them in the economic hierarchy was a small stratum of better-paid crafts-
men and proprietors of small businesses; at the top was a still smaller number
of relatively high-income entrepreneurs and professional people. Even though
most Chinese migrants who came before Annexation entered at the bottom of
the economic order as unskilled workers, their work contributed to the expansion
of Hawaii’s economy and to the resulting increases in the number and types of
occupations opening up. The occupations becoming available had a preference
scale based primarily on their relative remuneration, especially during the earlier
decades of the migrant period. In Hawaii, where traditionally there have been no
rigid racial or ethnic barriers to occupational movement, Chinese migrants could
move upward readily on this scale.
While they were moving into new positions in Hawaii’s expanding division
of labor, most of the migrants were still outsiders in the emerging Hawaiian so-
ciety. Generally, the occupations they were moving into were of the kinds that
met the needs of other ethnic groups but required very little in the way of per-
sonal contacts. Moreover, many if not most of these jobs were not wanted by the
Hawaiians or the relatively small number of Caucasians in the Islands. This sort
of situation, in which members of different ethnic or racial groups play different
roles in a division of labor without becoming integrated into a common society,
has been labeled “symbiotic” by sociologists who borrowed the term from the
natural sciences. Just as different species living in the same environment can form
60
a mutually beneficial ecological pattern, different ethnic groups living in the same
geographical area may perform roles that supplement one another. In this sense,
many of the Chinese migrants entered symbiotic occupations in which they car-
ried out tasks that were beneficial to the other groups in the society while still
leading personal lives largely within their own group.1
Trade and Opportunity

From the beginning of their experience in Hawaii Chinese tended to gravitate into
trade, as they have commonly done wherever they have gone as migrants. Trade,
as sociologists and anthropologists well know, is almost universally the main, and
sometimes the only, basis upon which persons of different ethnic groups make
contact with one another. As Louis Wirth said in discussing the Jews as traders in
the Gentile world, “trade relationships are possible when no other form of con-
tact between two peoples can take place.”2 Utterly different in language, religion,
customs, and historical background from either the indigenous Hawaiians or the
Western foreigners, Chinese traders played an important part in the new economic
and social order that was developing in the Islands. In the relatively impersonal
role of the trader the Chinese migrant could carry on a successful business, even
become a wealthy man, without acquiring more than a small part of the culture of
the people among whom he was living and with whom he was trading.
Chinese pioneers such as those in Samsing & Co. and Hungtai Co. who came
to Hawaii in the first half of the nineteenth century had quickly found opportu-
nities as traders. Of the 8 Chinese among the 315 foreigners in Honolulu whose
occupations were listed in an 1847 register, 5 were proprietors of stores. Only
seven years later 73 commercial licenses were issued to Chinese, including 3 for
wholesaling businesses, 3 for retail firms, 32 for “hawking and peddling,” 2 for
“plantations,” 2 for “horses used for hire,” and 1 for a boat. Since many of these
licenses were issued to firms with two or more partners, the number is striking.
The total Chinese population, all males, could not have been much more than 375
at the time, and this number would have included the 275 to 290 laborers and
“houseboys” who had been brought to Hawaii in 1852 under five-year contracts.
Apparently most of the noncontract Chinese in Hawaii were engaged in trade.
A common beginning for the Chinese trader, especially one who came to
Hawaii without capital or family connections to Chinese already established in
business, was that of rural peddler or urban “hawker.” Several Chinese contract
laborers made their first move off the plantation by becoming peddlers in rural ar-
eas. Probably some of them began peddling their own garden produce or fish they
had caught themselves even while still working on the plantation. As in many ar-
eas with a scattered rural population, poor roads, and no ready access to stores,
peddlers in Hawaii met a real need, and for several reasons the Chinese migrants
61
were well suited to this role. In the 1930s a young Hawaii-born Chinese described
how Chinese migrants made the transition from agriculturist to trader and store-
keeper:
Even though the Chinese emigrant has been a farmer, or a worker around the
village, nearly every one of them has had some experience at bargaining. I
know, for instance, that my folks used to go into Macao about once a week to
peddle their produce. Peddling has been taken up as a sort of secondary occu-
pation. Many of the families have little or no land; there may not be enough
land to keep the whole family busy. Some of the individual members will
try selling something in order to make some money. When they go overseas,
many of them soon get into peddling and hawking…. The peddler gets a little
money and buys a box of fruit, some peanuts, and then carries them around
selling them. When he has been at it a while, and has saved some money, he
gets a cart and increases his stock. Eventually he may set up a small shop.3
The experience of bartering in the markets of South China was useful to

many migrants in nineteenth-century Hawaii when much of the rural trade with
Hawaiians was on a barter rather than a cash basis. Moreover, Chinese in the rural
districts were outsiders who could strike bargains without having to take into ac-
count the personal claims to which Hawaiians were subject when trading among
themselves. Another of the Chinese peddler’s advantages was that he knew or
could make contact with Chinese merchants in the larger towns of the Islands and
could exchange products collected in the rural districts for goods as well as for
cash.
George N. Wilcox, the retired manager of Grove Farm on Kauai, recalled in
1930 the role of the Chinese peddlers on Kauai in the 1860s when he had the only
store in the Lihue district:
I kept that store for a while…. People had to go a long way to get things
if they came there…. That was when the Chinese went about Kauai as ped-
dlers. Since there was but the one store, they would get what they could carry,
or take some little cart, and peddle their goods from place to place. When
night came, they would put up at the best place they could find. You know
the Hawaiians are very hospitable. The Chinaman would pick out the biggest
house he could find and simply go there and put up for the night…. It was
the peddlers who later started other stores on the island on sites leased from
Hawaiians.4
Carrying his small stock of goods into remote Hawaiian villages, the peddler
was the middleman in an arrangement that was mutually advantageous to the
three main ethnic groups in the economy—the Chinese themselves, the Hawai-
62
ians, and the Caucasians. Through these small trading activities many Chinese
were able to accumulate the money they sought either to return to their home vil-
lages in China or to establish themselves in more permanent businesses in the
Islands. The Hawaiians could exchange their produce for the foreign goods they
were learning to enjoy, while the Hawaiian government received added revenues
through license fees and taxes on the peddlers. The Caucasian businessmen, espe-
cially the wholesalers, profited from the spread of a commercial order throughout
the Islands as indigenous Hawaiians were more and more drawn into the new
money economy.
Even in the larger towns, such as Honolulu and Hilo, the Chinese peddler
with his carrying pole remained a familiar sight well into the twentieth century.
Before the proliferation of neighborhood grocery stores, housewives in the grow-
ing residential areas bought most of their fresh food from peddlers. A writer in
1893 mentioned the advantage to the householder of having peddlers bringing
produce to the house “instead of having to trudge off in the early morning to the
market for their breakfast supply…. [Now] he will be greeted by plodding John
Chinaman, borne down with the weight of a pair of baskets laden with a supply
of all the Hawaiian and half the foreign catalogue of green groceries, with some-
thing in the fruit line, additional, half the time.”5
One outstandingly successful Chinese migrant who moved from the plan-
tation into peddling and then into increasingly successful businesses was Chun
Hoon. In 1961 the Chun-Hoon family was featured as an “Island success story”
in a publication of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii:
The father came here seventy-four years ago [1887] to work as a sugar
plantation laborer. Today his fifteen children are business and professional
people, all well educated, all prominent in community affairs. Chun Hoon
did not stay on the plantation long—only the three years necessary to fulfill
his contract. Making use of the English he had learned during his short time
in Hawaii, Chun Hoon went into business for himself. He was a peddler in
those early days, a familiar sight to housewives in the Nuuanu, Makiki, and
Manoa valleys. For he called from door-to-door, selling the wares he carried
in baskets that swung from the ends of a bamboo pole.
Chun Hoon was an honest, friendly young merchant whose business ex-
panded enough to warrant a small shop at the corner of Union and Hotel
St. Aided by his wife, Lee Oi, whom he married in 1895, Chun Hoon grew
from a small retailer to an exporter of pineapples and bananas. At the time
of his death in 1935, he was the sole supplier of fruits and vegetables to
the U.S. Army in Hawaii. Chun Hoon not only sold fruits and vegetables,
but he owned the fields from which his produce came. The family’s retail
outlets also grew during the years and today include Chun Hoon and Every-
body’s Super Markets, Chun Hoon Pharmacy, a drive-in, and Chun Hoon
63
Dress Shop.6
Not all the Chinese retailers started out as peddlers, of course; there were
several other avenues by which they went into business. Some of them worked
first for firms owned by Caucasians or Chinese; some started as partners with
fellow clan members or other heung li; some saved up money while working at
other occupations and then invested it in small stores which they and their fam-
ily operated. However it came about, the number of retail businesses owned and
operated by Chinese migrants grew steadily in the latter part of the nineteenth
century.
In the twelve-year period 1872–1884, the number of retail licenses issued to
Chinese quadrupled from 103 to 412. Over half the stores licensed in 1872, 1878,
and 1884 were outside of Honolulu, unlike the Caucasian-owned stores which
were heavily concentrated in that city. The Chinese stores were scattered here and
there in rural settlements, villages, and plantation towns throughout the Islands.
On the island of Kauai, for example, the seventeen Chinese stores in 1878 were in
eight different communities; the forty-two on the island of Hawaii were in at least
twenty-six communities. Often the Chinese store was the only one in a large dis-
trict and typically it was a general store. One “Kimo (Pake)” advertised in 1884
that he was a “Dealer in Groceries, Provisions, Dry Goods, Clothing, Crockery,
Glassware, Cutlery, Harness, Saddles, and every description of General Merchan-
dise” at Hawi, Kohala, Hawaii.7 Store proprietors often provided other services
besides selling merchandise, as can be seen in this 1897 advertisement by a Chi-
nese storekeeper whose surname was Tom but who did business as “Awana”:8
Awana,
Dry Goods, Groceries, Hats, Shoes,
General Merchandise
Beef
Pork Meats Mutton

Poultry
Island Produce.
Blacksmith Shop.
Best Horse Shoeing in Maui.
Restaurant—Excellent Meals Served on Short Notice.
Makawao, Maui, H.I.
For several decades the Chinese steadily increased their share of the retail
business of the Islands. During the 1866–1889 period, while the total number of
64
retail licenses issued in Hawaii more than tripled (196 to 626), the number issued
to Chinese increased more than seven times (54 to 393), with the Chinese retail-
ers’ share of the licenses growing from 28 to 63 percent.
Many Chinese retail ventures relied on the partnership system to bring to-
gether capital and personnel. The same attitudes that had given rise to small
cooperative enterprises in agriculture carried over into commercial ventures. In
addition to those who started the business, partners often included employees
who acquired shares after working for the firm for some time. The regular income
of an individual partner in such a business might not have been much above that
of a laborer or agriculturist. According to two Chinese migrants writing in 1900,
“a high-class merchant drew a salary of $40 a month; a middle-class merchant,
$30; and a low-class merchant, $20.”9 However, a partner leaving a firm after
many years might receive several hundred dollars, or even several thousand, for
his share.
By about 1910 the number of Chinese retail dealers reached a peak (1,067)
and declined slowly during the next twenty years to 996. After constituting a ma-
jority of the retail dealers for over a quarter of a century, their proportion declined
to less than one-third by 1930. Many Chinese had risen in the occupational scale
through the medium of trade; so did later immigrant groups who also had been
brought in at the bottom of the economic order as unskilled workers on planta-
tions. Japanese immigrants, the next large group brought into the Islands, moved
into the retail field just as the Chinese had done. Even though the actual number
of Chinese retailers had not greatly decreased by 1930, their percentage among
all retail dealers had declined steadily since 1890. This decline was particularly
marked in the rural areas, villages, and small towns of the Islands where Chinese
migrants had done most of the retail business for several decades. By 1910 they
made up only 39 percent of the retailers outside of Honolulu, only 30 percent in
1920, and only 20 percent in 1930. This reduction was concurrent with the de-
crease in the numbers of Hawaiians and Chinese in the nonurban districts and the
great increase there of immigrants and immigrant families of other ethnic groups,
such as the Japanese, Koreans and Filipinos. Members of these groups who left
plantation work during these decades were following the same course as the ear-
lier Chinese: going into peddling and establishing small stores. The converse of
this pattern was the concentration of Chinese businesses in Honolulu, where 53
percent of all Chinese retailers were located in 1910, 63 percent in 1920, and 70
percent in 1930.
Even though the Chinese share of the total retail business in the Islands
declined after 1890, retailing occupied a steadily increasing proportion of the
Chinese employed male population. By 1930 there were four and a half times
as many Chinese retailers as would have been statistically expected if the oc-
cupational distribution among Chinese males had been exactly like that of the
employed male population of Hawaii as a whole. The number of Chinese sales-
65
men and clerks in stores also grew steadily during the forty years from 1890 to
1930 (164 to 809). From 1896 to 1930 Chinese males were increasingly over-
represented in these occupations; by 1930 their occupational index10 had reached
a high of three and a third times statistical parity. Nevertheless, their propor-
tion of the total number of persons in these occupations began to decline in
the decade between 1920 and 1930, when Hawaii-born members of other ethnic
groups—especially Japanese—began coming to maturity and entering the retail
field in larger numbers than the Chinese.
Other Symbiotic Occupations

Many of the other occupations entered by the migrants fulfilled the needs of other
groups who did not want such work, while not demanding of the Chinese much
knowledge of the other groups’ cultures. Among these occupations were those
of laundrymen; tailors, dressmakers, and shoemakers; restaurant and café pro-
prietors, cooks, waiters, and bakers; house servants, gardeners, and “hostlers”
(stablemen). As on other frontiers with a scarcity of women, many tasks tradition-
ally carried out by women were performed by men—and by men of a different
cultural group with a lower standard of living than those who wanted the services.
Dressmaking, laundering, and domestic service, for example, were not typically
male occupations in either Chinese or Western societies, but many migrants de-
cided that such jobs were preferable to agricultural or other manual labor. During
the migrant period most such occupations called for painstaking handwork but
little capital or equipment so they could be undertaken by migrants who did not
have the means to start other businesses.
Laundrymen
The demand for laundry workers rose with the growth of an urban population in
the Islands.11 By the 1870s, it seems, commercial laundering was done almost en-
tirely by Chinese. By 1880 public concern about the way Chinese laundries were
operated led to the passage of an act placing “all laundries and wash houses” un-
der the control of the Board of Health and requiring that laundering “for hire” be
done in buildings erected by the government and supervised by health authori-
ties.12 The census of 1884 enumerated 325 Chinese “washermen” in Honolulu,
76 in the rest of the Hawaiian kingdom, and no laundry workers of any other eth-
nic identity. The business directory of the Islands in 1896 listed 40 laundries in
Honolulu, 4 in Hilo, and 5 on Maui; all, except one in Honolulu, were operated
by Chinese.
For many migrants laundry work was only a convenient temporary base pro-
viding shelter, income, and contacts while they looked for better opportunities.
66
Lee Chau, who came to Hawaii from a See Yup district shortly before Annexa-
tion, was one such migrant. Through other migrants he got a job in a laundry in
Hilo. The work was hard and distasteful, the hours were long, and he soon saw
he was getting nowhere. After about six months he left the laundry to become a
cook for the partners and employees in a nearby Chinese business. His experience
in this shop eventually enabled him to open his own store in Hilo. From retailing
Lee branched out into wholesaling and by the 1920s his firm, Kwong See Wo,
was one of the largest Chinese businesses on the island of Hawaii, grossing about
$250,000 a year. When he was interviewed in 1936 he said that many of his cus-
tomers were Caucasians and other non-Chinese.
The number of Chinese working as laundrymen steadily decreased after
1910. Nevertheless, they continued to be overrepresented in this type of work for
some time, with six times statistical parity in the Islands as a whole and more
than four times in Honolulu in 1920. By 1930 women were taking over many of
the laundry jobs. By 1950 most laundry work in the Islands was done by women,
few of whom were Chinese; only 2 percent of the workers in this occupation were
Chinese males. With the passage of the migrant generation, there was no longer
any basis in the Islands for the old stereotype of the Chinese as laundryman.
Domestic Servants
Another occupation in which Chinese migrant men once had a large role was
domestic service. Two of the eight Chinese in Honolulu in 1847 were servants.
Twenty of the first boatload of 195 Chinese imported in 1852 signed contracts to
work as “houseboys” for five years at two dollars a month. In succeeding years
other Chinese house servants were obtained under the contract labor system; 17
of a boatload of 188 Chinese imported under the auspices of the Board of Im-
migration in 1870 signed contracts to work at seven dollars per month as house
servants, most of them for Caucasians. By far the greater portion of the Chinese
men who worked as servants, however, entered the occupation as free employees
after having worked, especially as cooks, on the plantations or in Chinese camps
in rural Hawaii. A Chinese who migrated to Hawaii in 1884 indicates that some
came as free immigrants with the intention of securing household employment at
the start: “My oldest brother went to Tan Heung Shan [Hawaii] in 1879 because
my cousin was there. Two years later my second brother went. They wrote home
telling my parents that they were working for a white devil as cooks and as house-
keepers. They wanted me to go too because it was a good place to make money
and learn fan wah [“the foreigners’ language”].”13 The census of 1884 included
a special tabulation of Chinese, Hawaiians, and “other nationalities” in Honolulu
in occupations “other than agriculturalists and contract laborers.” For the cate-
gory of “servants,” the census listed 100 Chinese, 46 Hawaiians, and 23 of other
nationalities. In the same order, the figures for cooks were 151, 9, and 72, for gar-
67
deners, 27, 26, and 81. Over one-fifth of the 1,283 Chinese in the occupational
tabulations were in domestic service categories.
In their large number of immigrant men and the exceptionally small number
of immigrant women in domestic service, Chinese differed radically from other
immigrant groups. Until the aging Chinese migrant servants retired, occupational
indices show increasing overrepresentation of Chinese men in this occupation.
The index for 1930 is the highest for any of the occupations dealt with in this
chapter except for laundrymen in 1920. However, their share of the total num-
ber of jobs in domestic service decreased as later immigrant groups brought more
women and established families more quickly than had the Chinese—especially,
at first, the Portuguese and Japanese. While non-Chinese families who employed
cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, and other servants during the latter part of the
nineteenth century probably depended largely upon Chinese migrant men, by
1910 only one-fifth of the 5,317 servants (male and female) were Chinese men.
By 1930 they were only 12 percent of the total and by 1940 only 1 percent—86
men in a total of 8,520. Obviously, as the migrant Chinese servants retired, they
were not replaced by Hawaii-born Chinese males.
The tendency for Chinese men to remain in service to one family for many
years was seen by their employers as evidence of loyalty, devotion, and concern
for the welfare of the employer and his family. It was commonly said of a Chinese
servant that he had become “a part of the family.” Not infrequently such servants
received rewards beyond their regular wages. Some of the earliest Chinese wives
to come to the Islands were brought at the expense of employers of Chinese ser-
vants; the servants’ children were often well educated, even in universities and
graduate schools in the continental United States, or secured preferred, well-paid
positions through their parent’s employer.14 Unmarried servants were sometimes
pensioned and returned to their native villages after years of service.15 Neverthe-
less, the life histories of many of those who remained unmarried, or who could
not bring their families to Hawaii, are rather pathetic. These are stories of hope-
ful migration, subsequent addiction to gambling or opium, improvident manhood
and loss of ambition, substitution of the employers’ families for their own, and
increasing dependence upon the benevolence of permissive employers. Such his-
tories are similar to those of the migrants who never left the plantations and
depended upon plantation paternalism for security in their declining years. A Chi-
nese servant whose life followed this pattern was described to the writer in 1936
by his former employer:
“Cooky” was with us for ten years. He was an excellent cook. He was a
crackerjack—if anything went wrong about the house, Cooky could fix it,
was mechanically inclined, had a good brain up here. We paid him forty dol-
lars a month for doing everything—all the cooking, housework, laundry, yard
work, and the like.
68
One thing we could not do, though, was give him all his pay—if we did,
the next day it would be all gone and he would soon be around asking for
more: “Pay ahead; next time, cut,” he would say. We got so we would only
give him two or three dollars at a time. I have the habit, after finishing my
lunch, of lying down on the lounge for a while. Cooky would come in: “You
give me free dolla, huh?” If I gave him some money he would go back to the
kitchen, clean things up a little faster than usual, and pretty soon he would
disappear. We wouldn’t see any more of him for several hours. We supposed
that he went down to Chinatown and gambled all his money away. We never
suspected that he smoked opium. He always stayed in the little house out in
the back yard and we never went in there.
As the time went on and on and he was always broke, we got quite con-
cerned about what would happen to him when he got too old to work. Finally
we told him that it was clear he couldn’t work many years longer and that he
would have to begin saving money. To make sure that he did so, we there-
after laid some of his wages aside and we paid him a good interest on the
money saved. He said he wanted to go back to China whenever he quit work.
[Cooky hadn’t been back for forty years; meantime his wife and two daugh-
ters had died. He had no close relatives left, but he wanted to go back.]
Finally Cooky got sick. We took him to our doctor who said that some
of the arteries leading into the heart were enormously enlarged, that Cooky
might live a long while, again he might suddenly drop dead.
Cooky told us one of his friends had told him about a firm in China
which promised big returns on investment, and wanted us to turn the money
over to him so he could invest it. We were afraid of that, however, and finally
convinced him that it would be best for us to send his money to our rela-
tive in Canton, which was not far from his village, and that A—– would be
glad to be his banker. After buying his ticket and giving him some spending
money for along the way, we sent the rest to A–— and instructed him to give
out the money in small amounts at a time.
So Cooky went. He had saved, or rather we had saved for him, about
$180. It seemed a shame, too—for ten years he had been making $480 a year,
and from presents, tips from our friends, and the like he got around $500 a
year, in addition to room, board, and lots of cast-off clothes—he never had to
buy clothes. He could have saved quite a large part of that $5,000 if he had
planned better—let alone all the money he made before he came to work for
us. Opium had taken most of it. We heard that he bought the second-grade
stuff—the scrapings from opium that had already been smoked.
Cooky came to A–— in Canton several times to get money. Sometimes
he arrived like a “big” man, in a sedan chair, with two coolies carrying him.
Once he asked for $100 to buy himself a wife: “Not a Number One wife,
Number Two kind all right.” Another time he wanted money to buy a house
69
in the village. It seems the house had been passed down to a cousin of his
who was willing to sell it…. A–— visited him in his village once. He found
Cooky smoking opium. The villagers didn’t like it—they had been trying to
prevent opium smoking in the village, but there he was, hard at it.
Barbers
In China barbering was a despised occupation. Sons of barbers, no matter how
talented, were not allowed to compete in the imperial examinations.16 Although
22 of the 34 barbers in Honolulu reported in the 1884 census were Chinese, the
migrants did not try to fill the many positions for barbers that opened up with
the increasing urbanization of Hawaii’s population. Of the 76 barbers listed in the
1896 directory only 21 were Chinese; in 1910 there were only 43 Chinese among
the 393 “barbers, hairdressers, and manicurists”; in 1920, 23 out of 537; in 1930,
only 13, including for the first time a Chinese woman, of a total of 883. In 1950
the number of Chinese women had increased to 49, in a total of 1,103, but only 2
Chinese males were in this category. In all census periods from 1910 to 1950 the
Chinese were very much underrepresented.
Food Service Workers and Owners

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public eating places were in great
demand by the large number of familyless men among the Caucasian and other
resident and transient foreigners in Hawaii. Few Caucasians or Hawaiians op-
erated restaurants during that period, although most of the saloon keepers were
Caucasians. It was mainly the Chinese who met the demand for food service, es-
pecially in the port towns. Chinese migrants who had cooked for fellow workers
on sugar and rice plantations and in Chinese-owned stores, laundries, and other
businesses found they could turn this experience to more profitable use. Tarn
Fong was one of these migrants:
Tarn Fong was born in Wong Leong Doo, Chung Shan district, in 1876.
There were four children in the family—two sons and two daughters, Ah
Fong being the oldest. His grandfather had been a teacher and had given the
children considerable training. Ah Fong attended school for ten years, until
he was about nineteen. His parents arranged to get a wife for him, but before
the wedding date the girl died. This was considered a very unlucky omen,
and Ah Fong decided to come to the Hawaiian Islands. He arrived with a
group of over one hundred laborers in 1898.
Upon arrival, he and about ten others signed a contract for three years to
work for the W–—Plantation on Oahu at $12.50 per month. During part of
70
these three years he was a cook in the Chinese camp. When the contract ex-
pired, he decided to quit the plantation and to work in a restaurant as a cook.
Ah Fong accordingly went to Honolulu, where he worked in a “coffee shop”
owned by a relative on King Street at the edge of the downtown district. He
had free lodging and meals at the shop and received at the start four dollars
per week.
He liked the work as cook, but at the end of five years he decided to
work for himself and succeeded in securing a position in a prominent Haole
home in Nuuanu Valley; beginning at nine dollars per week, his wages were
raised to twelve and later to fifteen dollars a week. He stayed with this family
three years. He then worked in a Haole home at Waikiki for many years.
In the early 1930s Ah Fong served as second cook in one of the Hon-
olulu schools, earning thirteen dollars per week. Being laid off—he was an
opium smoker—he secured jobs as cook in various downtown restaurants,
shifting from one to another. Finally his health became such that he was un-
able to obtain any more work.17
Between the 1850s and the turn of the century, the majority of the “vict-
ualling” licenses were issued to Chinese. In 1866 Chinese had 58 percent of these
licenses and 85 percent in 1889.18 They operated all of the 19 “coffee saloons,”
42 of the 48 restaurants, and 10 of the 18 bakeries in Honolulu listed in the 1896
directory, as well as 32 of the 39 “coffee saloons,” 19 of the 23 restaurants, and
7 of the 8 bakeries in the rest of the Islands. In 1910, although they were no
longer so dominant in the food business, 59 percent of the male restaurant, café,
and lunchroom keepers were still Chinese. By that time Japanese migrants leav-
ing agricultural work had begun to cut into Chinese control of this field. Twenty
years later Chinese men made up only 31 percent of the male proprietors in food
service and by 1950 their proportion had declined to 22 percent.19 Throughout
this period, however, Chinese men continued to be statistically overrepresented
in this field as shown by the occupational indexes—3.9 in 1910, 4.9 in 1930, and
still above 3 in 1950.
Two well-known Chinese restaurants started in Honolulu by Chinese mi-
grants are illustrative—one in the Chinatown section, the other in the Waikiki
tourist area. Wo Fat Chop Suey, Ltd., at the corner of Hotel and Maunakea
Streets, claims to be “the oldest chop sui house in Hawaii.” In 1885 six migrants
from Chung Shan district joined to start the Chinese restaurant and pastry shop
which since the 1930s has been known as “Wo Fat.” After the original founders
died, several of their sons continued to operate the restaurant along with their
other business interests. In 1937 two prominent Chinese, Chang Nee Sun, son-in
law of one of the founders, and Henry Awa Wong (for years known locally as
“Mayor of Chinatown”), joined Leong Han and Charles Tim Lee, each a son of
one of the founders, and with new capital they constructed a three-story building
71
which was expanded in the 1950s to increase seating capacity to a thousand per-
sons. Wo Fat is a popular location for banquets of Chinese organizations and for
wedding receptions within the Chinese community, and it is patronized by both
Chinese and non-Chinese who like Cantonese cooking.20
The most colorful, though ultimately not the most successful, of the Chinese
immigrant chefs and restaurant proprietors was Chong Pang Yat, who portrayed
himself as “Me P. Y. Chong” in pidgin English advertisements. Born in the 1890s
in Shekki, Chung Shan district, he was brought to Hawaii by his father, Chong
Park Shun, who during the early decades of this century in Honolulu was a
teacher and principal in Chinese-language schools as well as editor of a Chinese-
language newspaper.
Starting as chef and manager of a small Chinese restaurant in Honolulu,
Chong Pang Yat soon gained a reputation as a chef possessing unusual culinary
skills. With a flair for publicity and self-promotion, he attracted financial backing
from both Chinese and non-Chinese supporters. This backing enabled him to es-
tablish and to expand “Lau Yee Chai,” which became the most publicized and
popular Chinese restaurant in the Waikiki area in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It
was the first Chinese restaurant in Honolulu to use elaborate Chinese architecture,
interior design, and decor to attract customers looking for Chinese atmosphere
as well as Chinese food. His overly optimistic and expansive plans led him into
bankruptcy, however, and his restaurant was closed.21
Chinese in the restaurant business actually more than doubled in number be-
tween 1930 and 1950 and the trend has continued. With the popularity of Chinese
food among Hawaii’s residents of all ethnic groups, as well as among the in-
creasing number of tourists, Chinese restaurants have multiplied. Most of today’s
Chinese restaurants are owned and managed by American citizens of Chinese an-
cestry, although a substantial proportion of the cooks are Chinese aliens who have
migrated to Hawaii since 1950. One change in the Chinese restaurant picture that
has occurred since World War II is the greater availability of Chinese cuisines
other than Cantonese, reflecting the difference between the older Chinese migra-
tion, almost entirely from Kwangtung, and the later migration from other regions
of China.
Employment of Chinese as waiters has fluctuated with changes in the restau-
rant business in Hawaii. In the latter part of the nineteenth century most waiters
were Chinese migrants; as late as 1910, some 61 percent of the male waiters were
still Chinese, but their proportion declined as the Chinese share of the restau-
rant business in the Islands decreased. At the same time the proportion of women
in this occupation increased. In 1910 women filled only about one-fourth of the
positions and less than half in 1920. This share rose to 61 percent in 1930 and
more than 90 percent in 1950. For several decades, however, relatively few of the
women working as waitresses were Chinese—none in 1910, less than 4 percent
of the total in 1920, only 9 percent in 1930. In recent years Chinese women have
72
outnumbered Chinese men waiters in Chinese restaurants, and they also work in
other restaurants and fast food places.22
A Transition Phase
The decreasing proportion of Chinese men in most types of employment dis-
cussed so far in this chapter strongly suggests that overrepresentation in symbi-
otic occupations was only a transition phase in the experience of the Chinese in
Hawaii. They were the occupations in which newcomers could find economic re-
wards while unprepared to participate fully in Hawaiian society at large. It was
not until other immigrant groups followed the Chinese off the plantations that
the Chinese faced competition in these fields. However, Chinese migrants who
had become familiar with the Western values and practices gaining ground in
Hawaii, especially the migrants who had Hawaii-born and Western-educated chil-
dren, tended increasingly to move from these occupations into others that were
higher on the economic scale, socially more acceptable in the status order emerg-
ing in Hawaii, and more involved in the Islands’ multicultural social system.
The opportunities for occupational mobility on the Hawaiian frontier pre-
sented a great contrast to the occupational continuity of the migrants’ home
villages, where kinsmen carried on the same occupations generation after gener-
ation. Labor for individual wages was uncommon in the villages, and money (as
distinct from land, buildings, and other tangible property) had only a small part
in family and clan life. In Hawaii, instead of continuity and submission to cus-
tom there was mobility and personal decision. Staying on the same job or with
the same employer indefinitely suggested lack of ambition and want of foresight.
Most migrants had their first experience with money of their own after arriving in
the Islands; from the beginning they worked for wages or calculated anticipated
earnings in dollars. In the early decades a migrant’s status was judged primarily
on how much money he had accumulated, no matter how, but as the migrants re-
mained in the Islands they came to recognize the relative social status, as well as
the relative remuneration, of different occupations within the Western economic
structure and value system. Skilled jobs, clerical and sales positions, and propri-
etary occupations—the white-collar jobs—were seen as not only better paid than
unskilled and semiskilled jobs but also as more prestigious. A hierarchy of oc-
cupations in China was, of course, well known among the migrants.23 What they
learned in Hawaii was that an individual could improve his economic position
and personal social status by his own efforts, without regard to his ancestral or
kinship identity.
73
Moving into the Mainstream

Fortunately for most Chinese migrants leaving agricultural work, their occupa-
tional careers coincided with a great increase in the number of jobs above the
unskilled and semiskilled levels; moreover, unlike Chinese who migrated to the
mainland United States, they did not face overwhelming competition from Cau-
casian workers ready to fill these better jobs and claiming prior right to them. The
1890 census in Hawaii, the first to attempt a tabulation of all employed persons
by major occupational categories and by “nationality,” makes it possible to es-
timate that of the 38,930 employed males in the Islands, only about 6,000 were
in skilled, clerical and sales, proprietary, and professional occupations.24 By the
time of the 1930 census nearly 50,000 of the 136,460 employed males were in
these four occupational classes—a tremendous increase in the proportion of these
preferred types of employment as well as a large increase in the total number
of jobs. In 1890 only 2,547 of the nearly 39,000 employed males were reported
as of American, British, French, German, and Norwegian nationalities; in 1930
only 24,943 of the 136,460 employed males were Caucasians of North European
ancestry. Even if all these men had been employed in these four occupational
classes they would not have filled half the positions in 1890 and only half in 1930.
A little over 13,000 Chinese males were employed at the time of the 1890
census; about 1,700 of them, 13 percent, were employed in one or another of
these four classes of occupations. Most of these 1,700 were among the “stay-
ers,” one might say, from the 25,000 to 30,000 migrants who had come to Hawaii
during the previous twenty-five years (Table 1). The number and percentage of
Chinese employed in these preferred occupations increased steadily from 1896
onward, reaching 3,161 in 1910, about one-fourth of all employed Chinese males.
Comparable numbers and percentages for succeeding census periods were: 3,691
(33 percent) in 1920; 4,403 (51 percent) in 1930; 4,785 (61 percent) in 1940;
5,958 (74 percent) in 1950; 7,409 (75 percent) in 1960; 9,773 (73 percent) in
1970.
Census employment data do not differentiate between foreign-born and
native-born individuals of ethnic groups, but age data show that less than 2 per-
cent of the employed Chinese males in 1910 could have been Hawaii-born. By
1910, then, at least a fifth of the migrant males then employed had established
themselves in occupations above the unskilled and semiskilled levels. The entry
of Hawaii-born males into the work force after 1910 makes it impossible to
determine the full extent to which migrants penetrated the preferred occupational
classes. Migrants still made up nearly 90 percent of the employed Chinese males
in 1920, but by 1930 this proportion had declined to about 60 percent. By 1950
nearly 90 percent of the employed Chinese males were Hawaii-born.
74
Migrants in Skilled Occupations

Census reports, business directories, newspapers, and other publications of the
1880s and 1890s show Chinese migrants in each of the following categories of
skilled workers:
Baker
Barber
Basket and chair maker
Blacksmith, horseshoer
Boot maker, shoemaker
Bricklayer and stonemason
Butcher
Cabinetmaker
Carriage maker
Carver, seal maker
Cigar maker
Coffin maker
Dressmaker
Engraver
Furniture maker and repairer
Gasfitter
Goldsmith, silversmith
Gunsmith
Harness and saddle maker
Hatter
Jeweler
Locksmith
Machinist
Musical instrument maker
Painter
Plumber
Printer, typesetter
Rice miller
Sail maker
Sign painter
Sugar boiler
Tailor, cutter
Tinsmith
Upholsterer
Watchmaker
Well driller
75
Woodturner
Nearly all these crafts were common to a preindustrial and premechanized

order. Some of the skills required were brought to Hawaii by migrants who had
learned them in China and continued to use them in the traditional way in the
Hawaiian Chinese community. Other migrants adapted these skills to meet the
demands of non-Chinese customers and the Chinese in Hawaii who had become
acculturated to Western ways. Some of these trades were unknown in the home
villages of the migrants who learned them after emigrating.
Among the crafts transplanted to Hawaii to serve the Chinese community
in the Islands were those of the goldsmith, silversmith, and jeweler. Demand for
Chinese-style jewelry increased with the growing numbers of Chinese families
in Hawaii, especially in Honolulu. The 1884 census reported nine Chinese jew-
elers in Hawaii. One early jewelry manufacturing firm, Sun Wo Company, was
established in Honolulu in 1888. In 1913 its manager, Chun Jew Kwong, had as
a partner Fong You, reputed to be “an expert and artistic designer,” who worked
as head of the manufacturing department. Chun Jew Kwong had two sons in the
firm, one working with his father in the business end, the other “acquiring prac-
tical experience by working at the bench.”25 A similar firm, established in 1907,
was the Bo Wo Company, headed by Nip Chan Poo who had been born in Sun
Wui, Kwangtung, about 1868 and had come to Honolulu in 1891 “to engage in
business.” Nip Chan Poo and his partner Lum King apparently had learned their
craft in China.26 For a while most of the jewelry makers and watchmakers in
Hawaii were Chinese; in 1930 they still had almost three times statistical parity
in these trades.27
Other crafts that could have been learned in China were those of the baker,
barber, cabinetmaker, carpenter, coffin maker, furniture maker, shoemaker, sign
painter, and tailor. These crafts could be carried on in Hawaii in traditional ways
for Chinese customers or adapted to meet the tastes and needs of other groups or
Westernized Chinese. One craftsman who seems to have done both was Quong
Fung Hin. Born in 1850 in Shekki, the largest town in Chung Shan district he
came to Hawaii as an independent laborer. He soon got a job as a carpenter,
having learned that craft in Shekki, and later opened his own carpenter shop in
Honolulu under the name Tuck Leong Cheong. Chinese carving, painting, and
lacquer work in Chinese temples and restaurants were among his specialties, and
he was said to be “an artist with bamboo and paper.”28 Another migrant, Lee Chu,
learned carpentry in Quong’s shop in the 1880s and later became the proprietor
of the first Chinese firm in the lumber business in Hawaii. A native of Chung
Shan district, where he was born in 1869, he was brought to Honolulu in 1883
by his father who had a Chinese store there. Lee attended school for four years
before going to work in Quong’s shop. After four years there he went on his own
in carpentry and contracting work; five years later, with support from a number
76
of Chinese businessmen, he started the Oahu Lumber and Building Co. of which
he became president and manager.29
The largest number of Chinese skilled workmen during the 1880s and 1890s
were in the building and woodworking trades, especially as carpenters and
painters. Some of these were employed on the plantations, since these were the
years when plantations were expanding rapidly and needed construction workers
as well as field hands. Probably some of those working for the plantations had
learned carpentry, masonry, and cabinet work in China; others learned the skills
on the plantations. Other migrants, like Quong and Lee, entered these trades with-
out going through a period of contract labor on plantations. One of these was Hee
Kau Kee, whose career was described in a 1913 publication on the Hawaii Chi-
nese:
Characteristic of the patient industry with which the Chinese who have come
to Hawaii have built up competences from small beginnings is the history of
Mr. Hee Kau Kee, one of the best-known painters and decorators of Hon-
olulu…. Just twenty-two years ago, when he was a boy of eighteen … young
Hee Kau Kee left his home in China to come to Hawaii which he had heard
of as the golden land of opportunity for young men who were not afraid of
work and had no means with which to start in business for themselves.
On his arrival in Honolulu, casting around for something to do, he was
offered the chance to operate a fish pond, and knowing something about fish
he took it. He continued in this business for one year and then went to Hawaii
to cook for the rice plantation laborers. At the end of three years he tired
of cooking and decided to learn a more profitable trade, so he returned to
Honolulu and started to acquire a knowledge of house painting. He found
this trade entirely to his taste and after he had been painting and decorating
houses for eleven years, he decided he knew enough to go into business for
himself and he did so.
He opened [a] store on Nuuanu Street … with the savings of his years of
work for others…. He has worked on many of the larger office buildings and
residences of the city and his services are in demand.30
This sketch of Hee Kau Kee’s career does not reveal who taught him the painter’s
trade, but it might very well have been some Caucasian housepainter with whom
he started as a helper.
Fifteen of the 264 carpenters reported in the 1884 census were Chinese, as
were 10 of the 83 painters. The 1910 census, the next one reporting relevant
data, showed that Chinese carpenters had increased to 205, one-tenth of the total,
and the 80 Chinese painters, glaziers, and varnishers constituted one-fifth of all
workers in these occupations. Nearly all of them would have been of the migrant
generation.
77
Like Chinese craftsmen in the building trades, some Chinese tailors and
shoemakers were migrants who had learned their skills in China; others became
apprentices in tailoring and shoemaking firms in Hawaii. Chinese clothing busi-
nesses prospered in Hawaii. According to the 1896 directory, 42 of the 69
Honolulu firms of dressmakers, tailors, and “merchant tailors” were owned by
Chinese, as well as 27 of the 40 such firms in other districts of the Islands. Chi-
nese tailors supplied the market with work clothing of all varieties, and by the
1890s Chinese tailoring firms competed with Caucasian-owned clothing stores
for customers buying Western styles of men’s suits and haberdashery. During the
1880s, 1890s, and 1900s Chinese men also worked as ladies’ dressmakers.31 In
1910 there were 373 Chinese tailors, 58 percent of the men in this occupation in
the Islands. By 1930, however, there were only 115 (22 percent of the total) and
by 1950 only 32 (12 percent). In this field, as in others, Chinese migrants were
being replaced by members of other ethnic groups rather than by Hawaii-born
Chinese.
Shoemaking, like tailoring, was an occupation in which migrants found op-
portunities in the Islands. As early as 1869 a Honolulu business directory listed
5 shoemakers among the 69 Chinese included. Later directories show increas-
ing numbers, and by 1910 some 64 percent of the 170 shoemakers in the Islands
were Chinese. While this proportion had declined to 28 percent by 1930, the last
census period for which such data were reported, Chinese were still very much
overrepresented in this occupation—in fact, they had four and a half times statis-
tical parity.
The careers of two Chinese migrants, Chun Kim Chow and Ng Nam, reveal
a striking contrast in occupational mobility in the shoe repair trade. Chun Kim
Chow came to Hawaii in 1898 at the age of twenty-nine after working as a
steamship stoker. He worked first as a maker of Chinese printing seals, but when
the demand for such seals fell off he went to work for a cobbler, learned the trade,
and in 1904 opened his own shoe repair shop in the central business district of
Honolulu. Four years later he added a retail shoe department and then expanded
the business until, before he died in 1957, he and his family owned and operated a
chain of shoe stores in downtown Honolulu with branches in other districts of the
city and on three other islands. Three publications devoted to prominent Hawaii
Chinese give Chun Kim Chow’s biography, but only one of them mentions “Ng
Nam, ‘dean’ of the shoe repairmen in Honolulu,” an employee of the Kim Chow
Shoe Store who “takes pride in his work, the same as he has for more than 30
years.”32
Getting Established in Business

Even though the number of Chinese craftsmen in Hawaii attracted attention and
78
even antagonism from Caucasian and part-Hawaiian competitors during one pe-
riod, there actually were more Chinese migrants in clerical, sales, and proprietary
occupations than in the skilled trades. During the 1890–1930 period, when it
was comparatively easy for migrants to improve their economic position, they
took advantage of opportunities to establish themselves in a wide variety of busi-
nesses. Publications on the Chinese in Hawaii are replete with success stories of
migrants who made their way up in the business world. Some of the businesses
in which they engaged declined or became obsolete even during the migrants’
lifetimes; others changed; many were expanded and carried on by the migrants’
Hawaii-born descendants. Accounts of migrants who established themselves as
agents, managers, partners, or owners of business firms show that by 1930 they
had been involved at one time or another in the following enterprises. This list
cannot be regarded as complete:
Agency for Chinese rice plantations, sugar plantations, pineapple growers

Auto repair shop
Bakery
Cigar factory
Coffee roasting and distribution
Cold storage
Commission agency
Construction firm
Cracker factory
Dairy
Dressmaking shop
Drugstore, herb store
Finance company
Fishing company
Fish market
Fruit processing
Furniture factory
Hack stand
Hotel
Ice cream factory
Import-export firm
Investment company
Jewelry factory and store
Labor recruiting
Land company
Livery stable
Lumber company
Lumber mill
79
Machine shop
Noodle factory
Paint contracting
Photography studio
Poi factory
Printing company
Publishing firm
Realty company
Restaurant, café, lunchroom, coffee shop
Retail clothing store
Retail general store
Retail grocery store
Rice mill
Soda water company
Tailoring firm
Theater
Trust company
Wholesale firm
Many of these migrant businessmen shifted from one field to another before
finally becoming established in a successful enterprise. Often they were active in
several businesses simultaneously: as investor, agent, director, partner, manager,
owner, or in some other capacity. By the 1930s, when most migrants still in the
Islands were ending their working careers, those who had made the most money
had done so in the rice, poi, and coffee industries, the export-import trade, whole-
saling operations, large retail stores, investment, and real estate development.
Involvement in the Island business community required migrant firms to deal
with Caucasians and Hawaiians, especially those owning or controlling leased
land, purchasers of crops raised by Chinese, representatives of shipping lines and
warehouses, bankers, government officials, attorneys, and tax experts. These con-
tacts were generally fairly impersonal, requiring of the migrant only a limited
command of English or Hawaiian. Social relationships were usually restricted to
the occasional Chinese banquet or civic affair. Migrants often turned over such
contacts to Chinese associates who were more familiar with Western culture than
they themselves were. Where this was possible the less acculturated businessman
could confine most of his personal contacts to the Chinese community.
There seems to have been a sequence of three phases in the occupational
accommodation of Chinese migrant businessmen, a sequence corresponding
roughly with three stages in the economic development of Hawaii over the
last two hundred years. During the first phase they were barterers and traders,
associated with Caucasian businessmen bringing the Islands into the Western
commercial order, and selling goods which came mostly from the North Atlantic
80
region. In the second phase, while still carrying on the earlier activities, Chinese
migrants served as “ethnic” businessmen, supplying goods and services desired
by a growing Chinese immigrant population and doing business mainly with
other Chinese. In the third phase, some migrants, especially in their later years,
became part of the Islands’ cosmopolitan business community which developed
as Hawaii approached economic maturity—no longer a frontier but an integral
part of national and international commerce.
Business in the Islands lost much of the ethnic character of the second phase
after the importation of foreign agricultural workers virtually ended in the early
1930s; by then the population was becoming increasingly made up of people
born in Hawaii and Caucasians from mainland United States. As immigrants
became more and more acculturated to Hawaii’s increasingly Westernized so-
ciety, and as their Hawaii-born and American-educated offspring outnumbered
them, linguistic, sentimental, and nationalistic ties diminished as advantages in
business transactions between people of the same ethnic origin. Products from
the migrants’ homelands were now in less demand than those advertised to the
American consumer in newspapers and magazines and on radio and television. In
these circumstances few businessmen of Chinese ancestry depend solely or even
mainly upon members of the Chinese community as customers; nor do they act
in the old symbiotic or middleman role of the “Chinaman” trader. They function
as part of the general business community—selling canned food, textiles, auto-
mobiles, and other commodities from all parts of the world to customers of all
ancestries, and themselves buying these products from dealers of other ethnic ori-
gins.
True enough, more than a few migrant businessmen had trouble adjusting to
the third phase. Many Chinese retailers who kept their stores going after others
had given up fared poorly. During the 1920s and 1930s the traditional busi-
ness practices followed by Chinese storekeepers were frequently criticized by
younger, Hawaii-born Chinese. The criticisms ranged from the appearance of
the stores to their accounting and financial practices. From the Chinese-Ameri-
can point of view, many of the stores were not kept clean, the goods were not
arranged attractively, the window displays and advertising were ineffective, and
not enough attention was paid to how the customers were served. Stock inven-
tory practices were considered inadequate to determine turnover and consumer
preferences: too much capital was tied up in goods not in regular demand (such
as those bought only for certain festivals), and excessive stocks of other goods
were carried. Credit was overextended to customers, tying up capital and increas-
ing risk of losses. Accounting practices were regarded as inadequate: assets were
undervalued, injuring the store’s credit standing; profit was not regularly calcu-
lated; division of profits among partners and shareholders at the end of the year
often left the firms with inadequate reserves. Small shops with limited capital
were seen as losing out to larger firms with a wider choice of goods at lower
81
prices. A basic criticism was that the traditional partnerships and family busi-
ness arrangements, as compared with an incorporated joint-stock company, were
poorly adapted to the organization and operation of a modern store.33
The need for Chinese proprietors to become nonethnic businessmen was gen-
erally referred to as the “need to modernize.” Migrant Chinese who succeeded in
doing so were likely to have had Western-educated associates who could reorga-
nize the business and manage it under the new system. One Chinese migrant who
had operated a general merchandise store for years in a plantation community
turned over his capital to his Hawaii-born, American-educated sons, who made
him president of the chain of grocery stores they opened in Honolulu. The man-
agement of another Chinese-owned neighborhood grocery store was turned over
to an experienced Caucasian who expanded it into a chain of modern supermar-
kets. Such supermarkets in Hawaii stock “ethnic foods” for Chinese as well as
other customers, but most of the stores in Honolulu’s Chinatown which used to
cater primarily to Chinese customers and sold mainly Chinese goods have gone
out of business. This happened not only with Chinese grocery stores but others as
well. Kum Pui Lai, writing in 1935, noted that Chinese jewelry stores which had
been prosperous during the 1900–1920 period had already begun to lose business
as second- and third-generation Hawaii Chinese turned from the traditional jew-
elry favored by their parents to Western patterns and designs. Chinese jewelers
did not offer the new patterns the younger Chinese wanted.34
The migrant businessmen’s adjustment to circumstances in the third phase
was affected not only by their own way of doing business but also by certain el-
ements of the Islands’ financial community. For many decades the only banks
in Hawaii were owned by Haoles (Hawaiian word commonly used to refer to
Caucasians), and Chinese businessmen felt that the banks were unduly restrictive
in making loans to non-Haole clients. This was one reason why two Honolulu
banks were organized by Chinese—the Chinese American Bank in 1916 and the
Liberty Bank in 1922. Both banks had trouble getting on a sound footing. Un-
like the Sumitomo Bank and the Yokohama Specie Bank which were established
in Honolulu as branches of banks in Japan with capital from their parent banks,
the Chinese-organized banks were entirely local and had to compete at first for
the limited capital and deposits of the Chinese in Hawaii. The Chinese Ameri-
can Bank, along with many other banks in the United States, was closed in 1932.
In the Chinese community it was widely believed that this bank need not have
closed if it had been helped by the two big “Haole banks” in the way a Haole-
owned trust company, allegedly in worse condition than the Chinese bank, was
saved by a bank loan. The Chinese American Bank reopened in 1936 as the
American Security Bank and it and the Liberty Bank are still thriving institutions.
In the earlier years of these banks there was strong rivalry among Chinese for the
top positions, probably not only for prestige but also because such positions car-
ried influence in allocating loans to Chinese clients. Now, however, a multiethnic
82
staff of officials and employees in their central and branch banks competes for
business among persons of all ethnic origins.
The Intermediary Roles

As the Chinese community grew and prospered, Caucasian business
firms—banks, insurance companies, shipping agencies, wholesalers, and oth-
ers—became increasingly interested in the Chinese as customers and clients. In
the period from the 1890s to the 1930s especially, these Caucasian firms em-
ployed several Chinese migrants who could act as intermediaries between the
firms and the Chinese business community. Migrants who could read and write
Chinese as well as speak it, who were respected by their fellow countrymen and
trusted by their Caucasian employers, who could help the Caucasians understand
the Chinese and vice versa, were employed as clerks and salesmen and sometimes
in higher positions. Some migrants who secured such employment had learned
English in night school after coming to Hawaii as adults. More commonly they
had been brought to the Islands as children or youths and, like Ho Fon, had been
educated in mission schools:
Ho Fon’s uncle who lived in Hawaii had become a labor agent in the 1870s,
receiving a bonus of twenty-five dollars from the Hawaiian government for
each Chinese brought in for plantation labor. In 1876, when fifteen years old,
Ho Fon was brought from his village in Chung Shan district to Hawaii on an
American sailing vessel chartered to bring in Chinese laborers recruited by
his uncle.
After arriving in Honolulu, Ho attended the Fort Street Mission School
(later known as Iolani School), from which he graduated. Among his school-
mates were several persons who later became important figures in Hawaii,
including George R. Carter who became governor of Hawaii (1903 to 1907),
A. G. M. Robertson, later a judge, Antonio Perry, later chief justice, and
W. M. McInerny, later a senator. During part of the 1880s he lived with a
Caucasian who was influential in Honolulu at the time, a Mr. Crabbe who
was married to a Hawaiian. In this home Ho perfected both his English and
Hawaiian.
In 1883 Ho joined the Tan Shan Sun Bo (Hawaii News), the first Chinese
newspaper in Honolulu, as manager and translator. Several Chinese mer-
chants turned to him to handle letters written in English or Hawaiian.
He became a “faithful church member” at the Fort Street Chinese
Church which in its early years was helped by a number of Caucasians, in-
cluding members of a prominent missionary family, the Damons. A member
of this family recommended Ho for a position as teller in the Bishop Bank,
83
shortly after several Chinese customers had transferred their business to an-
other Haole-owned bank. According to one account Ho’s first task was to
win back the Chinese to Bishop Bank, which he did.
Ho spent most of his thirty-two years of service with this bank in charge
of the Chinese department, taking care of financial matters that concerned
Chinese, particularly those who had little or no command of English. He was
empowered to make loans to Chinese merchants up to $600 without security.
At the time of his retirement, in 1929, George S. Waterhouse, vice-president,
and J. O. Carter, assistant cashier, characterized Ho Fon as “a man of sterling
worth, whose honesty and integrity are of the highest quality.”35
The usefulness to the migrant of this intermediary role is demonstrated by

the career of Chung K. Ai, who became well known in Hawaii as C. K. Ai. For
him, as for other Chinese, employment by a Caucasian was a start toward becom-
ing an independent entrepreneur:
In 1879, when he was fourteen years old, C. K. Ai was brought from Sai San
village in Chung Shan district to Kailua, Kona, where his father, Ako, had
a store. After a short stay there he was sent to Honolulu where he attended
Fort Street Mission School for two years. Leaving school before graduation
and still not very proficient in reading and speaking English, he spent two
years assisting in his father’s business ventures on the island of Hawaii. At
eighteen he came back to Honolulu to try his own luck in business with some
financial aid from his father. A partnership tailoring business in Chinatown
failed. To improve his English he attended evening classes at Reverend Frank
Damon’s school. His interest in Christianity, which had begun at Fort Street
School, led to his joining Fort Street Chinese Church; he remained a member
of this congregation for the rest of his life, becoming one of its most influ-
ential leaders and largest contributors. One result of this was that he became
well known and respected by influential Caucasians who served on the board
of the church until it became independent of the Hawaiian Board of Missions
in 1919.
Through his father, Ai came into contact in the 1880s with James I.
Dowsett by whom he was employed as clerk-bookkeeper from 1887 until
Dowsett’s death in 1898. After proving his competence and reliability, Ai
was allowed by Dowsett to supplement his wages by undertaking a variety
of ventures in his spare time: he imported goods from China, including mat-
ting, silks, peanut oil, tea, cigars, shoe leather, and nails, using Dowsett’s
warehouse for storage until the goods were sold; he contracted to have fire-
wood made on property near Nanakuli and stored at the warehouse until sold
to Honolulu residents, especially to Chinese; he imported pineapples from
Kona for sale in the Honolulu market; with Chinese partners he contracted
84
to dig wells; he started a coffee shop in Chinatown to be operated by another

migrant; he had a building put up for a fish market near the waterfront. There
were other ventures; some were profitable, some failed.
In 1898 Ai was the main promoter of City Mill Company, a rice mill and
lumber business in which several Chinese bought shares. Before the com-
pany could start business the buildings were destroyed by the Chinatown fire
of 1900. Losses amounting to tens of thousands of dollars were finally repaid
through Ai’s determination. City Mill was rebuilt, with Ai as president, and
today it is a large, successful business managed by one of Ai’s sons, with a
cosmopolitan body of sales clerks and customers.36
Migrants in intermediary roles were greatly outnumbered by Hawaii-born

Chinese. For members of the “early second generation,” beginning with a few
born in the 1860s and 1870s, as well as for migrants, employment by Caucasians
provided an entrée into the Honolulu business community. The careers of these
earlier Hawaii-born Chinese, such as William Kwai Fong Yap, are very much like
those of the migrant intermediaries:
William Kwai Fong Yap was born in Honolulu in 1873, the son of Hakka
Chinese immigrants who had become Christians in China. He was educated
at the Fort Street Mission School. At the age of thirteen he started his ap-
prenticeship in a tailor shop and worked at this trade for eight years. During
the last two years of this time he also served as a clerk and interpreter in the
law office of Charles L. Carter. From 1894 to 1899 he was a clerk in the gov-
ernment postal service of the Republic of Hawaii. For the next twenty-eight
years he was associated with the Bank of Hawaii, first as a collector and fi-
nally as an assistant cashier in charge of the Chinese department. In his later
years, with some of his eight sons, he developed real estate, investment, and
insurance businesses.37
Chinese employees of Haole companies had a variety of jobs. Some of them

sold life insurance, fire insurance, and automobile insurance to Chinese clients;
Chinese salesmen in Haole automobile agencies competed with each other for
“the Chinese business”; clerks who read and spoke both Chinese and English han-
dled transactions with Chinese immigrant storekeepers for Haole wholesale firms
and commission merchants; Chinese-speaking salesmen in Haole retail stores
attended to Chinese-migrant customers; clerks helped Haole lawyers and tax ex-
perts deal with their Chinese immigrant clients; Chinese-speaking reporters for
English-language newspapers covered events among the Chinese in Hawaii and
to some extent in China; they were interpreters and assistants for investment com-
panies, building-and-loan associations, collection agencies, real estate firms, and
a number of other businesses dealing with Chinese migrants.
85
Although positions in Haole firms had some advantages for Chinese who
were qualified to provide liaison with the Chinese community, those who took
such positions often found their advancement within the firms limited. Some
were content to remain in subordinate positions, but others came to resent what
they felt to be discrimination. In any case, with their practical experience in West-
ern business methods, many of them went into business for themselves—not into
ventures that were typically carried on by migrants in the second phase, but into
enterprises like the Haole-owned firms in which they had been employed. These
former intermediaries made up the vanguard of the Hawaii-born Chinese busi-
nessmen of the third phase.
A Place in the Professions

Between the 1880s and 1920s a very few Chinese migrants held positions in
the learned or professional occupations. Publications of this period mentioned
Chinese migrants as government interpreters and translators, newspaper editors,
teachers, school principals, doctors, temple priests, Christian clergymen, and re-
ligious workers, but in some of these categories there were only two or three
individuals at a time. The total was very small. With few exceptions the migrants
who held these positions worked with their fellow Chinese. Their roles were
largely within transplanted Chinese institutions or institutions that had developed
in Hawaii to meet the needs of the Chinese immigrants and their families. None
of the migrant Chinese professionals competed directly with Caucasians in the
same professions. In fact, except for the few Western-trained physicians and pro-
fessors they were not prepared to participate in the Western professional world.
At the same time, they did hold positions requiring proficiency in written Chi-
nese, a qualification shared by few others in Hawaii, even among the Chinese
migrants. Unlike most of the migrants, those who came as professional workers
were not likely to have been attracted to Hawaii by the hope of becoming rich; as
a group, they were quite poorly paid.
Interpreters and Translators

With the migration of thousands of Chinese to the Islands, government offices
needed literate Chinese who could serve as interpreters and translators in admin-
istering laws and regulations and who could deal with legal offenders among
those Chinese who neither spoke nor understood Hawaiian or English. The Board
of Immigration, for instance, needed interpreters and translators in regulating
Chinese immigration and dealing with immigrants; health authorities, quarantine
officials, immigration inspectors, revenue and customs officers could hardly have
functioned without interpreters and translators. The police and the courts relied
86
on a Chinese staff who could speak not only Hawaiian or English or both but also
several Chinese dialects—as well as being able to read and translate written Chi-
nese.
In the early days those who could qualify for such positions were mainly
migrants who had been educated both in China and Hawaii. Ho Fon, mentioned
earlier, had such a dual education and occasionally served as a court interpreter.
Another such migrant was Chuck Hoy, an interpreter with the U.S. Immigration
Service in Honolulu from 1908 to 1920. He had received some Chinese educa-
tion in his native Chung Shan district and some English education at the Fort
Street Mission School in Honolulu.38 Most of these positions, however, came to
be filled by Hawaii-born Chinese, some of whom had been sent back to their fa-
thers’ villages for their early education and who later completed their schooling
in Hawaii. Later, other Hawaii-born Chinese qualified for these positions by be-
ing educated in Chinese-language schools, as well as English-language schools,
in Hawaii or by learning Chinese at home. William Kwai Fong Yap’s service in
the office of a Caucasian attorney in the 1890s illustrates how Hawaii-born Chi-
nese served as interpreters and translators.
Religious Workers
Another professional role for Chinese migrants rose in the 1850s and 1860s from
the concerns of Caucasian Christian missionaries and teachers who had been
working among the Hawaiians since the 1820s. As the number of Chinese mi-
grants multiplied, they attracted the attention of Caucasian Christians in Hawaii
who, for several reasons, insisted that something be done to Christianize this new
group. There was fear that the “heathen Chinese” would have a bad influence on
converted Hawaiians; there was interest in continuing work among Chinese mi-
grants who had been converted to Christianity before leaving China; and there
was a desire to convert migrants and especially children of migrants who were
not Christians. Although a few Caucasian religious workers in Hawaii had been
missionaries in China and knew some of the dialects spoken by the migrants, it
was felt that Chinese Christians were needed to work among their fellow coun-
trymen in the Islands. The first Chinese engaged by Caucasians to evangelize the
migrants was Samuel P. Aheong, “an educated and talented Chinese” who had
come to the Islands in 1854 as a laborer:
On his arrival at the islands he … was employed by Mr. Torbert at Makawao

[Maui]. While in the Rev. Mr. Green’s school, and under the teaching of his
daughter, Mary, this young Chinaman learned to speak and read the English
language with great ease and fluency. So much were his services valued by
the Hawaiian Board [of Missions] that during the last year of his evangelistic
labors he received a salary of $1,200. He relinquished his store at Lahaina [in
87
1868] to engage in preaching the gospel to his countrymen, who ever listened
to his addresses with delight, for he could speak in several of the dialects of
China…. In May 1870 … he left with his Hawaiian wife for China, where he
died.39
In 1875 the YMCA in Honolulu engaged a Chinese colporteur, Sit Moon,

to come from San Francisco to work among the Chinese in the Islands. In 1878
the Hawaiian Board of Missions again undertook work among the Chinese and
the next year helped some Chinese Christians establish the Fort Street Chinese
Church in Honolulu. A Chinese evangelist, Kong Tet Yin, who had gone to Aus-
tralia to work among the Chinese there after being trained by the Basel Mission in
Kwangtung, was brought to the Kohala Sugar Company’s plantation on the island
of Hawaii in 1878 to work among the Chinese Christians there.40 During the last
quarter of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth, Chi-
nese Christian clergymen were brought from China and from overseas Chinese
communities to serve the Chinese congregations of several churches founded by
the Hawaiian Board of Missions (Congregational) and by Anglican missionaries.
After Annexation a few Chinese Christian ministers and their families en-
tered the Islands under the exempt-categories provisions of the Chinese Exclu-
sion Act. The 1910 census reported eleven Chinese clergymen; thirteen were
reported in 1920 and nine in 1930. Probably most if not all, of these were mi-
grants, although subsequently most of the Christian ministers of Chinese ancestry
have been second- or third-generation Chinese born in Hawaii or on the U.S.
mainland. The early Chinese religious workers were among the best-educated
migrants in the Islands, even though their salaries were small compared with
the incomes of some of the Chinese rice planters and merchants in their con-
gregations. With their literacy in Chinese and usually in English, their ability to
speak both languages, and their identification with influential Caucasian Chris-
tians, they were important links between the Chinese and Haole communities.
Most of them came with wives or married Chinese women in Hawaii, and many
of their descendants have been prominent in Hawaii’s religious and educational
institutions.41
Teachers
When Chinese Christian churches were organized, beginning in the late 1870s,
classes in English were commonly held at the church building with Caucasian
volunteer teachers. Most of the students in such classes were youthful migrants,
some of whom, like Ho Fon and C. K. Ai, had come to join fathers or older rela-
tives in the Islands. Some migrants who had established their families in Hawaii,
however, wanted their children to learn to read and write Chinese, a concern that
grew stronger as these children increased in number. Chinese Christian ministers
88
were among the first Chinese-language teachers in Hawaii, taking on this respon-
sibility as unpaid volunteers. A few literate migrants who had clerical jobs such
as those of bookkeepers in Chinese stores gave private tuition to Chinese chil-
dren. The 1884 census included data for teachers but no Chinese were reported
in this occupation. Census data on teachers were next issued in 1910 when forty-
seven Chinese males and twenty-one females were reported in this profession. A
few of these would have been migrants holding positions as Chinese-language
teachers, but most of them would have been Hawaii-born Chinese who by that
time were teaching in the English-medium government and mission schools for
children of all ancestries, including in 1910 more than three thousand children of
Chinese ancestry.
One of the first migrants who came to Hawaii specifically to teach Chinese
was Chong Park Shun. Educated in Chinese classics, he came to Hawaii in 1900
and became teacher and principal of the Honolulu Anglo-Chinese Academy. In
1909 he was employed to teach Chinese at Mills School, a Congregational-spon-
sored school near Honolulu’s Chinatown, in which Chinese boys made up most
of the students. Later he taught in Wah Mun School, one of two Chinese-lan-
guage schools opened in 1911, and by 1913 he had become its principal. Two
other teachers in that school were brought from Yokohama, Japan, where they
had been teaching in a Chinese school. Another migrant, Young Kum Hoy, was
brought from Chung Shan district in 1916, when he was sixty years old, to teach
in Wah Mun School. He had earned the degree of sau choy at the age of seventeen
through examinations in Peking.42
Because of their low salaries, teachers in the Chinese-language schools gen-
erally took on other jobs calling for Chinese literacy, such as those of editors
and writers for Honolulu Chinese newspapers and clerical work in Chinese busi-
nesses. More educated than most Chinese migrants, this small group played an
important part in the developing Chinese community. Several became leaders and
influential members of the many Chinese societies organized by the migrants.
College Professors
The establishment of an arts and science college at the University of Hawaii
brought about the appointment, in 1920, of the first China-born member of the
faculty—Dr. Tien Mu Wang—to teach Chinese. A few other China-born and
China-educated faculty members were added in the 1920s and 1930s to develop
the Chinese language courses and to lecture on Chinese history and civiliza-
tion, Chinese art, literature, philosophy, and religion. Most influential of these
was Shao Chang Lee, who had received part of his university education at Can-
ton Christian College and Tsing Hua (Peking) and part at Yale and Columbia
universities. These intellectuals were highly regarded by the Hawaii Chinese
community and became another link between the Chinese and other groups in the
89
Islands, especially the Caucasian intelligentsia, even though most of them even-
tually returned to China or, like Professor Lee, went on to U.S. mainland colleges
and universities.43
Newspaper Editors
Chinese-language and Chinese-English newspapers published in Honolulu by lo-
cal Chinese created positions for a few editors and writers who were part of the
small professional group among the migrants. The 1884 census reported that two
Chinese in Honolulu were editors; the next census giving such information, that
of 1920, listed only two Chinese in the Islands (both in Honolulu) under the cat-
egory of “authors, editors, and reporters”; only five were similarly listed in the
1930 census, three of them in Honolulu. There is no way of knowing whether or
not those reported by the census in this category had other occupations such as
that of Chinese-language teachers. At least two migrants, Chong Park Shun and
Hee Jack Sun, combined their careers as Chinese-language teachers with news-
paper editing. At different times they were editors of the Lung Kee Sun Bo. Hee
was also editor of the Sun Wan Yat Bo in Hilo and later of the Sun Chung Kwock
Bo in Honolulu.44 Some migrants who were competent in written Chinese took
time from other careers to write articles for Honolulu Chinese papers, but they
probably would not have been enumerated as authors or reporters in the census.
Physicians
The 1884 census listed thirteen Chinese as “druggists,” none as “physicians and
surgeons.” The 1896 census reported fifteen Chinese as “doctors” and did not
specify the occupation of druggist. In the U.S. censuses of 1910 and 1920 only
four Chinese were reported as physicians and surgeons. Thirteen of the “doc-
tors” in 1896 were probably migrants who called themselves such because of
their knowledge of Chinese herbs and drugs which they prescribed and dispensed
from their drugstores, as the thirteen “druggists” of 1884 probably also would
have done. The other two reported in the 1896 census may have been Dr. and
Mrs. Khai Fai Li. Dr. Li and his wife (Kong Tai Heong) came to Hawaii in that
year after medical training with European physicians at Canton Medical College
and practicing briefly in Hong Kong. They opened an office in Honolulu’s Chi-
natown and for some time their practice was almost entirely among Chinese; later
on they had patients from the many ethnic groups in Honolulu, where they prac-
ticed throughout the rest of their medical careers.45
It is apparent, then, that by the 1930s the Chinese migrants who remained
in Hawaii had found places in a wide range of occupations, skilled trades, busi-
nesses, and professions, and that even though many of them were still culturally
90
isolated from the mainstream of Hawaii’s Westernized, multiethnic society, they

were an integral part of the Island economy. The next chapter discusses the shifts
in attitudes and economic behavior of the migrants as they changed from sojourn-
ers into settlers.
91
CHAPTER 5
Settlement, Investment, Entrench-
ment
“WHEN I landed, all I wanted was a thousand dollars in Chinese money,” a

well-to-do migrant reminisced to a friend many years later. Another prosperous
migrant who had come to Hawaii in 1877, when he was twenty years old, told
a Honolulu reporter fifty-six years later, “I had always planned on returning to
China,” but he never did.1 Like these two, almost all the migrants came to the Is-
lands as sojourners thinking their stay would be a temporary phase of their lives,
an interlude during which they could make enough money to provide a better life
for themselves and their families in China. Over half of them did, in fact, return to
live there permanently; but many others became settlers, having come to think of
Hawaii as their permanent home and the future home of their descendants. This
was particularly true of those who became established in trades, businesses, and
professions and who were reluctant to give up the advantages they had gained
in the Hawaiian economy. Others remained because they had gradually lost their
close ties with village and kin in China and no longer felt the pull of earlier claims
upon them.
Investment and the Sojourner

As long as migrants regarded themselves as sojourners in the Islands, they tended
to be more interested in long-term investment in China than in Hawaii. Un-
married migrants and migrants whose wives and children remained in the home
villages sent much of their earnings back to their families. If a migrant prospered,
increases in his remittances might make possible a better home in the village and
expanded landholdings for his family. Even when he had his wife and children
with him in Hawaii, as long as he thought of himself as a wah kiu (“overseas
Chinese”) he continued to send substantial sums of money back to kinsmen in
his village. Little is known about the amounts of migrants’ remittances. One fig-
ure reported by the Chinese consulate was $3,930,000 remitted from Hawaii in
1930;2 in that year there had been only about 5,300 employed Chinese foreign-
92
Settlement, Investment, Entrenchment
born males in the Islands. While the amounts remitted by the Hawaii wah kiu in
earlier years are not known, they must have been considerable between 1880 and
1930. Even though most migrants were earning only a few hundred dollars a year,
thousands of them were employed and sending money home.
Besides sending money to kinsmen, some of the wealthier migrants who re-
tained the sojourner outlook sent large sums of money for investment in trading
firms, industries, and other enterprises in China or in the foreign-controlled areas
along the China coast. Some of them, especially importers and wholesalers of
Chinese goods, invested in businesses in China in order to reduce commissions to
middlemen. During the 1920s Lee Ong, whose home district was Toi Shan, man-
aged a retail and wholesale firm in Honolulu, Yuen Chong Co., dealing mainly in
Chinese groceries. Apart from his branch store in Pahala on the island of Hawaii,
Lee was also involved in establishing a firm in Hong Kong, Tai Yuen Chong
Co., which exported Chinese goods. Another migrant, Leong Han, divided his
time in the 1920s between his three firms: Wing Sing Wo Co., Ltd., a large retail
and wholesale business in Honolulu, Wing Sing Fat Co., an export firm in Hong
Kong, and Wing Sing Yuen, a bank in Shekki, Chung Shan district.3 Other mi-
grant entrepreneurs appeared to be interested in building up businesses in China
through which they could have secure sources of income when they returned to
live there permanently. Several prominent Hawaii Chinese businessmen, for ex-
ample, pooled capital in the mid-1920s to establish a department store, Tai Tung
Co., Ltd., in Shanghai.4
Savings in Hawaii
When migrants began to change from sojourners into settlers and became more
acculturated to a money economy with all its business and financial institutions,
they kept more and more of their savings in Hawaii. The village-reared migrant
with little experience in handling money had not been familiar with financial in-
stitutions like banks, savings and loan associations, investment companies, and
building and loan companies. Some migrants kept their savings in cash, on their
person or in some hiding place. Even as late as 1931, for instance, when a
54-year-old migrant living in a Chinese society building in Tin Can Alley, Hon-
olulu, was arrested for possession of opium, he was found to have considerable
cash hidden there. Narcotics agents “found a tin of opium, two pipes, scales, a
loaded revolver of Spanish make, and currency amounting to more than $1,400.
Silver coins and paper money in envelopes were hidden in crevices in the attic
and were claimed by Lum. In a false-bottom box they also found $400 in pa-
per money which the Chinese said was also his.”5 Other migrants entrusted their
money to kinsmen, friends, or business associates, sometimes to their regret.
93
Immigrant Loan Associations

Migrants who were still suspicious of Western savings institutions could get
interest on their savings through the wui—a traditional Chinese credit or loan as-
sociation they had transplanted to Hawaii. In the South China villages the wui,
also referred to in Hawaii as the hui, was commonly an arrangement among fam-
ilies well known and trusted by one another, rather than between individuals.6
A family without adequate funds to meet a financial obligation, such as paying
for the wedding of one of its members or the education of a promising scholar,
might invite ten or fifteen families to organize a wui. Each family would put up
a like sum large enough to total the amount desired. This pool was to be made
up periodically as many times as there were members. The initiating family took
the first pool and hence was bound to pay its share each succeeding time. At the
end of a predetermined period, perhaps at the end of a harvest, the families in-
volved would meet and bid for the second pool—all except the one which had
already received it. The family willing to accept the pool with the largest deduc-
tions—willing to accept perhaps 9.50 yuan from each family in a 10 yuan per
family pool—received it. Deductions were made only by those who had not yet
taken one of the pools. Drawings continued periodically until each family in the
wui had received a pool.
The last family to receive a pool had been able to pay the reduced amounts
more often than any other and received the full amount at the last meeting since
no other family had a right to bid for it. This family, therefore, put in the least and
got out the maximum amount. (The first family, of course, had also received the
full amount but paid the most in.) A family with no urgent need for money found
it profitable to delay receiving the money until the end. In the village society the
wui was more a method of mutual aid in crises than a business concern; relations
between participating families characteristically remained friendly; profit mak-
ing was subordinate to personal obligations. The initiating family was especially
grateful to the others for their willing and sympathetic assistance.
In Hawaii the wui was typically used by individual migrants or by partner-
ships—often to secure money for opening a new business or expanding an old
one, as well as for other less directly economic purposes. The participants in the
earlier wuis were almost invariably relatives or friends among whom there was
mutual trust. Those who had received the pool had to be relied on to continue pay-
ing their shares until the final drawing. This responsibility was a moral obligation
enforced by desire to maintain status among friends, not a contractual relation en-
forced by law and the courts. The wui was ordinarily organized by immigrants
who did not have sufficient economic standing in the business community at large
to secure a commercial loan or did not know enough about financial institutions
to apply for such a loan.
The wage and money economy of the Islands, and the increased ability of
94
Chinese immigrants to accumulate money, changed the wui. In the 1920s some
wuis would be for as much as five thousand dollars, though most ranged from a
few hundred dollars to a thousand. The bids for the pool at the drawings permit-
ted a much higher rate of interest than could be made in many other investments;
a wui member might make a profit of 5 percent or more per month. Migrants
whose attentions were focused largely upon making money came to look upon
the wui more as a profit-making opportunity than as a system of mutual self-help
among friends. The more businesslike the wui became, the faster the friendly re-
lationships tended to recede into the background. Desire for profit drew men into
wuis composed of casual acquaintances who all too frequently failed to continue
the payments or even exploited the practice to their own advantage. Instead of
postponing receipt of the pool in order to profit by the high returns, some would
secure the pool in the early drawings and then leave the Islands or otherwise
avoid the subsequent payments expected of them.
Efforts to change the wui from a system depending on personal relations,
moral obligations, and honesty into a formal and contractual arrangement, one in-
volving promissory notes and pledges of securities, destroyed the close personal
relationships of the earlier organization. Such efforts did not eliminate the risks,
however, since it was difficult to enforce the contracts legally. Eventually, be-
cause of these changes, it became easier, safer, and cheaper for the migrant with
good securities to borrow money through a financial institution. The risks in-
volved in the wui, longer residence in Hawaii, increased acculturation to Western
ways and institutions—all tended to change the Chinese immigrant into a savings
bank depositor.7
Savings Deposits
Data concerning savings bank deposits by ethnic groups are available only for the
period 1910–1936, but this was the period when more and more Chinese migrants
were becoming settlers. In 1910, when 14,094 Chinese men and women were
gainfully employed in Hawaii, Chinese held only 881 savings bank deposit ac-
counts in Hawaii, totaling only about $290,000. These accounts increased rapidly
after World War I—4,788 in 1920; 13,124 in 1925; 16,641 in 1930—even though
the number of Chinese gainfully employed had decreased to 9,779 by 1930. The
large number of Chinese deposit accounts in 1930 is partly explained by the
practice among Chinese parents in the 1920s of opening a savings account for
each child, often at the time of the one-month-old baby celebrations when gifts
of money from relatives and friends of the parents were received. This practice
seems to have been more characteristic of families settling down in Hawaii than
of those accumulating funds in the father’s name to be taken back to China. Part-
time working students and wage-earning women, married and unmarried, also
made up a large number of the Chinese depositors. By 1925 the per capita sav-
95
ings deposits for Chinese exceeded those for all other groups in Hawaii except
Caucasians, and continued to do so at least until 1936. Up to that year the peak
amount of money in these accounts—more than $5.3 million—came in 1929,
amounting to a per capita savings deposit of about $200. The depression and
money exchange speculation probably accounted for the decline of per capita de-
posits to less than $150 in 1936.8
Investment in Real Estate

Several migrants made fortunes in the real estate business, especially in Hon-
olulu. One early migrant who took this route to wealth was Y. Anin (Young Anin).
A sketch of his life, published in 1913, notes that he had come from Chung Shan
about 1873, worked for a while as a rice planter, and then opened a restaurant:
After four years, Mr. Anin realized that with the constant coming of immi-
grants to Hawaii, real estate would prove profitable not only as an investment
but as a business, and disposing of his restaurant he entered this field. He
remained in this business for several years and acquired large property inter-
ests in Honolulu and about the islands which he still retains.
About ten years ago Mr. Anin with several other influential and wealthy
Chinese decided that the city of Honolulu stood in dire need of a clean
sanitary fish market where the products of the sea could be kept fresh and
displayed for sale in tempting style, and through Mr. Anin the Oahu Fish
Market Company, the largest institution of its kind in the Islands, came into
existence. This market covers half a block and contains a number of stalls
where not only fish but other fresh meats and vegetables are retailed….
His residence, once that of a prince of the royal family of Hawaii, is
beautifully furnished….9
By the 1930s, besides two Chinese banks, there were Chinese-owned invest-
ment and trust companies as well as building and loan organizations; these, along
with similar Caucasian-owned financial and investment firms, were providing
loans to Chinese builders and mortgages for Chinese homes and real estate ven-
tures. By 1930 Chinese had two times statistical parity as bankers, two and a half
times parity as real estate agents and officials, one and a half times as builders
and contractors, and two and a half times as insurance agents, managers, and of-
ficials (see Table 6).10
Data concerning Chinese investment in real estate cover the first three
decades of this century, the decades in which the shift from sojourner to settler
attitudes among migrant Chinese was most marked. In 1901 the real estate taxes
of Chinese in Hawaii amounted to only about $8,000, although approximately
18,000 Chinese men were gainfully employed in the Islands at that time. In 1911,
96
with 13,000 men still employed, only 507 Chinese were paying taxes on real es-
tate assessed at less than a million dollars. In 1920 the number of Chinese on
the real estate tax rolls had more than doubled and their taxes had risen to more
than eleven times the taxes paid in 1901. By 1930 taxes on property assessed at
$15.5 million were paid by 3,070 Chinese, even though the number of Chinese
employed men had dropped to 8,085. Like the assessed value of real property, the
per capita assessed value had increased markedly from 1911 to 1930. A compar-
ison of the Chinese with other groups in Hawaii for this period shows that while
Caucasian, Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian, and Portuguese groups each exceeded
the Chinese in per capita assessed value of real property in 1911, by 1930 the
Chinese were surpassed only by the Caucasians.11
Instead of farmland, which sojourner migrants usually bought in China, most
of the property in Hawaii in which migrants first invested was in the business
districts of Honolulu and towns on the other islands. They bought lots and build-
ings where they themselves or other migrants operated stores and small factories,
garages and service stations, taxi stands and quick-food counters, restaurants,
dance halls, poolrooms, and theaters. They invested in business blocks with of-
fices for realtors, notary publics, lawyers, dentists, and physicians. Later they
sensed the growing desire of Chinese migrant families to move out of the busi-
ness districts and built housing for them in residential districts. Gross income
returns for 1934 showed that on the island of Oahu 279 Chinese individuals,
25 partnerships, and 19 Chinese corporations secured rental licenses and re-
ported a total gross income from rentals of $811,042.12 Chinese individuals and
corporations took out more licenses for rentals in 1934 than for any other kind
of business, and partnerships for this purpose were outnumbered only by those
concerned with “general merchandise, groceries and meats.” A larger and larger
transient population attracted to Honolulu and a growing number of city resi-
dents seeking houses to rent demonstrated to the Chinese, as well as to other
investors, the economic advantages of rental property. By the 1930s Chinese
landlords had units in nearly every part of Honolulu rented to people of all eth-
nic origins. Tourists from the U.S. mainland looking for apartments near Waikiki
Beach or househunting military families in Makiki or Kaimuki were likely to find
that many of the places offered to them were owned by Chinese. Many Hawaii-
born Chinese doctors and dentists, schoolteachers and enterprising housewives,
as well as Chinese migrant businessmen, became landlords of tenements, apart-
ment houses, duplexes, and bungalows.13 A rent control survey in the early 1950s
reported that 25.4 percent of all rental units in Honolulu were controlled by Chi-
nese.
Success in this field was not guaranteed. Some Chinese who invested in
rental property during the booming 1920s found themselves in financial straits or
bankruptcy when real estate values in Hawaii dropped during the depression of
the 1930s. A second-generation Hawaii Chinese student writes of the impact this
97
crash had on her family:
We were living quite comfortably until 1929 when the real estate boom came
along. We invested all our money in real estate and when the crash came,
we were quite hard up. We all worked after school to help the family in ed-
ucating us. There were people who were glad we were broke. They certainly
thought mother was going to give me away for marriage to someone to help
our family budget. Mother and Dad felt bad but they never showed their feel-
ings in front of us. They knew we felt bad too.
Nevertheless, Chinese in Hawaii continued to regard land as one of the best

investments. In the 1960s, when real estate values in Hawaii had risen to heights
undreamed of in the 1920s, a successful second-generation Hawaii Chinese busi-
nessman cited his father’s counsel to “buy land—it’s the one thing that doesn’t
disappear” as a reason to buy property even at the new high prices.
Entrenchment by Hawaii-born Chinese Males

Estimates presented in Table 3 indicate that nearly all employed Chinese males
reported in the censuses of 1890, 1896, and 1910 were migrants; about 90 percent
in 1920 and 60 percent in 1930 were still of the immigrant group. But by 1940
about 80 percent of the employed Chinese males were Hawaii-born; by 1950,
about 90 percent. Economic entrenchment during these latter decades, therefore,
was increasingly achieved by Hawaii-born Chinese. The money that migrants
spent on the education of their Hawaii-born children, as well as other help they
gave toward advancing their children’s careers, turned out in the end to be the
best investment the migrant generation made.
The attainment of a remarkably favorable position within Hawaii’s occupa-
tional structure by the children of Chinese migrants can be demonstrated in two
ways: first, with census data showing the percentage distribution of employed
Chinese in a hierarchy of occupational classes over the period of years for which
such data are available (Table 3); second, by means of occupational indices,
showing the extent to which Chinese were statistically overrepresented or under-
represented from decade to decade in these same occupational classes (Table 4).
98
Table 3
Percentage Distribution of Chinese Men Employed in Hawaii by Occupational Class:
1890–1970
Occupational 1890 1896 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960a 1970a
Class
Preferred 11.6 9.9 22.9 32.7 50.1 59.3 72.7 74.2 73.0
classes
Professional 0.1 0.2 0.6 1.6 4.7 5.7 10.7 16.6 21.6
Proprietary 5.9 4.9 9.7 10.4 14.2 14.7 17.3 15.6 14.0
Clerical, sales 1.3 1.8 5.4 11.5 20.7 28.7 26.2 21.3 17.9
Skilled 4.3 3.0 7.2 9.2 10.5 10.2 18.5 20.7 19.5
All other 88.4 90.1 77.1 67.3 49.9 40.7 25.5 22.3 27.0
classes
Farmer 11.6 12.7 9.2 4.4 4.3 1.6 1.0 0.9 0.4
Semiskilled 1.6 2.5 5.6 5.6 5.9 12.0 11.4 10.0 9.2
Domestic, 8.1 9.1 12.1 12.6 13.1 12.3 7.8 7.1 11.4
service
Unskilled 67.1 65.8 50.2 44.7 26.6 14.8 5.3 4.3 6.0
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 98.2b 96.5b 100.0
No. males em- 13,067 16,610 13,742 11,110 8,571 7,853 8,085 9,866 13,401
ployed
No. migrant 13,042 16,550 13,502 9,885 5,271 1,600 900 N.A. 1,650
males em-
ployedc
99
No. Hawaii- 25 60 240 1,225 3,300 6,253 7,185 N.A. 11,750

born males
employedc
Note: Terms used in this and later tables regarding occupational classes are abbreviated to facilitate
presentation. “Occupational class” is referred to in recent censuses as “major occupation group.”
“Professional” comprises “professional, technical, and kindred workers”; “proprietary” comprises
“managers, officials, and proprietors, except farm”; “clerical, sales” combines “clerical and kindred
workers” and “sales workers”; “skilled” comprises “craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers”;
“farmer” comprises “farmers and farm managers”; “semiskilled” comprises “operatives and kindred
workers”; “domestic, service” combines “domestic workers” and “service workers, except domes-
tic”; “unskilled” combines “farm laborers (wage workers) and farm foremen” and “laborers, except
farm.”
a Data for 1960 are based on a 25 percent sample, for 1970 on a 20 percent sample; both samples
included men in armed forces.
b Occupations not specified in 1950 amounted to 1.8 percent, in 1960, to 3.5 percent.
c Estimates for migrant and Hawaii-born males are based on census tables of age composition of
all Chinese males and of Chinese employed males.
The most important indicator of the economic progress of the Hawaii-born

Chinese is found in data regarding Chinese males in professional occupations.
The proportion of professional men among the Chinese migrants in 1890 was
extremely small—only about one-tenth of 1 percent (Table 3). Over the eighty
years covered in this table the professional class showed an enormous propor-
tional increase as Hawaii-born Chinese made up a growing part of the Chinese
male employed group. By 1950 the 865 Chinese males in the professions—nearly
all Hawaii-born—made up almost 11 percent of all employed Chinese males,
and Table 4 shows that they were overrepresented in this occupational class
about one and a half times. They included accountants and auditors, architects,
artists, chemists, Christian clergymen, dentists, draftsmen, engineers, lawyers and
judges, newspaper editors and reporters, optometrists, professional musicians,
pharmacists, photographers, physicians and surgeons, religious and social wel-
fare workers, schoolteachers and college professors, and surveyors.
100
Table 4
Occupational Indices of Chinese Men Employed in Hawaii by Occupational Class:
1910–1970
Occupational Class 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1970
Professional 0.4 0.5 1.0 1.2 1.5 1.4
Proprietary 2.8 3.1 3.0 2.0 1.8 1.6
Clerical, sales 1.4 2.1 3.5 2.9 2.1 0.7
Skilled 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.9 1.3
Farmer 1.4 0.8 0.9 0.6 0.3 0.7
Semiskilled 0.7 0.7 0.9 1.1 0.7 0.8
Domestic, service 2.6 2.8 4.1 1.9 1.0 0.7
Unskilled 0.8 0.8 0.5 0.3 0.2 0.8
Most of these professions required years of Western, university-level edu-

cation, and for a majority of them it was necessary to secure enough financial
backing to go to the continental United States for training. These requirements
signify that the Chinese who entered the professions were among those most ac-
culturated to Western thought and values. In a very real sense their economic
adjustment may be seen as growing out of their acculturation, whereas the eco-
nomic adjustment of the immigrant generation and the Hawaii-born with little
or no Western education represented only an accommodation to Western culture
and economy. Hawaii-born men who established themselves in the professions
came to represent to the Chinese the peak of the occupational hierarchy: they en-
joyed the highest social prestige not only among the Chinese but in the wider
community as well.14 This recognition is a marked departure from the aspirations
and attitudes of most migrants, who attached higher prestige to the proprietary
class than to the professional. They respected wealth, and migrants in traditional
Chinese professions had low incomes in comparison with successful migrant
businessmen. At the same time, the migrants’ knowledge of Western culture was
generally too limited to allow them to enter most of the remunerative Western-
type professional positions opening up in Hawaii.
The economic entrenchment of the Hawaii Chinese, both immigrant and
Hawaii-born, is evident in the steadily increasing proportion of those in the other
three classes of preferred occupations as well as in the professions. While only
101
about 5 percent of the Chinese men employed in 1896 were in “managerial, offi-
cial, and proprietary” occupations, the percentage had risen to 14 in 1930 and to
17 in 1950. In clerical and sales occupations the percentage increased from about
2 in 1896 to 26 in 1950, in skilled occupations from 3 to 18.
Migrants had almost three times their statistical share of the managerial, of-
ficial, and proprietary positions in Hawaii in 1910 and about one and a half times
their share of clerical and sales jobs. Chinese continued to be overrepresented
in these classes even though the numbers of employed immigrants went down
rapidly each decade from 1910 to 1950. In 1930 Chinese males still had three
times statistical parity in the former class and three and a half times parity in the
latter. By 1950, when all but about 10 percent of the employed Chinese males
were Hawaii-born, Chinese still had about two times statistical parity in both oc-
cupational classes. These data support the view that a disproportionately large
number of the migrants who established families in the Islands were in business
and able to get preference for their sons in managerial, proprietary, clerical, and
sales occupations. Another factor in Chinese overrepresentation in these classes
after 1910 was the concentration of Hawaii-born Chinese in the cities and towns
where managerial and clerical positions in government (federal, territorial, and
county) were also concentrated.
Migrants in skilled jobs had increased from 565 in 1896 to 982 in 1910, more
than doubling the percentage of Chinese males in this class of occupations. Chi-
nese in these occupations increased most rapidly between 1940 and 1950, with
nearly a fifth of all Chinese employed males in skilled jobs in 1950, when the
number stood at 1,496. Employment of additional workers of Chinese ancestry by
the Navy and War Departments after the attack on Pearl Harbor was the greatest
single cause of this increase. According to one report, 52 percent of the work-
ers promoted at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard in 1943 were Chinese.15 During
this period, few if any persons of Japanese ancestry were employed in the Pearl
Harbor military installations. Skilled occupations in which Chinese males were
statistically overrepresented in 1950 included airplane mechanics and repairmen,
electricians, machinists, radio repairmen, plumbers, tinsmiths, coppersmiths, and
sheet-metal workers. In skilled occupations as a whole, however, neither migrants
nor the Hawaii-born reached statistical parity during the period 1896–1950.
The proportion of Chinese who were farmers (owners and managers as dis-
tinct from farm laborers) declined steadily after the turn of the century to only 1
percent by 1950. In actual numbers the decrease is remarkable; more than 2,100
Chinese farmers were reported in 1896 but less than 100 in 1950. From almost
one and a half times statistical parity in 1910, they had less than one-third in 1950.
Most Hawaii-born males, even though descended from migrants who had mainly
been farmers or farm laborers in their ancestral villages, left or avoided agricul-
ture in favor of urban occupations.
The proportion of Chinese employed in less skilled occupations also de-
102
creased as more of the migrants became settlers and an acculturated group of

Hawaii-born Chinese grew up. Whereas about two-thirds of all Chinese workers
in the 1890s were doing unskilled work, only about one-twentieth of Chinese men
in 1950 were in unskilled jobs. Only about one-fifth as many Chinese men were
doing unskilled work in 1950 as might have been expected from their proportion
of the employed male population. In domestic and other service work the per-
centage of Chinese workers so employed increased between 1896 and 1930 but
decreased during the next two decades. The actual number peaked in 1910 with
1,622 and thereafter dropped to only 631 in 1950.
The 1940 census differentiated clearly between domestic workers in private
households and other service workers; most Hawaii-born Chinese males in ser-
vice jobs would have been among the 880 Chinese “service workers other than
domestic” rather than among the 86 in domestic service. The Hawaii-born were
probably concentrated in such service jobs as those of firemen, policemen, cooks,
waiters, bartenders, hospital orderlies, janitors, and porters. These were the jobs
that many Hawaii-born males reared in rural Hawaii would qualify for, especially
those whose families had wanted their children to begin earning money rather
than continue their education. The one occupational index at the lower levels of
employment that showed overrepresentation for Chinese as late as 1940 was for
the service category. The rise in this index from 2.5 to more than 4 in 1930, in
spite of decreasing numbers of migrants in the labor force, resulted from the fact
that the proportion of all employed males in this category decreased more rapidly
than the proportion of Chinese in it.
The percentage of Chinese males working in semiskilled jobs rose through
the 1890 to 1940 period. From 1890 to 1920 this increase was largely because
of migrants moving from unskilled to semiskilled work. With the proportion of
migrants among Chinese workers declining after 1920, the increasing percentage
of semiskilled workers from 1920 to 1940 indicates that it was the Hawaii-born
Chinese without much education who were working into these occupations. Not
until 1940 did Chinese representation in these occupations come down to statisti-
cal parity.
Grouping together the upper four classes of occupations (Table 3) and com-
paring them decade by decade with the lower four highlights the increasing
entrenchment of Chinese men in the preferred occupational classes. In contrast
with the sojourner migrant period when only about one-tenth were employed in
occupations at the upper levels, in 1950 nearly three-fourths were concentrated in
these occupations.
This phenomenal improvement must be seen in the context of the extensive
economic changes occurring in Hawaii during this period. Migrants in the 1890s
had to try to improve their position in an economy in which four-fifths of the
available jobs were unskilled. By 1950 Hawaii’s economy had become much
more urban, and military-related expenditures and tourism were replacing the
103
sugar and pineapple industries as the leading sources of income. Occupational

data for all male employees in 1950 show that only 23 percent of them were in
unskilled jobs; at the higher levels the percentages were: professional, 7.3; pro-
prietary, 9.5; clerical and sales, 12.5; skilled, 21.0—a total of 50.3 percent for the
upper four classes of occupations. In that year, however, nearly three-fourths of
the Chinese men were in these upper four classes. The contrast was even greater
for the first three classes—54 percent of the Chinese, 29 percent for all males.
The success of Hawaii-born Chinese in consolidating the gains of the im-
migrant generation and in reaching into other preferred positions is strikingly
demonstrated by the wide range of occupations in which Chinese males had been
able to achieve statistical parity or even overrepresentation by 1950 (Table 5).
Especially impressive is the fact that all but four of the forty-seven occupations
were in the upper levels or preferred classes of occupations. Moreover, fourteen
of these forty-three were professional occupations, few of which migrant men
could have qualified for. Another thirteen were in the managerial, official, and
proprietary class—the one in which migrant men had attained their greatest suc-
cess—but the 1950 group included some occupations, such as federal, territorial,
and county administration, which few migrants could have entered.
Another way of documenting the occupational success of the Chinese in
Hawaii is provided by data available for 1930, when about three-fifths of the
employed Chinese males were still of the migrant generation. Table 6 lists oc-
cupations in which Chinese in Hawaii and the continental United States had
statistical parity or were overrepresented. Note the striking differences between
the two groups of Chinese, most of whom originated from the same districts
of Kwangtung province. Hawaii’s greater openness to occupational movement
is revealed in the wider range of business and professional activities among
Island Chinese in 1930 as compared with Chinese on the U.S. mainland. In the
continental United States, where Chinese had been seriously restricted in their
occupational choices for several decades, they were heavily concentrated in five
or six occupations. In these occupations they were highly overrepresented, with
twelve times statistical parity as restaurant keepers and seventy-four times as
laundry operatives. Under the conditions of greater freedom in Hawaii the Chi-
nese had entered many occupations of higher income and prestige in numbers that
were equal to statistical parity or above it. Of the fifteen professional occupations
listed in the 1930 census, for example, the Chinese in Hawaii were overrepre-
sented in eight, in contrast to none on the mainland. Of the fifty-five preferred
occupations listed, Chinese were overrepresented in thirty-five in Hawaii and
only seven on the mainland. Moreover, the wide range of occupations in which
the Chinese in Hawaii had achieved statistical parity or better suggests that the Is-
land group was much more secure occupationally than the mainland group—less
dependent, that is, upon a few symbiotic occupations.
104
Table 5
Occupational Indices of 1.0 or Over for Chinese Men Employed in Hawaii: 1950
Occupation Occupational Index

Professional
Accountants, auditors 2.7
Architects 1.0
Artists, art teachers 1.3
Chemists 1.7
Dentists 3.3
Designers, draftsmen 2.8
Engineers (civil) 2.5
Lawyers, judges 1.0
Pharmacists 2.5
Photographers 1.5
Physicians surgeons 2.8
Social, welfare recreation workers 1.4
Surveyors 1.3
Teachersa 1.2
Managerial, official, proprietary

Officials, inspectors (federal) 1.4
Officials, inspectors (territorial, local) 1.5
Other specified managers and officials 1.8
Managers, officials (proprietary—salaried) 1.5
Wholesale trade 1.5
Retail trade 2.4
Finance, insurance, real estate 1.5
Managers, officials (proprietary—self-employed) 2.4
105
Construction 1.0
Manufacturing 1.5
Wholesale trade 2.5
Food and dairy products stores 3.8
Eating and drinking places 3.2
Clerical
Bookkeepers 3.3
Stenographers, typists, secretaries 1.7
Sales
Hucksters, peddlers 1.6
Insurance agents, brokers 1.9
Real estate agents, brokers 2.9
Salesmen in wholesale trade 1.2
Salesmen in retail trade 1.9
Skilled, craftsmen, foremen

Bakers 1.2
Electricians 1.4
Linesmen, servicemen (power) 1.1
Machinists, job setters 1.6
Mechanics, repairmen (airplane) 2.3
Mechanics, repairmen (radio, TV) 1.7
Plumbers, pipe fitters 1.2
Tailors, furriers 1.8
Tinsmiths, coppersmiths, sheetmetal 3.6
Semiskilled
106
Meat cutters (except slaughterhouse) 4.5

Operatives, public administration 1.6
Service workers
Cooks (except private household) 3.1
Waiters, bartenders, counter workers 1.7
Source: Andrew W. Lind, “Mounting the Occupational Ladder in Hawaii,” Romanzo Adams Social
Research Laboratory Report, no. 24, January 1957 (mimeographed): Hawaiian Collection, Hamilton
Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
a Not elsewhere counted.
Table 6
Occupational Indices of 1.0 or Over for Chinese Men Employed in Hawaii and the Conti-
nential United States: 1930
Occupationa Occupational Index

Chinese Males in Chinese Males in Conti-
Hawaii nental U.S.
Professional
Dentists 4.0 —
Draftsmen 1.9 —
Photographers 1.8 —
Accountants, auditors 1.7 —
Civil engineers, surveyors 1.6 —
Chemists 1.4 —
Physicians, surgeons 1.3 —
Schoolteachers 1.0 —
Proprietary
Restaurant, café, lunchroom keepers 5.0 12.7
Retail dealers 4.9 2.0
Insurance agents, managers, officials 2.6 —
107
Real estate agents, officials 2.5 —

Manufacturers 2.3 —
Bankers, bank officials 2.0 —
Managers, officials in manufacturing 1.8 —
Wholesale dealers, importers, exporters 1.6 3.5
Garage owners, managers, officials 1.3 —
Builders, building contractors 1.3 —
Hotel keepers, managers — 1.0
Clerical, sales
Office boys 4.5 —
Clerks in stores 4.5 3.7
Bookkeepers, cashiers 4.4 —
Clerks (except in stores) 3.4 —
Stenographers, typists 3.4 —
Salesmen 3.2 1.2
Agents, collectors, credit men 1.9 —
Commercial travelers 1.5 —
Skilled
Bakers 4.5 —
Shoemakers, cobblers (not in factory) 4.3 —
Tailors 3.4 —
Mail carriers 3.2 —
Jewelers, watchmakers, goldsmiths, sil- 3.0 1.0
versmiths
Compositors, linotypers, typesetters 1.3 —
Machinists 1.0 —
Mechanics 1.0 —
108
Painters, glaziers, varnishers (building) 1.0 —
Farm
Farm managers, foremen — 1.2
Farmers (owners, tenants) 1.1 —
Semiskilled
Sailors, deckhands — 6.7
Fishermen, oystermen — 2.4
Deliverymen (bakeries, stores) 1.8 —
Chauffeurs, truck and tractor drivers 1.1 —
Guards, watchmen, doorkeepers 1.1 —
Operatives in iron and steel, machinery, 1.0 —
vehicle industries
Domestic, service
Servants 5.4 21.9
Laundry operatives 5.2 74.1
Waiters 5.1 22.8
Unskilled
Janitors, sextons 2.6 —
Laborers, porters, helpers in stores 1.8 —
Garage laborers 1.1 —
Laborers (domestic and personal service) 1.0 1.6
a The numbers of specified occupations for which comparable data were available, by classes of
occupations, are as follows: professional, 15; proprietary. 11; clerical. 8; skilled, 21; semiskilled, 14;
farm, 2; domestic, 4; unskilled, 13.
109
Chinese Women in Employment

The entry of Chinese women into paid employment has been another remarkable
phase of the economic adjustment of Island Chinese. Throughout the period of
Chinese immigration, and in fact through the first two decades after American
exclusion laws were applied, a distinctive feature of the Chinese group was the
small number of gainfully employed women. Even when Chinese women mi-
grants increased, especially during the 1880s and 1890s,16 relatively few worked
regularly in paid jobs, in sharp contrast to women of other immigrant groups. In
the more numerous Punti group, husbands who brought wives to the Islands were
usually prosperous enough not to require, or desire, their wives to work outside
the home. Moreover, footbinding of Punti women effectually prevented wives
from becoming wage earners.17 The ninety-eight Chinese employed women re-
ported in the 1890 census constituted only about one-seventh of the Chinese
females fifteen years of age or older. Some of them would have been Hawaii-
born. Eighty-five who were listed as laborers or as farmers would have been
mostly Hakka women who did not practice footbinding; women in many of
the Hakka families, which had started coming to Hawaii as early as the 1860s,
worked in sugarcane fields, in rice paddies, and on truck farms, especially in dis-
tricts where Hakka Christian farming families were concentrated.
The 1896 census reported 1,419 foreign-born Chinese women living in
Hawaii, in addition to 48 Hawaii-born Chinese females fifteen years old or older,
but only 100 Chinese employed women. In 1910, only 352 of the 2,300 Chinese
women were reported as employed; probably more than half of them were Island-
born. Ten years later, Chinese employed females still numbered less than 500,
although there were nearly 1,500 foreign-born Chinese women twenty-one years
of age and older and about 600 Hawaii-born Chinese females fifteen years of age
and over.
The small proportion of Chinese women working outside their homes was
in accord with Chinese village customs and attitudes. Except for families in dire
poverty, women would rarely have been allowed to leave home to work for
money; those who did so were a class apart. Because of this attitude, most early
immigrant parents were unwilling to have their daughters get the kind of edu-
cation that would prepare them for paid work. Chinese Christian families and
other Chinese families influenced by Western attitudes in Hawaii, however, were
less likely to object to education for their daughters, and most of the employed
Chinese women in 1910 and 1920 probably came from such families. The readi-
ness with which Chinese women could find paying jobs during the early part of
the twentieth century and their substantial contribution to family incomes help
to explain why the old attitudes faded away even among the more conservative
Chinese:18 between 1920 and 1930 the number of gainfully employed Chinese
women increased 145 percent, from 493 to 1,208. By the 1920s and 1930s most
110
immigrant parents had lived in the Islands twenty or thirty years or longer, and
they came to tolerate and even encourage their daughters’ going out to work. The
percentage of Chinese women reported by the census as employed rose from 14
in 1920 to 26 in 1930, 32 in 1940, 35 in 1950, 43 in 1960, and 52 in 1970.
Along with the increase in numbers of employed Chinese women there was
a remarkable improvement in their occupational distribution (Table 7). Sixty-four
of the 98 employed in 1890 were reported as unskilled laborers, 21 as farmers.
Most of the other thirteen were probably in some kind of service work. This dis-
tribution indicates the sort of employment that could be found at that time by
foreign-born and Hawaii-born women, mostly unschooled or poorly educated,
living in rural areas.19 In contrast, nearly 70 percent of the women employed in
1930 were in professional, proprietary, and clerical and sales occupations; very
few were reported as farmers and unskilled laborers. It is especially remarkable
that 37 percent had professional positions, since these required advanced school-
ing, indicating the great change in Chinese immigrants’ attitudes toward their
daughters’ education. In fact, so many daughters and granddaughters of Chinese
immigrants had become schoolteachers that by 1930 they represented 14 percent
of all women schoolteachers in the Islands and constituted one-third of all Chi-
nese employed women.20 Because of the high proportion of teachers, Chinese
employed women had nearly eight times as high a percentage in the professional
category as employed Chinese men in 1930. The census reported 442 Chinese
women in professional occupations and only 259 men. More Chinese men (56)
were in teaching than in any other profession, but proportionately more men
than women were in professions requiring university and postgraduate education,
such as medicine, dentistry, law, and engineering. In 1930 primary and secondary
school teaching in Hawaii required only five years beyond elementary school, al-
though many teachers had college degrees.
Table 7
Percentage Distribution of Chinese Women Employed in Hawaii by Occupational Class:
1890–1970
Occupational Class 1890 1910 1930 1940 1950 1960a 1970a

Preferred classes 3.0 31.6 70.8 61.6 77.2 73.6 72.5
Professional 2.0 7.5 36.6 23.5 20.9 21.4 19.0

Proprietary 1.0 4.8 7.4 6.8 7.5 6.3 5.4
Clerical and sales — 12.5 23.1 29.7 47.5 44.9 46.2
Skilled — 6.8 3.7 1.6 1.3 1.0 1.9
111
All other classes 97.0 68.4 29.2 38.4 22.8 26.4 27.5
Farmer 21.4 — 2.6 0.4 — 0.4 0.1

Semiskilled — 0.3 6.4 16.3 8.6 9.5 7.9
Domestic, service — 14.9 16.0 16.5 12.6 11.5 17.9
Unskilled laborer 65.4 53.2 4.2 5.2 1.2 0.8 1.6
Occupation not specified 10.2 — — — 0.4 4.2 —
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Number women employed 98 352 1,208 2,835 3,803 5,775 9,819
a Data for Chinese women for 1960 are based on a 25 percent sample; those for 1970 are based on
a 20 percent sample.
The high proportion of Chinese women in the preferred occupations contin-

ued through other census periods covered in Tables 7 and 8. The actual number
in the professions continued to grow even though the occupational index for Chi-
nese women professionals decreased after 1930. The percentage decline in the
professional class was offset by the increasing number and percentage of Chinese
women in clerical and sales occupations. The changing proportions of Chinese
women in these two classes of occupations reflect changing employment oppor-
tunities in the Islands, especially in Honolulu, as well as changes in the relative
position of Chinese women when second- and third-generation women of other
immigrant groups became qualified for jobs at the upper occupational levels. For
one thing, competition for teaching positions increased. Young Chinese women
became unwilling to teach on the neighbor islands where very few Chinese lived
any longer, so schools on those islands were increasingly staffed by teachers of
other ethnic groups, especially Japanese. At the same time, Chinese women were
more attracted to clerical jobs and their rising pay scales in government and pri-
vate industry in Honolulu.
Table 8
Number and Occupational Indices of Chinese Women Employed in Hawaii by Occupa-
112
tional Class: 1930–1970
Occupational Class Number Employed Occupational Index

1930 1940 1950 1970 1930 1940 1950 1970
Professional 442 665 795 1,866 1.6 1.5 1.3 1.1
Proprietary 89 193 285 534 1.7 1.2 1.1 1.1
Clerical and Sales 279 841 1,807 4,532 1.7 1.6 1.3 1.1
Skilled 45 46 50 190 0.7 1.2 0.9 1.1
Farmer 31 12 __a 9 1.5 0.3 __a 0.2
Semiskilled 77 462 327 778 0.8 1.2 0.7 1.0
Domestic, service 194 468 479 1,757 1.9 0.6 0.6 0.8
Unskilled laborer 51 148 46 153 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.7
a Data for farmers were included in the proprietary class in 1950.
By 1930 Chinese employed women were in a much better position than were
employed women in the Islands as a group (Table 8). They were markedly over-
represented in professional, proprietary, and clerical and sales occupations and
were below statistical parity in skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled jobs. The over-
representation of the parent generation in proprietary occupations was, to be sure,
a great advantage to Chinese women who went into proprietary and clerical and
sales occupations themselves. Chinese women were overrepresented as farmers,
even though few in number, probably because widows of Chinese immigrant
farmers continued to own and operate their husbands’ farms.
Table 9
Occupational Indices of 1.0 or Over for Chinese Women Employed in Hawaii: 1930 and
1950
Occupation Occupational Index

1930 1950
Professional
Teachers 2.0 1.7
Accountants, auditors — 1.7
Social, welfare, recreation workers — 1.2
113
Librarians — 1.2
Proprietary, officials, managers

Retail dealers, store managers 2.1 —
Managers, officials, proprietors (self-employed) — 1.7
Restaurant, café, lunchroom keepers 1.2 —
Clerical, sales
Saleswomen, clerks in stores 2.8 1.1
Bookkeepers, cashiers 2.4 1.4
Clerks (except in stores) 1.4 —
Stenographers, typists, secretaries — 1.3
Telephone operators — 1.1
Farmers
Farm owners and tenants 1.5 —
Semiskilled
Tailoresses 1.9 —
Operatives (clothing industries) 1.6 —
Operatives (canning industries) 1.5 —
Service workers
Waitresses 1.4 —
Unskilled laborers (canning industries) 1.7 —
Table 9 specifies the occupations in which Chinese women were statistically

overrepresented (occupational indices above 1.0) in 1930 and 1950. In 1930 there
were five types of jobs (other than farm owners and tenants) below the skilled
level in which their indices were above parity; in 1950 there were none. Chi-
114
nese women in 1950 were overrepresented in nine occupations in the clerical and
sales, proprietary, official, and managerial, and professional categories, but, sur-
prisingly, they were below parity as retail dealers and store managers in which
they had had twice their statistical share in 1930. The wider distribution of
Chinese women through the professional occupations is shown by the fact that
whereas they were overrepresented in only the teaching profession in 1930, they
were overrepresented in four professions in 1950.
Employment and Income

The occupational data have demonstrated the movement of Chinese up the occu-
pational ladder during the period when most of the employed Chinese men were
migrants and during the later decades when the employed Chinese group was
increasingly Hawaii-born. Data that would make it possible to correlate improve-
ments in occupational status with income are not available, but miscellaneous
information points to the general trend. Starting with the contract laborers—the
earliest migrants who came in considerable numbers—it will be recalled that the
first group, who came in 1852, received $3 a month and board; contracts in 1870
called for $6 a month and board; in the late 1890s, $15 a month (if twenty-six
days were worked) without board. Most Chinese who stayed on sugar plantations
after their contracts ended worked as day laborers instead of signing another con-
tract. During the 1870s these day laborers were paid about $10 a month; in the
mid-1880s, about $13.50 a month; in the 1890s, about $15 to $18 a month; in the
1900s and 1910s, still less than $1 a day with a work year of 312 days. The few
Chinese who were employed as “skilled hands” on the sugar plantations in 1915
were paid an average of $1.11 a day.21
On the basis of data in Table 3 it can be estimated, therefore, that about 80
percent of the 13,000 to 18,000 employed Chinese men during the 1890s were
receiving no more than $250 to $300 per year in cash wages, and more than 60
percent of the 13,742 employed in 1910 were receiving no more than $300 or
$400 per year, although some of these men undoubtedly added to their income by
after-work activities such as gardening, fishing, and peddling.
Information about the incomes of migrants at levels above those of unskilled
labor and domestic service is even scarcer. The 1913, 1929, and 1936 publica-
tions on the Chinese in Hawaii are silent on this subject, but they do contain
success stories of a few hundred migrants who became comfortably well off,
some of them even quite wealthy. Chun Fong, the migrant businessman who re-
ceived about $600,000 for his share in a sugar plantation before returning to
China in 1890, is a well-known example of the migrants who “made their for-
tune” in Hawaii. In the early 1930s Chinese friends assured the writer that at least
five migrants in Honolulu at that time were millionaires. Emphasis on success
115
stories undoubtedly gives a distorted impression of the general situation among

migrants of the 1890s and early decades of this century. Migrants in sales and
clerical jobs in that period probably received little more in cash wages than ordi-
nary laborers, although they usually received meals and lodging in addition and
had some prospect of becoming a partner in the business.
Much later, in 1939, a survey of white-collar male workers in Hawaii re-
ported that the Chinese included in the survey received an average monthly pay
of $124 (about $1,500 a year); Caucasians received an average of $139 a month,
Japanese $98 a month.22 How near the $1,500 a year was to the median income
of Chinese males is unknown, but about 40 percent of the Chinese males at that
time were in semiskilled, service, and unskilled occupations with lower average
incomes than those of white-collar workers, while about 20 percent were in the
proprietary and professional occupations with higher average incomes.
The favorable position of Chinese in Hawaii’s economy was documented
for the first time in census reports when the 1950 census included income data
for 1949. Median income for Chinese males receiving income, $2,964, was 27
percent higher than the median of $2,340 for all males—and highest of all eth-
nic groups for which results were reported. Caucasian males came second with
a median income of $2,856, followed by Japanese ($2,427), Hawaiians and part-
Hawaiians ($2,369), and Filipinos ($1,995). Comparable data for females in 1949
showed the median for “all races” to be $1,247; Chinese females had the highest
median income of any ethnic group reported ($1,887), followed by Caucasians
($1,551), Japanese ($1,207), Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians ($999), and Filipinos
($548).
The 1970 census report on incomes in 1969 showed that the median income
of all males with incomes had more than doubled since 1949, as had the median
for the four ethnic groups on which such data were published. Again, Chinese
males had the highest median income ($8,000)—20 percent above the median
of $6,529 for all males. Japanese males came second with $7,839, followed by
Caucasians ($6,173) and Filipinos ($5,252). The median for Chinese females
($3,594) was above that for “all races” ($3,222) but below that of Japanese fe-
males, who had the highest median income ($3,623).
Data on family incomes for 1969 show a similar high position for the Chi-
nese with a median income of $14,179—23 percent above the median for all
family incomes ($11,554). Japanese families had a median income of $13,542;
Caucasians $10,508, Filipinos $9,289. Similarly a higher proportion of the Chi-
nese males were receiving incomes of $15,000 or more—14 percent compared
with 12 percent of the Caucasian males, 10 percent of the Japanese males, and 2
percent of the Filipino males.23 If the census had reported individual incomes of
$50,000 or higher, the data would undoubtedly have shown a higher proportion
of Caucasian men receiving such incomes than Chinese or men of other ethnic
groups. In any case, data given for 1949 and 1969 indicate that Chinese as a group
116
were not only well entrenched financially but in a superior economic position in
comparison with other groups in the Islands.
The success of the Hawaii-born Chinese in establishing themselves in pre-
ferred occupations and in favorable financial circumstances has created a prob-
lem that is becoming apparent among the younger generation. Since most Chi-
nese parents in the Islands can give their children opportunities for superior
educational and occupational training, the young anticipate employment at upper
occupational levels. But young Chinese are coming into the job market at a time
when openings on these upper levels are not increasing as rapidly as in their par-
ents’ youth, nor as rapidly as young people of all ethnic groups are prepared to fill
them.24 In some preferred occupations the supply of qualified applicants already
exceeds the demand—the outstanding current example is that of several hundred
more college graduates with teaching credentials than the school system is em-
ploying. Competition from persons of other ethnic groups seeking to rise on the
occupational scale also means the loss of the initial advantages enjoyed by Chi-
nese migrants and the early group of educated Hawaii-born Chinese.
117
CHAPTER 6
Urbanization
EVEN though most of the Chinese migrants to Hawaii came from rural villages
and found their first opportunities in agricultural areas of the Islands, they and
their Hawaii-born descendants have been constantly attracted to the urban areas
of the chief ports: Honolulu on Oahu, Lahaina and Wailuku on Maui, and Hilo
on the island of Hawaii. The very earliest Chinese immigrants, as resident traders
and domestic servants, were largely concentrated in these ports, but in the plan-
tation frontier period of the 1850s to 1890s the Chinese population in the rural
districts grew more rapidly. The geographical redistribution of the Chinese and
their eventual concentration on the island of Oahu, especially in Honolulu, re-
sulted from a complex of economic, cultural, and social changes. Urbanization in
Hawaii was not peculiar to the Chinese, of course, nor was Hawaii different in
this respect from the continental United States, but the particular circumstances
in which the Chinese in Hawaii became concentrated in urban areas were related
to other changes taking place among the Chinese migrants and their families.
Among these circumstances were the business and employment opportunities
opening up in the towns, the growth of Chinese families with the bringing in of
more Chinese women, the location of women and families in the urban areas, and
the gradual movement of rural families into the towns and into Honolulu.
The urbanization of the Chinese was not as conspicuous while new migrants
were arriving from China, especially during the 1880s and 1890s, as it was later
on. Chinese migrants in the rural areas outnumbered those in the towns for sev-
eral decades, but with the restriction of Chinese labor immigration and the return
of many sojourner laborers to China both the numbers and the proportion of Chi-
nese in nonurban areas fell rapidly. On every island except Oahu the Chinese
population decreased steadily, even though the total population of each island was
increasing. At the same time, Chinese who remained on those islands were in-
creasingly concentrated in the towns rather than remaining distributed through
the rural areas. On the island of Hawaii the Chinese population, mostly migrant
men in rural areas, reached a peak of 4,934 in 1884—20 percent of the island’s
total population of 24,991 and over a fourth of all the Chinese in the Islands. By
118
Urbanization
1910 the number of Chinese had gone down to 2,995, only 5 percent of the is-
land’s population, but 15 percent of these Chinese were in Hilo, the main town
and port of the island. By 1950, when the total population of the island had grown
to more than 68,000, the Chinese had declined to 1,360, with 61 percent of them
concentrated in Hilo. The majority of the Chinese remaining on Maui in 1950
were clustered in the towns of Wailuku, Kahului, and Lahaina; those on Kauai, in
Lihue and Kapaa.
Oahu, like the other main islands, had large sugar and rice plantations
employing Chinese workers, and there was a rural Chinese population of in-
dependent farmers, especially after Honolulu’s growing population provided an
expanding market for fresh produce which was difficult to bring in from the other
islands. More Chinese went into truck farming on Oahu than on any other island.
In 1884, a time of heavy immigration of Chinese agricultural laborers, 42 percent
of all Chinese in the Islands were already on the island of Oahu in rural and ur-
ban districts. By 1900 this proportion had risen to 54 percent. During the early
decades of this century the buildup of the naval base at Pearl Harbor and other
military installations on Oahu, outside of Honolulu, provided civilian jobs that
attracted many Chinese. But it was the growth of the Chinese population in Hon-
olulu which largely accounted for the fact that 72 percent of Hawaii’s Chinese
were on Oahu by 1920 and 91 percent by 1950.
Concentration in Honolulu
Every census from 1853 to 1970, except for 1890, has shown an increase in the
number of Chinese residents in Honolulu (Table 10). During the fifty years after
Annexation the number of Chinese in Honolulu nearly tripled—in spite of the re-
turn to China of thousands of sojourner migrants and the deaths of others. In 1930
Chinese in Honolulu outnumbered those in San Francisco, which that year had
the largest Chinese population of any city in the continental United States. From
1884 onward a higher proportion of the Hawaii Chinese than of the total Hawaii
population was concentrated in Honolulu, and in the 1880s and 1890s one-fourth
of Honolulu’s population was Chinese.
Table 10
Chinese in Honolulu and the Hawaiian Islands: 1853–1970
Year Number of Number Per- Total Percentage of Percentage of

Chinese in of Chi- centage Honolulu Total Island Chinese in Total
Hawaiian nese in Popula- Population in Honolulu Popu-
Islands Honolulu tion Honolulu lation
1853 364 124 34 11,455 16 1
119
Urbanization
1866 1,206 370 31 13,521 22 3

1872 1,938 632 31 14,852 27 4
1878 5,916 1,299 22 14,114 24 9
1884 17,939 5,225 29 20,487 25 26
1890 15,301 4,407 29 22,907 26 19
1896 21,616 7,693 36 29,920 27 26
1900 25,767 9,061 35 39,306 26 23
1910 21,674 9,574 44 52,183 27 19
1920 23,507 13,383 57 83,327 33 16
1930 27,179 19,334 71 137,582 37 14
1940 28,774 22,445 78 179,326 47 13
1950 32,376 26,724 83 248,007 50 11
1960 38,119 30,078 79 294,194 47 10
1970 52,583a 48,897 93 442,397 58 11
Note: Chinese data for 1853–1890 are for foreign-born only. The area defined as “Honolulu” was not
constant in all censuses.
a U.S. census tabulation procedures have resulted in the inclusion of certain part-Chinese in the
category Chinese, and the exclusion of other part-Chinese. It is estimated that “unmixed” Chinese in
1950 totaled about 29,500. in 1970, about 30,000. See Clarence E. Glick, “Interracial Marriage and
Admixture in Hawaii,” Social Biology 17(1970): 278–291.
The urban occupations opening up in Honolulu were the main objectives of

Chinese moving from the other islands and from the rural areas of Oahu. Less
than a fifth of Hawaii’s employed Chinese men had urban jobs in the Honolulu
district in 1884 (Table 11); by 1930 this proportion had risen to more than three-
fifths and by 1950 to more than five-sixths. After Hawaii-born Chinese women
entered the labor force, they were concentrated in Honolulu even more heavily
than the men.
Table 11
Chinese Employed in Honolulu and in the Hawaiian Islands Exclusive of Honolulu:
1884–1970
Males Females
Employed Employed in Percentage of Employed Exclusive Percent-
120
Urbanization
Year in Hon- Hawaiian Is- Total Employed in Hawai- of Hon- age of To-
olulu lands in Honolulu Em- ian olulu tal
Exclusive of ployed in Islands Employed
Honolulu Honolulu in Hon-
olulu
1884 2,918a 13,600b 18b N.A. N.A. —
1910 5,004 8,736 36 169 183 48

1920 5,143 5,967 46 310 183 70
1930 5,287 3,284 62 882 326 73
1940 6,028 1,825 77 2,239 596 79
1950 6,829 1,332 84 3,504 328 91
1960 9,281 585 94 5,775 366 94
1970c 12,364 951 93 9,174 587 94
a Not included are 1,206 men reported as agriculturists, pig and poultry raisers, and fishermen,
b Estimated.
c Data are for the Honolulu Standard Metropolitan Area, which in the 1970 census included the en-
tire island of Oahu.
It is impossible to say how much of the growth of Honolulu’s Chinese com-

munity resulted from the movement of migrants from rural areas and small towns,
but by 1930 this movement had clearly become less important than the city-
ward movement of Hawaii-born Chinese. By that time migrants who had come
to Hawaii before Annexation had spent over thirty years in the Islands. Most of
those who had been interested in moving into the city had probably done so early
in their careers, and as the years passed fewer and fewer of the rural migrants
sought employment in Honolulu. Only 40 percent of the Chinese men fifty-five
years old and over, most of them migrants, were in Honolulu in 1930, while 75
percent of the men under that age (fifteen to fifty-four) were in the city. In the
mid-1930s several hundred of the Chinese husbands and unmarried Chinese men
in Honolulu were persons who had been born and reared in other Island commu-
nities. These men commonly belonged to families which moved from the country
member-by-member, as described in this account written by a Honolulu Chinese
student in 1937:
About forty years ago my maternal grandfather and grandmother emigrated

from China to Oahu. They settled in a section of the island known as W—and
became rice planters…. Later two boys and four girls were born to them.
121
Urbanization
My mother was the eldest child in this family. The children all grew up
and went to school in W—. My mother was married to my dad in 1912. My
dad had come to Oahu from China with his parents when he was about four
years old. After dad’s and mother’s marriage, they moved to Honolulu to set
up housekeeping. In the long space of fifteen years, four children were born
to them.
In the meantime my elder Uncle Wah came to live with us in town when
he was about fifteen. Uncle Kwock followed him to live in our home a few
years later. Many years passed and after becoming successful in business,
Uncle Wah married and established his own home in——, then the most se-
lect section of [Honolulu] [according to the Chinese]. Then, after Uncle Wah
became fully settled in his new home, my grandparents and two younger
aunts moved to town to live in his home. My other Aunt Mei had married a
Chinese of W–—, and they operated a little store where groceries and gen-
eral merchandise were sold.
Uncle Kwock went to live with Uncle Wah in due time. The house, it
seems, was purposely built large enough to accommodate my grandparents,
aunts, uncle, and Uncle Wah’s own family.1
Some immigrant parents who had settled in rural districts or small towns did
move into Honolulu late in life, long after their grown-up children had gone to the
city. Retired or unable to continue working, they went to live in their children’s
homes in Honolulu. Tyau Fook was one of these parents:
Mr. Tyau Fook was born in Sun On district, Kwangtung, China. Coming to
Hawaii at an early age he became a merchant at Kula, Maui. To Mr. and Mrs.
Tyau were born seven sons and three daughters. The older sons moved to
Honolulu and secured work there. One became a plumber, another an em-
ployee for a lumber company, another a clerk in a Chinese-owned furniture
store. One of the daughters married a Chinese living in Honolulu. After op-
erating his store for almost forty years at Kula, Mr. Tyau finally sold out and
he and Mrs. Tyau and the younger children moved into Honolulu to live with
the older married sons in a large house in the Palama section of town. At
the time of Mr. Tyau’s death in 1937, there were, in addition to his wife and
ten children, five daughters-in-law, nine grandsons, fourteen granddaughters,
and two great-grandchildren, all living in Honolulu.2
Latecomers into the city included a number of aging familyless migrants.

Many of these were men who after a lifetime in agricultural labor had failed to
provide for their old age. They turned to the city hoping for help from more suc-
cessful relatives, from heung li, from some Chinese organization, or as a last
resort from a public welfare agency.
122
Urbanization
The phenomenal concentration of the Chinese in a single city in a region

dominated by plantation agriculture until World War II cannot be explained en-
tirely by the movement from the rural districts and small towns. Two other factors
were important: direct migration to Honolulu from China and the disproportion-
ate establishment of Chinese migrant families in Honolulu rather than in other
parts of the Islands.
Hundreds of youths and men, usually kinsmen of migrants already living in
Honolulu, came directly to jobs in Honolulu without following the usual pattern
of going first into rural work. This was particularly true during the 1880s and
1890s, with smaller numbers coming in after 1900. Admission of these migrants
as members of categories exempted from exclusion was facilitated by the growth
of the Chinese merchant class in Honolulu.
Probably most important of all was the fact that from the 1870s onward a
higher proportion of the families established in Hawaii by migrants were in Hon-
olulu than elsewhere in the Islands. Census data for 1884 and 1890 show that
while only about one-fourth of the Chinese men in Hawaii were in Honolulu,
they had about three-fifths of the foreign-born Chinese wives. Immigration per-
mits issued to Chinese women between May 1893 and November 1898 show that
74 percent of the women expected to live in Honolulu, even though only about
a third of the migrant men were located there.3 Chinese families continued to be
concentrated in Honolulu: about half of them in 1896, two-thirds by 1920, three-
fourths by 1930, five-sixths by 1950.4 In 1896 half the Chinese children in the
Islands were in Honolulu though only a third of the total Chinese population lived
there. In 1910, when over half (56 percent) of the Chinese still lived in other parts
of the Islands, three-fifths of the Hawaii-born Chinese lived in Honolulu.
Chinatown: The Nucleus

As in other cities with sizable Chinese migrant populations, one district in Hon-
olulu came to be known as Chinatown or the “Chinese quarter,” even though
there was never a time when this section was exclusively Chinese or when all
Chinese in Honolulu lived there.5 Honolulu’s Chinatown could be more accu-
rately described as the nucleus of the Chinese community—a place where the
Chinese first concentrated and which continued to be the center of Chinese busi-
ness and social life even after Chinese residences were dispersed throughout the
city.
Concentration of the Chinese in this area began in the 1850s; in 1866 over
half the 370 “Chinese foreigners” in Honolulu lived in the downtown section,
which included the low-lying land immediately northwest of the present central
business district, the area that came to be called Chinatown. Forty-one other Chi-
nese lived directly south of that section, nearer the mouth of Honolulu harbor, in
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Urbanization
an area which was then part of the waterfront and trading district. One hundred
others, most of the remaining Chinese residents, were reported as living in the
sections of Honolulu that were the chief residential areas of the Caucasians; most
of these Chinese were undoubtedly domestic servants. A few Chinese in the Hon-
olulu district but on the outskirts of the town were engaged in farming or trading
with the Hawaiians who were the main residents of these outlying sections.
The 1869 business directory of Honolulu gave the addresses of sixty-nine
Chinese businesses, nearly all in the Chinatown section.6 During the 1870s
Chinese business activities continued to be centralized in this one section of
downtown Honolulu. In 1872 the stores of 96 percent of the Chinese who had re-
tail merchandise licenses were in this area, and in 1878 about 83 percent. All the
Chinese wholesale firms were located there in 1872 and 1878.7 In 1884, some 79
percent of the retail licenses obtained by Honolulu Chinese were for firms located
in what the census report of that year called “the old Chinese quarter,” as were
82 percent of the “victualling” licenses and all but one of the wholesale licenses.
The common practice among Chinese during that period of living on their busi-
ness premises explains the 1884 census report that more than 70 percent of the
Chinese males and three-fourths of the approximately 350 Chinese migrant fam-
ilies in the Honolulu district lived in that same area.
A news item on 8 January 1886 noted that “new buildings go up at a fabulous
rate of speed on the Chinese end of King Street.” Later that year, in what the
newspapers called “the Chinatown fire,” over thirty acres of buildings in the
“congested Chinese quarter” burned down. Although government authorities at-
tempted to enforce regulations requiring that new buildings in the burned-out area
be fireproof, a larger and even more disastrous fire occurred there in 1900. A
few years later it was reported that “Chinatown has again been largely built up of
wood, and is getting more and more congested; a building is added here, a cook-
house there, a shed in another place (for this is the way Chinatown grows).”8
Like many Chinatowns in other parts of the world, the one in Honolulu was
located on the least desirable ground near the center of the city. Part of the land
was low and pestilence-ridden. An editorial written in 1899, about six months be-
fore bubonic plague broke out in Chinatown, recognized the health hazards of the
area:
Some three or four acres in the section called Aala, west of the mouth of
Nuuanu stream and above King Street, were set aside by the last legislature
for a park, with a view of becoming a place of recreation, especially for the
poorer classes of the city who are largely congregated in the low grounds ad-
jacent as well as in Chinatown. The land, flooded at high tide, has already
been partially filled up by the harbor dredger…. The periodical flooding of
these low grounds will always be a menace to the public health. It would be
ultimate economy to cart one hundred thousand loads from Aala Park to fill
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Urbanization
up those sections, even if the use of the park were thereby delayed five years.
The poor people would suffer less by the continued lack of a park than by
living on low and pestilential ground.9
This area of Honolulu had actually been known among Caucasians as the
“native quarter” before it acquired the designation of Chinatown, and for decades
more Hawaiians lived in it than Chinese. In 1884, at the peak of anti-Chinese
agitation, over 4,200 of the 10,700 persons in the Honolulu wards most closely
corresponding with the “Chinese quarter” were Hawaiians; only 3,780 were Chi-
nese; over 2,700 were of “other races,” mostly Portuguese and other Caucasians.
The 3,780 Chinese in this district constituted only 73 percent of the 5,225 Chi-
nese reported by the census in Honolulu; the other 1,445 were distributed through
all the other ten wards, composing from 5 to 26 percent of the population of these
other wards.
The presence of so many Hawaiians in the Chinese quarter was a matter for
comment by some Caucasian observers. In 1882, in a sermon warning against
“unfair competition” from Chinese, a Honolulu minister nevertheless observed
that “while the Chinese are steadily, surely, displacing the Hawaiians, yet among
all our many races thrown together in this little kingdom, no two so completely
fraternize as do the Chinese and the Hawaiians. They buy and sell with each
other, work together, live together, and intermarry as no other races among us.”10
A writer for an 1896 Honolulu directory noted that “the Chinese quarter of town,
which is also largely inhabited and frequented by natives, occupies a considerable
portion of the center of town. The two races mingle a great deal together.”11
This intermingling of different ethnic groups in Chinatown continued, but
with constant change in the origins, numbers, and proportions of groups in the
area. In 1930, although 3,000 more Chinese were living in Honolulu than in San
Francisco, Honolulu’s Chinatown was much less predominantly Chinese than
that of San Francisco. In that year only 47 percent of the people living in the
Chinatown area were Chinese and less than 5 percent of the 19,334 Chinese
in Honolulu lived there, the others being widely dispersed throughout the city.
Thirty-seven percent of the other people in Chinatown were Japanese, 9 percent
were Hawaiians or part-Hawaiians, 2 to 3 percent (each) were Filipinos, Koreans,
and Caucasians.12 Interspersed among the Chinese stores and clubhouses were
businesses operated by Japanese, Koreans, Hawaiians, Filipinos, and Caucasians;
living quarters above the business premises were occupied by tenants from every
group in Honolulu’s multiethnic population, as they still are today. Nevertheless,
even though Chinatown’s population has never been exclusively Chinese and
even though each succeeding decade has seen a smaller proportion of Honolulu’s
Chinese living in the area, the district has continued to be the focal point of the
commercial, cultural, and social life of Honolulu’s Chinese.
The impress of early Chinese residents, businessmen, and city officials on
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Urbanization
the old Chinatown area and nearby districts remained for many years in the Chi-
nese and Hawaiianized Chinese names of lanes and paths: Chun Hoon Lane,
Afong Lane, Achi Lane, Tai Ping Lane, Young Kee Lane. Though most of these
have disappeared in the redevelopment of central Honolulu, the forty or so acres
bounded by the Honolulu waterfront, Nuuanu River, Beretania Street, and Nuu-
anu Avenue are still thought of by older Honolulu residents as Chinatown. For
decades the center of activity for Chinese migrants, their children, and their
grandchildren all over the Hawaiian Islands, Chinatown was to them wah fau:
“Chinese port.”
126
CHAPTER 7
The Migrants’ Chinatown
HONOLULU’S Chinatown did not come into being by statutory segregation of

the Chinese from other ethnic groups or even because of extralegal restrictions
upon the area in which they could live. The concentration of migrants there was
essentially the product of those qualities of human nature that lead people in a
strange environment to seek out and associate with others who speak their lan-
guage and share their particular needs and desires, attitudes and habits, beliefs
and practices. In fact, Chinatown in Honolulu was not so much a district as a way
of life. The migrants, reared in a cultural milieu which stamped them as markedly
different from other ethnic groups in Honolulu, could have more satisfying con-
tacts there than they could have with non-Chinese. Chinatown, in this sense, was
a form of accommodation to the experiences and problems of life in a new and
strange social world. It was a place where the migrant could relax from the strain
of life in a foreign land, continue contacts with the homeland, and find help in
times of crisis.
Chinatown, like each individual migrant, has had a life history marked by
changing phases. The Chinatown way of life constantly underwent modification
and reorganization until it became only a remnant of what it was during the years
when the Chinese community was primarily a community of sojourner migrants.
Concurrently, the degree to which individual migrants felt themselves identified
with the Chinatown social milieu varied from phase to phase in their own life
cycles. Any characterization of life in Chinatown during the decades it was domi-
nated by the migrant generation must be a generalized account of what a changing
Chinatown meant to a number of individuals who themselves were adjusting to
the immigrant experience. Without doubt, the greatest changes in Chinatown oc-
curred when the basic mode of life among the Chinese was shifting from that of
sojourner immigrant men living alone or in groups to that of more conventional
and stable families. In 1884 more than 4,500 of the 5,225 Chinese in Honolulu
were immigrant men; there were only about 350 families.1 By 1950, in con-
trast, there were more than 6,000 Chinese families and less than 6 percent of
Honolulu’s 26,724 Chinese were foreign-born males. Over the years the growing
127
number of families, spread throughout Honolulu, tended to eliminate or moder-

ate some of the more demoralizing features of the early Chinatown, diminish the
importance of some of the older Chinatown activities and institutions, change
others, and build up new ones.
In the 1880s and 1890s Chinatown life was dominated by activities and or-
ganizations meeting the needs and wishes of sojourner immigrant men. Their
conception of themselves as being in Hawaii temporarily to take advantage of any
opportunities they could find predisposed them to cultural isolation. Beyond the
necessary and sometimes unpleasant economic relations with non-Chinese, cau-
tion about the law enforcement agencies of the “foreign” Hawaiian government,
and somewhat indifferent curiosity about the bizarre behavior and beliefs of other
foreigners, the wah kiu was generally little concerned about the life going on out-
side his own small social world.
Many of the migrants who congregated in Chinatown, especially in the
evenings and on Sundays, lived in other parts of Honolulu or in rural Oahu, but
Chinatown was where they could find a welcome from kinsmen, heung li, or
friends with whom they could enjoy relief from the strain of impersonal contacts
and exasperating encounters with the fan kwai. In Chinatown the migrant was not
ridiculed for wearing a queue or stared at curiously because of his long finger-
nails or the half-dozen long hairs growing from a mole on his face. He could hear
the familiar sounds of his own dialect and did not have to strain to make himself
understood in a foreign language.
To Caucasian observers the Honolulu Chinatown of the 1880s or 1890s
doubtless resembled the picture Dr. A. W. Palmer, a minister of the main Con-
gregational Church in Honolulu, recalled as his childhood impression of San
Francisco Chinatown:
It was dirty, overcrowded, rat-infested and often diseased. It was poorly built
with narrow alleys and underground cellars … more like a warren of bur-
rowing animals than a human city. It seemed uncanny because inhabited by
a strange yellow race who wore “pigtails,” talked an outlandish lingo in high
falsetto voices, were reputed to eat sharks’ fins and even rats, and to make
medicine out of toads and spiders, and who sprinkled garments for ironing by
sucking their mouths full of water and then squirting it out over the clothes.
And Chinatown was accounted vicious because it was the haunt of gambling,
opium smoking and lotteries….2
A Chinese observer in the late 1920s, on the other hand, points to the emotional
significance of Chinatown to the Chinese immigrants themselves.
Most of us can live a warmer, freer, and a more human life among our
relatives and friends than among strangers…. Chinese relations with the pop-
128
ulation outside Chinatown are likely to be cold, formal, and commercial. It is

only in Chinatown that a Chinese immigrant has society, friends and relatives
who share his dreams and hopes, his hardships and adventures. Here he can
tell a joke and make everybody laugh with him; here he may hear folk tales
told and retold which create the illusion that Chinatown is really China.3
Maintaining the Home Ties

One of the most important ways in which Chinatown at first met the needs of the
sojourner migrant was by providing means for keeping contact with his parents,
his wife if he had one, and others in his home village. No matter whether he was
a laborer on one of Oahu’s sugar plantations, a worker in the rice paddies, taro
patches, or banana fields, an employee in a Honolulu laundry, tailor shop, or noo-
dle factory, or a servant in some Haole house, Chinatown was his link to the home
he had left in China.
Few migrants could read or write the Chinese language. If a migrant wished
to send a letter to his relatives at home, the chances were that he would have to
find someone who could write his letter for him, and when he received a mes-
sage from home he needed someone to read it to him. Men who could do this
were most readily found in Chinatown. This was one reason why Chinatown was
busiest on Sundays when laborers came there from rural Oahu and other sections
of the city of Honolulu. The problem of maintaining contacts with home was
complicated by the lack of adequate postal and banking systems in China. If a
relative or fellow villager happened to be making a trip to the native village or
returning for good, the migrant might send his letter and some money with him,
but such opportunities came too seldom. Thus the Chinatown store became an
invaluable institution for the migrants. A Honolulu Chinese described how the
stores in Honolulu’s Chinatown at that time were still performing these services
in the early 1930s:
Take Wing Sing Wo store on Hotel Street, for example. You go in there any
day and you will find a great many letters stuck into a wire rack which stands
in the back of the store. These letters are for Chinese who communicate with
their folks at home through this store. Suppose a man in Honolulu wishes to
send some money to his mother in Ngai How village in See Dai Doo [Chung
Shan district]. He will be likely to go to Wing Sing Wo rather than to some
other firm because it has a sub-branch store in Hachak Hee, the market town
in See Dai Doo nearest the village of Ngai How. If he was from another dis-
trict he would go to some store in Chinatown run by people from that district.
The Ngai How man goes to Wing Sing Wo and says he wants them to write
a letter for him. He tells the writer of the letter what he wants said. Perhaps
129
he can only send a little money this time: he has been out of work; times
are hard; he wishes he were able to send more money. Sometimes the letter
is written as the man dictates; sometimes the writer listens and then writes
it later. These writers know what the proper things are to say and what this
man’s folks will like to hear.
Most of the men who could write Chinese, especially in the old days,
were the bookkeepers in the stores. In the old days, one used to get twenty-
five to fifty cents for writing one of these letters, and many Chinese used to
make pretty good money at it, for there were many Chinese who could not
write a letter or who did not want to do it themselves. The professional writer
uses more high-sounding phrases, so that the letter is more impressive upon
the people at home who read it. I have heard some of the old men complain
that they can’t make easy money anymore by writing letters. At the present
time there is such a surplus of Chinese in Hawaii well-educated enough in
Chinese to write letters, be bookkeepers, clerks, schoolteachers, etc., and so
much competition for the business of remitting money that the stores doing
this business now keep several bookkeepers and offer to write the letters free
of charge. Every day that a boat is sailing for China, there are many Chinese
in Wing Sing Wo’s store to get letters off and the bookkeepers are surely kept
busy then. On Sundays, Chinese come into Honolulu from out in the country
districts partly for this purpose.
Through Wing Sing Wo’s connections in Hachak Hee, the letter is deliv-
ered and an acknowledgment, perhaps an answering letter, returned through
the same system, addressed to the man in care of Wing Sing Wo. A few days
after a boat arrives from China, the stores usually put in the paper a list of the
names of people for whom letters are waiting at their store. It is more or less
a standing joke in the Chinese community to ask a person if he isn’t expect-
ing a letter at such and such a store, implying that he has been prosperous
enough to be sending money to his relatives in his home village.4
The difficulty and expense of maintaining these contacts with home help
to explain why most of the men wrote only when they were sending
money—perhaps only once or twice a year, such as before Chinese New Year or
some other festival period. This association between mail and money became so
firmly established that migrants who were not able to send money home stopped
writing altogether.
Chinatown as Social Center

The Chinatown store was also a social center where the migrant could enjoy in-
timate and personal contacts. The newcomer especially felt the need for such
130
association and soon learned the location of stores operated by people from his
own or a nearby village. Here the heung li exchanged news from home, talked
over old times, or reviewed local gossip and scandal. The merchant himself was
usually the best-informed person about his home village. He heard read, or read
himself, the letters his heung li received. He especially welcomed visits by vil-
lagers who had only recently come from China.
The appearance at the store of an immigrant who had been home to China
for a visit was as important as a personal letter. He also brought news and
family tidings from the village to the immigrants in Honolulu. He could re-
late events with a personal touch and could give his views on village gossip.
Sometimes he brought small bags of herbs, beans, yam flour, or sweets from
the wives, parents, mother-in-laws, or godparents to the immigrants. The re-
turned immigrant also helped to refresh memories of the village as shown by
the following conversation heard in a store:
Immigrant: “E-hee!” (as he enters the store and sees the returned immi-
grant) “So soon come back? You went how long?”
Returned Immigrant: “I used up the few bits (money); have to come
back. Went home for thirteen months.”
Immigrant: “Have son born?”
Returned Immigrant: “Picked a daughter.”
Immigrant: “Also good. Have pregnancy when you come?”
Returned Immigrant: “Don’t know. Your family everyone peaceful. Ah
Wah (the immigrant’s son) very nice. Studies at the village school. Your wife
asked you send a little more home—not enough to spend.”
Immigrant: “I make not enough! For a time, no work. Village peaceful?”
Returned Immigrant: “Very peaceful—but some small burglaries. Last
month Ah Sai Pak lost a coop of seven chickens. Somebody said Ah ——
stole them. Don’t know. Now in the village many young men have nothing
to do. Very bad. They do whatever bad. Much gambling and eating opium.”5
Another dimension of the Chinatown store’s significance as social center for

the village migrant is suggested by Bung Chong Lee:
The store was a club where the immigrant had status. His words found mean-
ing; he could be understood and his conversation appreciated. He could talk
at length and be listened to. He could boast of his catching the largest cricket
on a certain hill and of seeing the largest snake in a certain rice field in China.
He talked of his achievements; he shared his sentiments, his experiences, his
memories with his fellow villagers. Every little nook, hill, and lane, the tem-
ple, the goddesses, and the many village legends were reviewed in intimate
detail. Through gossip in the stores, the village mores were reenforced, and
131
the immigrant’s life was organized.6
The Chinatown store had frontier and village characteristics rather than those
of the usual urban business establishment. The merchant’s Chinese customers
were mostly other wah kiu who were bound to him in one way or another. He did
business with them personally and informally. A customer might stay to chat for
an hour. The store usually had quarters where those in the business cooked, ate,
and slept, and a villager coming into Honolulu from rural Oahu or from another
island might be given a meal or two at the store or find lodging there overnight
without paying. A heung li just arriving from China might put up at the store for
several days until he found work and accommodations elsewhere; the storekeeper
was a helpful source of information about jobs available on Oahu. A Chinese
political exile could usually find some store in Honolulu’s Chinatown that would
provide him temporary lodging and security, as well as a place where he could
carry on propaganda freely among sympathetic listeners. Villagers’ clubs usually
had their informal beginnings at some Chinatown store, and officers of other Chi-
nese immigrant societies which had no headquarters of their own commonly held
their meetings on Sundays at the store of one of the members.
Hotels and commercial lodging houses for Chinese migrants were rare in
spite of the large number of familyless Chinese men in the Islands. Migrants stay-
ing in Honolulu temporarily would seek lodging with friends or relatives, and
familyless men employed in Honolulu expected to live at their place of work or
another provided by the firm. As Chinese immigrant societies prospered and built
their own clubhouses, members and occasionally nonmembers would be put up
free or at small cost. The clubhouses became centers for informal friendly gath-
erings, games and gossip, and eating and drinking for members who did not live
in them—especially on weekends. Many members who married and established
family homes continued to use their society clubhouses as social centers, much
like the Elks Club.
Another informal social center in the old Chinatown was the Sunday market-
place. In South China markets were usually held at the market towns six times
each lunar month, but in Hawaii most Chinese had to adjust their work sched-
ules to fit the Westerners’ organization of life around a weekly cycle. Sunday had
been established as the Sabbath in Hawaii under the influence of the missionaries
and according to Western practice, but it was not a day for religious observance
and rest for most Chinese migrants. Sunday was Chinatown’s busiest day. Early
in the morning Chinese farmers, gardeners, poultry raisers, pigraisers, and others
left their homes in rural Oahu and brought their produce to Chinatown’s Sunday
morning market. Chinese living in Honolulu looked forward to Sunday morn-
ing as the time when they could buy the choicest vegetables and meats and the
freshest eggs. But buying and selling seemed almost secondary to the opportu-
nities the market offered for meeting friends, discussing crops, gossiping about
132
acquaintances, exchanging jokes, and other convivial activities of a people for

whom market days in their homeland had been among their most exciting times.
The Sunday market was not a complete replica of the marketplace at home.
Many of the commodities sold in the South China market were missing, as well as
many of its personalities. The traveling herbalist with his trick performances and
facile sales talk; the traveling merchant; the transient craftsman who journeyed
from one market town to the next—all were absent. The drugs of the herbalist
and the wares of the traveling merchant were supplied by the permanent stores
of Chinatown, where craftsmen were also located. In the Chinatown market pro-
duce and other goods were sold for cash; unlike village markets, barter was rare.
For years, these cash sales involved haggling over the price; only gradually did
but yee ga (“no two price”) become common. The presence of customers of other
ethnic groups, especially Hawaiians, also made the Chinatown market different
from those in the migrants’ home districts.
Sunday was the day for other Chinatown activities too. With the formation
of Chinese societies in Chinatown, Sunday noon, at the close of a busy morning,
was commonly the time for the organizations’ business meetings or social func-
tions. Sunday afternoons became the customary time for funerals of prominent
Chinese, as it was the most convenient time of the week for the busiest people in
the Chinese community.
There was little demand at first for restaurants catering to Chinese cash cus-
tomers, but later several eating places for Chinese were established in Chinatown,
and combination bakeries and teahouses became popular during the 1920s and
1930s. These eating places and teahouses, like the stores, became favorite gather-
ing places for Chinese, more for the relatively sophisticated residents or workers
in Chinatown than for rural (and frugal) migrants who felt more at home sitting in
a dimly lighted fellow villager’s store. In the twenties and thirties the most pop-
ular teahouse was Sun Yun Wo,7 in the center of the Chinatown district, where
this writer often went with Chinese friends. Day after day Chinese businessmen
and intellectuals filled the large room on the second floor of this establishment
for dim sum—second breakfast or early lunch. The tables were bare, their cross-
pieces well worn by the feet that had been propped up on them. Chinese bamboo
stools still lined the walls for use at banquets, but common chairs had replaced
them at the tables laid with chopsticks and Chinese crockery. Each guest prepared
his own tea by pouring boiling-hot water into a bowl containing tea leaves; there
were no teapots. Over the plates of such foods as siu mai, kau tse, ma tai shu, dau
sa bau and over the bowls of tea, groups of Chinese conversed on many subjects.
In one corner a group might be discussing the increase of freight rates on goods
from China or the troubles of dealing with customs officials. In another corner a
group of young newspapermen might be discussing the recent turns in the polit-
ical affairs of China or an editorial in the last issue of the Sun Chung Kwock Bo.
At one table a group of Chinese-language-school teachers might be lamenting the
133
lack of interest shown by their students in mastering Chinese. At another table an

elderly, poorly clad Chinese man might be listening intently while a young man
read to him and explained a letter from China, or translated a letter written in
English by a son attending college on the U.S. mainland. Here was laughter and
heated argument, and above the bustle and talk the waiters could be heard singing
their orders down the dumbwaiter to the kitchen below. In earlier years no women
would have been seen in such a place of eating and leisurely conversation, but by
the thirties one occasionally saw a local-born Chinese girl there, perhaps bringing
some Caucasian friends seeking atmosphere of the old Chinatown. In restaurants
like this Chinese societies would hold their annual banquets; the wuis would have
dinners at which monthly bids were opened; the sixty-first birthdays of prominent
Chinese would be celebrated; visiting friends would be entertained and famous
Chinese passing through Honolulu would be honored.
Commercialized Vice
In Chinatown the sojourner migrant was exposed, often for the first time, to com-
mercialized vice. The ordinary young man in the village of the type from which
most Chinese migrants came during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s was closely
supervised by older members of a dominating family or kinship group. Any indi-
vidual liberty he enjoyed was the freedom to act within boundaries prescribed and
approved by family mores. He had no money to spend as he wanted. For most of
these young men opium smoking, illicit relations with women, and serious gam-
bling were out of the question. Villagers knew that such practices were prevalent
in the cities but they did not approve of them within the family. It was not merely
that such habits were considered bad for the individual; anyone who indulged in
them brought disrepute to the whole family clan. Wayward behavior soon became
a subject of village gossip.
Most of the Chinese migrants came to Hawaii from districts located only a
few miles from Hong Kong, Canton, or Macao, and some villagers who went
to those cities to seek their fortunes indulged in the pleasures they found there.
C. K. Ai reports that a granduncle who had made and lost a fortune in Canton
returned to live in the village where “like so many of his generation” he was
a confirmed opium smoker. Macao, the Portuguese colony which was “within
four hours’ walk” of Ai’s home village, had by the nineteenth century become
notorious for opium, gambling, and prostitution. Ai said that although “friendly
gambling” was customary among relatives at lunar New Year in his home village,
excessive gambling, presumably in Macao, brought disgrace to his nephew and
the nephew’s wife.8
Conditions in Hawaii were, on the whole, not favorable to maintaining vil-
lage standards of morality. Here the young migrant, even if he had kinsmen in
134
the Islands, was not under the daily surveillance of family members. If he went
to the sugar plantations he entered a contract as an individual and was treated as
one rather than as a member of a family group. Wherever he worked, he received
money which he alone could decide how to spend. His personal behavior was re-
stricted only by plantation rules, employers’ demands, and laws of the Hawaiian
government—all of them “foreign” agencies toward which he felt no personal or
traditional obligations. Instead of living in a stable community with strong mores,
the migrant was in a world of transitory relationships and conflicting standards
of conduct. The extremely abnormal age-sex ratio of the society in which the mi-
grants lived in the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s contributed to the spread of
habits which family control would have restricted in the village.
It was easy for the migrant to start gambling and smoking opium in Chi-
natown. Whiling away the time at a friendly game at a Chinese store or society
clubhouse not infrequently led to more serious gambling. In the lodging quarters
of a store or a Chinese society’s clubhouse the newcomer or visitor could be in-
vited to join others in smoking opium. Store proprietors and older members of the
society might disapprove, but they were not usually in a position to interfere as
kinsmen in the village might have done.
As gambling and opium smoking spread, there were migrants who saw
the profits to be made by exploiting these habits, and the subsequent com-
mercialization made Chinatown the center of a network of gambling operators,
opium importers, and opium sellers which spread throughout the Islands. The
“banks” or headquarters for lotteries—chee fa and bark gup biu (“white pigeon
ticket”)—were located in Chinatown;9 certain stores and runners in Chinatown
and on all the islands received commissions for handling tickets and bets. At first
the major operators and participants were Chinese, but it was not long before
Hawaiians, Caucasians, Japanese, and others were taking part. In fact, at one time
lotteries were so popular with the Hawaiians that some chee fa tickets were made
up of Hawaiian words.10 By the 1930s the number of unattached Chinese men
had diminished and this form of gambling was not so prevalent among the settled
Chinese family men; most of the lottery ticket buyers were reported to be Hawai-
ians and part-Hawaiians, Japanese, and Filipinos.11
The popular table games in the “gambling dens” of Chinatown were fan tan,
pai kau, and sup chai. The “dens” were usually barricaded rooms on an upper
floor; when watchers warned that the place was about to be raided, operators tried
to get rid of evidence of a game before the police could break in. If the operators
succeeded, the police might find the men just sitting on stools around the walls of
the room, talking idly among themselves.
Some Caucasians in Honolulu protested against the gambling that was
known to go on in Chinatown, but their objections were generally ineffective.
English-language newspapers carried stories about lotteries, gambling dens, and
arrests and convictions, and occasionally editorials condemned the flagrant dis-
135
regard of antigambling laws in Chinatown.12 Antilottery laws were passed and

from time to time the banks were raided and operators arrested, but most banks
were soon back in business. Officers who were supposed to enforce the laws
were themselves suspected of taking money from the gamblers. In fact, from the
1880s into the 1920s most Caucasian residents, along with lower-rank govern-
ment officials who were mostly Hawaiians, were probably indifferent toward the
way Chinese migrants spent their spare time as long as they kept to themselves.
Even as late as the 1930s police appeared to have been quite tolerant toward gam-
bling among the Chinese. When this writer went with two China-born students
to Manoa Chinese Cemetery to observe Ching Ming ceremonies in April 1931,
dozens of Chinese, mostly elderly men, were playing fan tan and pai kau even
while the ceremonies were being performed. Some twenty tables were set up on
the edge of the cemetery—less than fifty feet away from a part-Hawaiian police-
man who directed traffic but ignored the gambling that went on for several hours.
The students pointed out a detective of Chinese ancestry who seemed to be en-
joying the whole affair.13
As with gambling, Chinatown was the center of the opium business which
extended throughout the Islands. Some storekeepers, heads of Chinese camps,
Chinese labor contractors, and others were unscrupulous about the business—in
fact, it has been charged that some Chinese employers of the early days forced
their Chinese laborers to accept opium as part of their wages. It is more likely that
Chinese employers complacently accepted their laborers’ use of opium, obtained
it for them, dispensed it to them, and deducted the price from wages. In China-
town itself there were many places where opium could be bought and smoked.
Tyhune, in business in Honolulu from 1833 to 1853, was said to have provided
rooms for “his countrymen addicted to the use of opium.”14 Some of the Chinese
imported from Amoy in 1852 were reported to be habitual opium users and some
of them who came to Honolulu after leaving the plantations became involved in
stealing and peddling opium from Caucasian-owned drugstores.15
Almost from the beginning, the government’s main concern was not use of
the drug by Chinese but the danger that their “pernicious habit” might be “ac-
quired by His Majesty’s native born subjects,” as indicated in the preamble of an
1856 act prohibiting the importation and sale of opium except when prescribed by
licensed physicians. From 1860 to 1874 the government attempted to confine the
use of opium, except for medicinal purposes, to the Chinese by issuing licenses
to Chinese to import and sell opium only to Chinese. Annual auctions of these
licenses proved to be a lucrative source of government revenue. The extent of the
trade and its profitability were demonstrated when a Chinese bid nearly $47,000
for the one license auctioned in 1874. By this time scores of Chinese migrants, in
addition to the import-license holder, were profiting in one way or another from
the habit among their countrymen.
The legislature of 1874 returned to the policy of prohibiting the importing
136
and selling of opium except for medical treatment. From 1876 to 1892 almost
every legislature was pressured to reenact an opium licensing bill. The Chinese
business community was embarrassed in 1880 when certain Chinese merchants
in Honolulu were reported to have been involved in bribery concerning an opium
licensing bill. (King Kalakaua had vetoed one passed in 1878.) A more notorious
case was exposed in 1887. Late in 1886 the legislature had passed a bill providing
for an opium monopoly license to be sold for $30,000. The license was awarded
to a Chinese who was later reported to have paid $80,000 to King Kalakaua
through an intermediary. The scandal was intensified when it was learned that
another Chinese merchant and rice planter connected with one of the largest Chi-
nese firms in Honolulu had given the king “presents” amounting to $71,000 with
the understanding that he would receive the license. The legislature repealed the
opium act and reenacted previous legislation prohibiting importation, sale, and
use of opium.16
In spite of the prohibition, opium smuggling and opium use continued, Each
year from 1880 to 1900 hundreds of Chinese migrants were arrested and con-
victed on opium charges. Convicted users who were sent to jail for a few months
generally resumed the habit. “Opium joints” were frequently raided, but usu-
ally they were so barricaded that evidence could be destroyed or thrown down
pipes into cesspools before police could force their way in. And although there
was public pressure to stop opium smoking, there were periods when smoking
places were protected by arrangements between police and operators. Chinese
who wanted opium smuggling stopped and the use of opium reduced were gen-
erally cynical about the effectiveness of the police, who were widely believed in
the Chinese community to accept bribes.17
After Annexation local laws against opium were reinforced by federal
statutes and agencies. In spite of the higher risks, wuis continued to engage in the
traffic, and from time to time local newspapers reported arrests of Chinese and
others charged with opium smuggling.18 By the 1930s, however, the character of
the opium traffic and its place in Chinatown had changed. Most of the opium
smuggled into Hawaii reportedly was being transshipped to the continental
United States or sold to members of other ethnic groups in Hawaii. Chinese
opium smokers, mostly aged, unmarried men living in the old Chinese quarter,
were still being arrested,19 but very few Island-born Chinese took up the habit. As
the number of first-generation migrants dwindled away, opium smoking among
Honolulu Chinese became a thing of the past. Chinese are still occasionally ar-
rested in Honolulu on narcotics smuggling charges, but they are more likely to
be from Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or Bangkok than from Honolulu,
and they are involved in an international traffic which is unrelated to the old
opium smoking activities in Honolulu’s Chinatown.
Although Chinese migrants in Hawaii were predominantly adult males with-
out families in the Islands, few Chinese women seem to have been brought to
137
Honolulu for commercialized prostitution.20 During the same period that Chi-
nese tongs in San Francisco were importing women for brothels there, Chinese
in Honolulu were not accused of doing so—even during the period of bitterest
anti-Chinese agitation. The United Chinese Society of Honolulu, in a petition to
the U.S. Congress in 1916 appealing for reopening the importation of Chinese la-
bor, asserted that there were no Chinese women “in the haunts of vice … in the
whole Territory of Hawaii.” The petition called attention to a recent canvass of
107 “unfortunate women” in the segregated district then existing in Honolulu and
pointed out that while 82 of the women were of “oriental birth” none was Chi-
nese.21 The petition did not claim that no Chinese men visited this district. In this
same decade Dr. Khai Fai Li opened, in addition to the office he and his wife had
in Chinatown, an office in Iwilei on the edge of the red light district because of
his concern about the prevalence of venereal disease. His patients, Chinese and
non-Chinese alike, came from the plantation areas of rural Oahu as well as from
Honolulu.22
Cantonese Theater
At about the time of Chinese New Year in 1879 one of Honolulu’s newspapers
announced a forthcoming event with a mixture of satire and anticipation:
A great attraction will be presented shortly, that will no doubt eclipse all the
theatre and circus shows of the Western barbarians. A Chinese dramatic com-
pany is about to open and will give a season. It will be extremely interesting,
as we learn that one of their plays extends over a period of more than one
hundred years. The interludes consist of musical entertainments—principally
gongs, cymbals, and firecrackers.23
For half a century one of the great delights in Chinatown for members of
the Chinese community was “Cantonese opera.” A Chinese theater was built in
the late 1870s in the heart of Chinatown; the 1884 census reported that eighty-
four Chinese men in Honolulu were “theater actors.” During that year a Chinese
known as Tai On secured “public show” licenses for weekly performances in
January—the Chinese New Year season—and for biweekly performances in the
remaining months.
Chinese migrants were familiar with theatrical performances by troupes of
professional actors who visited their home villages on special occasions—during
New Year festivals or at times of ancestral or religious celebrations. At such times
performances were given in an improvised open-air theater much as in the days
of Elizabethan drama in England. Financial arrangements were made by the clan
elders for the entire village. In Honolulu, however, the theater was more like that
138
of the Chinese city than the village. It was a commercial venture undertaken by
Chinese promoters, and the theater was part of Chinatown business life. Com-
panies of actors were brought from South China, performances were billed, and
tickets were sold to individual playgoers. This is the system with which West-
erners are familiar, of course, but to the Chinese migrant it was another change
from the clan world of his village. Nevertheless, the opportunity to see familiar
drama in a Cantonese dialect was a magnet which drew migrants to Chinatown
from other districts of Honolulu and from all over Oahu. Chee Kwon Chun and
John Coulter tell about rice planters, as soon as the week’s work ended on Satur-
day afternoon, going on horseback “to town to see Chinese shows, provided by
actors from China.”24
A Chinese student of Chinatowns on the U.S. mainland in the 1920s de-
scribed Chinese drama of the type that was presented in Honolulu:
An important part of the organization of a Chinese theatre is the orchestra.

This is composed of a leader who plays the ox-hide drum, a fiddler, a ban-
joist, a gong player, and a cymbal player. The orchestra is supposed to
accompany the singing, but frequently the noise which the orchestra makes
is so loud that even a trained ear can hardly detect the human voice.
A man with little imagination cannot enjoy a Chinese drama. When a
Chinese actor prances about, the audience must imagine he is riding a horse.
When an actress knocks in the air with her fan, a sympathetic observer must
picture in his mind a door that is locked. He must overlook a warrior or a
traitor who, after suffering decapitation on the stage, calmly rises and walks
away. He must, however, pay no attention to the property man, who comes
out again and again to put a label on a bench or chair, transforming it into
a bridge, a boat or a pagoda, as the occasion demands. To an uninformed
American, all these movements are bewildering, but the Chinese, who have
been accustomed to these things from childhood, enjoy them immensely.25
It is not surprising that such a theater had little appeal to the non-Chinese in
Honolulu in the late nineteenth century. Few of them would have understood (or
have been interested in learning) the conventions of Chinese drama, and the mu-
sic of the theater—particularly the loud beating of gongs—seemed barbarous to
the Western ear. A strong puritanical element remained in the missionary com-
munity to whom even Western theater had an immoral tinge, and Chinese theater
was not only incomprehensible but heathen. Migrants attending the theater ex-
pected the performance to continue until midnight or even later, and Cantonese
opera required an orchestra. Because some Caucasian residents objected to the
“noise” coming from the Chinese theater, the Minister of the Interior included a
provision in the public show licenses in 1885 that the orchestra could not play
after ten o’clock. A Chinese promoter applying for a license for a forthcoming
139
production, which was to run for twenty-four nights, asked that this restriction
“be removed or modified so that the use of gongs, drums and other instruments
connected with the orchestra be extended to 11:30 o’clock in the evening, and all
plays to cease at 12:00 o’clock in the evening, and the Theatre to be closed at
12:30 A.M.” The promoter pointed out “that in order to render effectual any play
in the Chinese language, it is necessary to have the use of the gongs and drums.”
He assured the minister that he would “endeavor to use the gongs and drums in
such a manner as to prevent the noise from being considered a nuisance.”26
Cantonese theatrical productions remained popular from the 1880s until the
late 1920s. Professional troupes en route to or from Chinatowns on the Pacific
Coast stopped off in Honolulu where local Chinese businessmen would under-
write their performances in the Chinese Theater and share in the profits. After
the Republic of China was established in 1911, women began to appear in these
troupes, replacing some of the tan actors (males taking female roles). By the
late 1920s, however, attendance was dropping off and the sponsors usually lost
money. As late as 1930 one could attend an occasional performance of Can-
tonese opera and see whole families there—grandparents, parents, and young
children—but there was not enough patronage to make regular performances
profitable. The Chinese productions could no longer draw large audiences of
young adult male migrants, and the older first-generation men, especially those
who were financially successful, were too busy with commercial affairs, Chinese
organizations, and family life to spend long hours watching a Chinese opera. The
young Hawaii-born Chinese who had been educated in the American school sys-
tem were more interested in American movies than in Cantonese theater.
Even though bringing professional troupes to Honolulu was no longer prof-
itable, Chinatown remained for a long time the center of those dramatic and
musical events that were most distinctively Chinese. Amateur performances of
Cantonese shows were staged by local Chinese dramatic clubs organized by
young adult immigrants and some of the Hawaii-born Chinese, especially those
who had been sent to China for part of their schooling. Chinese dramas were
also put on by students in the Chinese-language schools. When drives were held
to raise money for these schools, it was customary for one of the adult dra-
matic clubs to put on a benefit Cantonese show. With the upsurge of Chinese
national consciousness, many of these productions took on a nationalistic flavor.
After 1911 a free dramatic performance was usually given at one of the language
schools as part of the celebration of Chinese Independence Day (“Double Ten
Day”).
Chinese movies were brought to Honolulu in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
but box-office receipts were too low to pay for showing them daily or even
weekly. Silent movies from China were shown occasionally, and the first Chinese
talkies made their appearance in a small theater near the old Chinatown district
in 1933. The synopsis of one of the silent Chinese movies, The Loo Yang Bridge,
140
was printed on the program when it was shown at the Park Theater (“Home of
High Class Chinese Movies”) on 15 June 1930:
This charming legend relates of the butcher of pigs, who for years had
thrown the intestines of the thousands of pigs which he killed into the Loo
Yang River. These intestines turn to turtles, snakes, and evil spirits, which
cause much damage to those crossing the river. During the passage of a large
boat which is nearly upset, a priest hears a voice from the sea, warning to let
the boat alone as an exalted person named Tsai is on board. Inquiry brings
out the fact that a Mrs. Tsai is on board and the priest informs her that her
expected son will become a man of great prominence. Mrs. Tsai makes a
promise if this is true she will honour the occasion by building a bridge over
this turbulent river for the good of all.
The son is born and in years later is told the promise his mother made;
he vows to complete her promise if possible. He passes the Imperial Litera-
ture Examinations with highest honours, is selected by the Prime Minister as
son-in-law. The marriage takes place and the young couple are much in love
with each other. His wife proves herself very capable and through her ability,
and under the most extraordinary circumstances, the bridge is finally erected,
and still stands as a monument, for the good of the people, erected through
the unceasing efforts of a young couple, to whom came all they wished for
because of their goodness to others and the unceasing love they bore to each
other.
To members of the second and third generations, whose tastes had been formed
by American movies, such a plot might have novelty but it was not likely to sup-
plant the Hollywood variety.27
Chinatown as Source of Help

In the migrant’s personal life, Chinatown was more than a place to relax and keep
up contacts with home—it was the place where he could find help in times of cri-
sis. Especially for the pre-Annexation migrant, Chinatown could provide the best
substitutes for the physical care and spiritual assistance he would have received
at home from family, clan, and village temple.
At home most of the migrant’s physical ailments had been treated by the
women of his family or other women in his village. It was they who prepared the
home remedies and administered the cures according to traditions handed down
through generations. Herbs and other drugs were part of the household stock;
water bottled on the seventh day of the seventh moon, when it was believed to
be especially pure and to have medicinal value, was kept for use in times of
141
illness. Professional or semiprofessional healers would be resorted to only in se-

rious cases which did not yield to home methods. Away from home the migrant
had to turn to other sources of care, and the presence of large numbers of family-
less men in Honolulu provided a field for many sorts of medical practitioners in
Chinatown.
Chinese herb stores took the place of the household supply and offered a
much greater variety of remedies than the home would have had. The migrant
could buy a bulky package of half a dozen or more ingredients to be brewed into
a thick tea for a cold—the package would even contain a piece of sweet preserved
fruit for taking away the bitter taste of the tea. All sorts of remedies filled the
drawers which lined these stores from floor to ceiling. Some, like the cold prepa-
rations, were made up in advance; others, more rare, like the tiny shavings from
the horn of a specially killed deer, were made up on the prescription of a Chinese
herbalist who owned the store. The herbalists almost invariably had learned their
profession from members of the preceding generations in their clan rather than
in a professional school; they were generally able to read and write Chinese; oc-
casionally there was one who had taken a degree under the imperial examination
system of Manchu days.28 Such herbalists had not been common in the smaller
villages, although they might have been known to the migrants from the larger
villages or market towns.
Sufferers from specific ailments could find other practitioners in Chinatown
who would undertake to cure them. Chinese barbers were sometimes also
masseurs who attempted, by tapping, kneading, or pommeling, to treat such trou-
bles as headaches, insomnia, and nervousness. Others in Chinatown practiced
ancient Chinese treatments for rheumatism or aches in various parts of the body.
An account given in the 1920s by a Honolulu-born Chinese dentist describes
some of the Chinese medical treatments he had known in his youth in Hawaii:
When a patient appeared with an aching arm, from any cause whatsoever, the
“physician” would locate the nerve leading to that part of the body and apply
his treatment where it came close to the surface of the body. Treatments were
of two kinds, other than massaging.
One was to apply a small amount of powder [moxa] and allow it to burn
slowly over the nerve until the patient became insensible to pain at the part
affected. The other was by piercing [acupuncture].
Dr. Chang pointed out that persons administering such treatments are
not versed in medical science and might cause infections through the use of
unsterilized needles or wires. He believes both practices were harmful. Both
afford only temporary relief and do not go to the cause of the illness, as is
often believed by the patients.29
The degree of professionalism among these various practitioners varied from
142
one to the other, and payment was of different sorts. The herbalist usually stipu-
lated prices that were paid in cash, but others might or might not have set fees.
Often they were repaid with gifts of food, jewelry, or li shee (money wrapped in
red paper). This practice, a carry-over from the personal relationships prevailing
in the village community, was familiar to the Chinese migrant.
Chinese migrants turned to Western medicine very slowly. When Dr. and
Mrs. Khai Fai Li opened an office in Chinatown in 1896, it was many weeks be-
fore they had their first Chinese patient; much of their practice was with poor
Hawaiians and Portuguese.30 Today, of course, most of the Hawaii Chinese go
to Western-trained physicians and surgeons, but in 1979 there were still four
Chinese herb stores doing business in Chinatown. Despite the reluctance of the
migrant generation to be treated by Western medical methods, medicine became
one of the most prestigious professions among the Hawaii-born Chinese. Al-
though only a few doctors of Chinese ancestry now practice in the old Chinatown
area, one of the most successful clinics, owned and staffed by Hawaii-born Chi-
nese physicians and surgeons trained on the U.S. mainland, is close to the original
Chinese quarter.
Faith healers, exorcists, and astrologers flourished in the old Chinatown
along with druggists, herbalists, and practitioners of physical therapy. The line
separating Chinese folk medicine from magic is hard to draw, and to the un-
schooled Chinese migrant there was little difference between them. Faith healers
undertook treatment of fractured bones, epilepsy, and mild forms of psychosis
along with the more common run of chronic ailments.
The Chinese temple (miu), transplanted from China though in a form not al-
together familiar to the Chinese villager, was another institution of Chinatown to
which the migrant could turn for help during times of physical or emotional trou-
ble. The earliest temples were established about the same time as the herb stores
and were also private enterprises. The priests, who owned the temples, and the
other temple attendants depended for their livelihood on the offerings of those
who came to worship and seek the aid of the deities. K. Chimin Wong and Lien-
Teh Wu’s description of an urban temple in China shows how temples served
those who went to them for relief from illness:
A very common custom is to go to the temples to pray for holy medicine. In

this practice, faith is placed in spiritual help more than in medicine, for some-
times none is given. As a rule this is resorted to as a last resource, a fair trial
being first given to rational treatment, but often it is prescribed at the very
beginning of an illness when the patient’s family is very superstitious. Pro-
pitious days, commonly the first and fifteenth of the month, are selected for
the commencement of the cure. In case of emergency, however, such things
are not taken into account. A fasting beforehand, that is, the adoption of cer-
tain modes of living in which no meat is allowed, the reciting of prayers, the
143
thorough washing of the body and other minutiae, are supposed to improve
one’s chance of getting the blessing, for the gods will only listen to the good
and clean. After the burning of joss and other offerings, the believer takes a
tube from the altar in which is placed a bundle of numbered sticks, passes
it over the joss fumes several times, shakes it until one falls to the ground.
This is picked up, the number read and a corresponding slip of paper given
on which is printed the prescription….31
The Chinatown temples were rather different from the village temples in
China which ordinarily belonged to the clan or the village and were seldom at-
tended by priests. Rites were performed by the individual worshipers at these
village temples or small, open shrines at sacred spots in the village. Urban tem-
ples in China had their priests, of course, but in his home village in China the
migrant was probably not familiar with them. In Chinatown, where the migrant
was much more on his own than in the village, the priests undoubtedly were im-
portant in times of stress. Conversely, serving in the Honolulu temples was more
lucrative for the priests than serving worshipers in China, as indicated in the story
of a young Hawaii-born priest who took over a Chinese temple in Honolulu in
1932 from an elderly migrant priestess:
Young Siu Hin … went to China for a visit. It was there he received his
message from the “Fifth Fairy Princess” that he was to become her inter-
preter—the means of communication between her and the people…. He
became the village doctor and healed people, and he told fortunes. The de-
mands were great, and the returns small so he returned to Honolulu for a
living Village folk are so poor they gave one copper or two for his services.
In Honolulu he taught [in a Chinese-language] school and helped in the Goon
Yum Mew, the largest temple in Honolulu, until last year…. Priest Young has
four helpers in the temple, doing the odd jobs of keeping the light of the gods
burning, keeping the altar place clean, and making paper miniatures of offer-
ings required in worship. “He is a saint. He speaks words of truth. They say
he is a protégé of the Fifth Fairy Princess. I had him sing the staff of my life,
and inquired of him the fortunes of my family, and it was very true.” Thus,
for the last two months, Young and his helpers in How Wong Miu have be-
come food for the women’s daily talk.32
Rites at these temples combined elements of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucian-

ism, and survivals of ancient nature worship handed down through innumerable
generations of illiterate village folk.’33 Tin-Yuke Char, discussing religion among
Chinese migrants to Hawaii, says that “the common man … is polytheistic in
his beliefs and practices. He embraces folk beliefs of supernatural beings, magic,
charms, astrology, fortune divinations, and deified warriors, heroes, and sages
144
taken from legends and fables. In Hawaii, it has been difficult to label which Chi-
nese temples and shrines are Buddhist and which are Taoist.”34
The first temple in Chinatown, in which Goon Yum (Kuan Yin), Goddess of
Mercy, was the principal deity, was built in 187935—the same year in which other
Chinese migrants founded the first Chinese Christian church a few blocks away.
In 1887 Frank Damon, who led mission work among the Chinese in Hawaii,
noted that there were “in Honolulu three Representative Idol Temples, with an
immense number of shrines in private homes and stores.” He described the three
temples in an account which is generally more objective in tone than that of other
Caucasian observers who were condescending or scornful toward what they re-
garded as “heathen temples”:
The largest of these temples is specially dedicated to the God How-Wong, a

deity mainly worshipped by the Chinese coming from the district of Heang
Shan [Chung Shan], the majority, perhaps, of our Chinese people being from
this region. This Temple is quite picturesquely situated on the river bank
at the foot of Beretania Street. It is most lavishly ornamented with gild-
ing and most gorgeous colouring. In the main shrine is a carved figure of
“How-Wong”; on either side are figures of two other gods, Kwan Tai and the
Chinese God of Medicine, to whom petitions are offered in case of sickness.
Another temple, erected since the fire last year, is situated a little off
King Street and is dedicated to Kwun Yam, the Goddess of Mercy of Bud-
dhism. She is represented seated on the opened petals of the Lotus and
occupies the most prominent position in the temple. Not far away is another
temple dedicated specially to Kwan Tai, the God of War. In this temple are
also idols representing Tien-How, the “Queen of Heaven,” and the “God of
Medicine.” Kwan Tai is more worshipped on our Islands by the Chinese than
any other god. His picture in a shrine is found in many stores, on the rice
plantations, and in the houses of the Secret Societies….
The worshipper procures his offering and the services of an assistant
from the temple-keeper. This assistant rings the large bell or beats upon the
drum to arouse the gods, while the worshipper kneels before the table upon
which he has placed his offerings of tea, wine, rice, fruit and fowl. With pros-
trations and incantations he devotes the essence of this food to the gods, then
goes to the shrine upon which the idol reposes and seeks the aid of the di-
vining blocks. These two pieces of wood are thrown down until they fall,
one with its oval and one with its flat side to the floor, which is considered a
good omen. Then the sacred jar of bamboo splints [chim], each of which is
numbered to correspond with the temple-keeper’s book of prayers, is shaken
until one of the splints falls to the floor. The assistant marks the number with
a brush pen. The number is handed to the temple-keeper, who gives the an-
swer according to the number in his book. The paper money is lighted from
145
the incense sticks on the shrine, then carried outside and placed in the brick
or metal crematory, and as it burns, the idol receives its essence. Meantime,
the assistant gathers together the food, to be taken home for a feast for the
friends.36
In the mid-1930s there were five temples in Honolulu, apart from the shrines
on the upper floor of many of the Chinese societies. None of these temples, all
privately owned by priest-caretakers, was located within the old Chinese quar-
ter. Fires in Chinatown had destroyed some of the early temple buildings;37 those
which were rebuilt were located close to, but not in, the old Chinatown. In two of
these temples the central deity was How Wong, important to the migrants from
Chung Shan who regarded him as their divine patron. Sau Chun Wong, in her
study of the temples of this period, says that How Wong, originally a fisherman’s
god, was appealed to by “people of any profession or trade … for good fortune,
protection, business success, and safety in travel to China.”38 Other deities in the
temples identified by Wong were Choy Sun, “god of fortune”; Yuk Wong Dai
Dei, “king and ruler of heaven and earth”; Hin Tan, “controller of thunder and
lightening”; the “Seven Sisters”; Fut Mu, the teacher of Goon Yum (Kuan Yin);
and Goon Yum herself.
By this time, most of the worshipers at the temples were no longer migrant
men but first-generation women. The ceremonies described in 1937 by Sau Chun
Wong, a Hawaii-born Chinese who was herself an active member of a Chinese
Christian church, closely resembled those described half a century earlier:
The ceremonials in all of the temples tend to be … of a magical char-

acter designed to coerce the gods and spirits to grant the expressed desires
of the worshippers [who seek] sons, happiness for departed spirits, family
happiness, long life, wealth and health, and security against accident and
misfortune.
A worshipper usually brings … on special holidays … a basket of food
composed of some form of animal flesh, as pork, chicken, or fish (or if he is
rich, all of the above), wine, tea, and three bowls of cooked rice, and a veg-
etable dish, as tofu [soybean curd] or “jai” [“monks’ food”]. As he enters, he
hits a panel and a drum several times to arouse the gods to listen to his suppli-
cation and also to chase away the evil spirits that are lurking near. The priest
may assist if the worshipper desires. He endeavors to get all the information
he can as to the desires of the worshipper. Then he chants … while kneeling
in front of the shrine…. He picks up the pair of kidney-shaped blocks and
answers to questions are secured by the throw of the blocks. If both fall with
the curved side up, it is a good sign; if one is flat and the other curved, it is
also good; but if both fall on the flat side, the future is not propitious and one
should take care.39
146
By the 1970s redevelopment of the old Chinatown section and the areas sur-
rounding it, along with the decline in the number of worshipers, has reduced
the number of Chinese temples to three. One of these, replacing an older one
dedicated to Goon Yum (Kuan Yin), was built on a site donated by a wealthy
Honolulu Chinese family. Some of the images from temples that were closed or
torn down have been placed in society buildings where worship can be continued
before the societies’ altars.40
In the late 1860s and early 1870s small numbers of migrants sought help in
times of crisis at Christian centers in downtown Honolulu like the Reverend S. C.
Damon’s Bethel Street Mission. These were mostly migrants moving into Hon-
olulu from the enclaves of Chinese Christian laborers in certain plantation and
independent farming areas, especially Hakkas who had become Christians before
migrating to Hawaii. In 1879 a group of thirty-seven Chinese formed them-
selves into a Christian congregation which was known for years as the Fort Street
Church. Interested Caucasian Christians served on the board and in other ways
assisted this congregation until it became independent of the Hawaiian Board of
Missions in 1919. By 1881, when the church building near Chinatown was dedi-
cated, there were 248 members.41
Problems arose in the Fort Street Church because the immigrant members
spoke one or another of two mutually unintelligible dialects: Cantonese and
Hakka. There were further differences among them because of the diverse Chris-
tian denominations to which some members had belonged before migrating to
Hawaii. Some had become Christians through the influence of German and
Swiss Lutheran missions; others had become Christians as the result of Ameri-
can Protestant missionary activity in China and the western United States. It was
easier for those who had been converted by American missionaries to make the
transition to the Congregational services of the Hawaiian Board than it was for
those converted by the Lutherans. There was no Lutheran church in Honolulu at
that time, but there were Anglicans whose services were somewhat like those of
the Lutherans. In 1886 a few members of the Fort Street Church began to meet
in a store near Chinatown for services with a newly arrived Anglican minister
and his young Hakka interpreter who had been brought to Honolulu at the age
of nine and sent to Iolani School. The following year this group, mostly Hakkas,
was formed into St. Peter’s Mission, later St. Peter’s Church, with their church
building behind St. Andrew’s Cathedral (Anglican), several blocks away from
Chinatown.42
The first Chinese Episcopal clergyman in Honolulu, Woo Yee Bew, was the
son of a Chinese who had been converted to Christianity in South China and had
himself been baptized in a Lutheran church near Canton. He had studied theol-
ogy at an Anglican college in Hong Kong before going to San Francisco and then
coming to Hawaii in 1883. Woo worked in Chinatown with S. C. Damon’s son,
the Reverend Frank Damon, and was active in the early development of the Fort
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Street Church before going to Kohala, Hawaii, to conduct services in Chinese for
the Christians on the plantation there. After many families from St. Paul’s Mis-
sion in Kohala had moved to Honolulu, Woo returned and helped organize St.
Peter’s Church in 1891.43
Though the first members of St. Peter’s Church were said in one account to
be “poor, mostly cooks, yardmen, and storekeepers,” the core of this and other
early Chinese congregations was made up of families—Chinese Christian fami-
lies who had migrated together from China or families brought to the Islands as
soon as the husband and father could manage it financially. The Chinese Christian
churches undoubtedly provided their members a type of personal and moral sup-
port which the familyless migrant generally lacked. Chinatown, therefore, played
quite a different role in the lives of the Christian migrants who had their families
there than it did in the lives of the familyless young men who were working in
the city or in other parts of Oahu.
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CHAPTER 8
Migrant Families
THE “familyless migrants” referred to so frequently in earlier chapters included

two types of Chinese men: those who had not married before emigrating and
those who, although married in China, came without their wives or children. The
exact proportions of married and unmarried migrants are unknown, but probably
more were married than was commonly realized. The census of 1896 reported
13,800 Chinese men as single and 4,027 as married. The same census reported
only 1,110 Chinese married women. A few hundred of the men had Hawaiian or
part-Hawaiian wives, but it is likely that two-thirds of those reported as married
had wives in China and perhaps many who were counted as single also had wives
in China. By 1910 the number of Chinese married women in Hawaii had risen to
1,555, but at the same time the number of married Chinese men had increased to
5,674.1 Many of these men had undoubtedly married on return visits to China; it
was common for their families to arrange marriages for them on such visits and
for the wives to be left behind to carry out their obligations to their husbands’ par-
ents, especially their mothers-in-law. Since, according to Chinese tradition, the
wife was expected to produce male heirs for the family, the migrant husband or-
dinarily did not return to Hawaii until his wife was pregnant or until the first child
was born. If this child was a daughter the migrant might stay on until his wife
was pregnant again. Generally there were several years of separation before the
migrant had saved enough money for another visit home.
The Early Decades

The familyless migrant in Hawaii almost necessarily led a life that was abnormal
in comparison with the pattern of his traditional kinship society. Some of the anx-
ieties felt by the wife of one of these wah kiu are revealed in excerpts from two
letters sent in 1931 to her husband who was working as a waiter in a Chinatown
restaurant—letters no doubt composed and written by a professional letter writer:
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Migrant Families
A week has passed since I saw you leave…. Although my body is far apart
from yours, my mind has really always been thinking about you. When I
think about how truly and how faithfully you have treated me, when sud-
denly we two are separated by mountain and ocean …—all those things
make me feel very sad and regretful…. I always pray to God to bless you to
enable you to make a good chance [have good luck] so that you can return
with your fortune to your home to let me be with you all the time, and to re-
new the feelings of our hearts…. I sincerely hope you … not squander your
valuable time in the yin fa chee dee [“opium and prostitute places”]….
… I wonder when we can ever meet again…. But since you have the ambi-
tion to seek your fortune abroad I hope you go forward courageously so that
happiness will be yours. You ought to know time and money are valuable.
Whenever they go away they can never return. The place where you can have
good times and all those profitless and useless pastimes I sincerely hope, my
beloved husband, that you will keep out of them lest they would handicap
your future. I know that you are broad-minded so will not reproach me for
this outspoken advice…. When you have leisure after your work hours, I
with ten thousands of strongest longings wish you to write to me to cultivate
my stupidness and to relieve my Ionesomeness and longing. The weather is
getting cold now. You should put on some more clothes and care for your-
self in order to relieve my worry. All I would like to say to you is too much
and the paper is too short. Wishing you health and prosperity and fortune
abroad….2
As in most other overseas Chinese colonies, the majority of migrants in

Hawaii never did establish families in the Islands. Romanzo Adams estimated
that 1,200 to 1,500 Chinese before 1900 married or lived with Hawaiian or part-
Hawaiian women and established Chinese-Hawaiian families, especially in the
rural areas and small towns. Several of the men who had such families also had
wives and children in China. Studies of Chinese-Hawaiian families have shown
that few children in these families became part of the “Chinese community”;
most of them were more closely identified with their mothers’ Hawaiian and part-
Hawaiian relatives.3 The Chinese-Hawaiians who were most likely to become
identified with the Chinese community in Hawaii were those boys who were
taken back to their fathers’ villages and reared by the fathers’ Chinese wives or
other relatives. A middle-aged Chinese-Hawaiian who had been taken to China
as a boy was interviewed in 1931; his daughter, who translated her father’s Chi-
nese into English, served as interpreter:
My father said he went back to China when he was eight years old with his
father [and] returned when he was nineteen years old. He said he has two
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mothers…. He stayed with this Chinese woman [who] is very nice to him….
“China mother very, very good.” He said she treated him just like her own
son. He said, “Hawaiian mother good too, treat me good, but China mother
very, very good.” He is more used to her ways…. You see he likes Chinese
ways and he was brought up in Chinese manner.4
Another Chinese-Hawaiian, also reared in China, married there and eventu-

ally brought his Chinese wife to the Islands:
I went to China when I was about seven years old with my father. I stayed
there for about twelve years…. In China I stayed with my Chinese mother;
yeah, my father married a Chinese lady. You know, Chinese style.
I take Chinese mother just like real mother. Yeah, I like her. I still write
letter to her…. My father died long time, but I write to my mother in Chi-
nese. I stay with my Chinese mother so long, I’m used to her….
I married in China—regular Chinese style. Match-making; I never see
wife till that day when I married her. I never bring her with me when I come
back to Honolulu. She didn’t come till five years after.5
Occasionally, as in a few cases known to the writer, a migrant who had

a “Chinese family” and a “Hawaiian family” eventually brought his Chinese
wife and any children she had to Hawaii and maintained both families in the
Islands, sometimes in the same household.6 The Chinese acceptance of concubi-
nage and the Hawaiian tradition of plural marriages provided a basis for tolerance
of such arrangements during the days of the Hawaiian monarchy, in spite of op-
position from Christian missionaries. Even after Annexation, lax enforcement of
antibigamy laws for two or three decades made it possible for some families of
this type to continue without interference from legal authorities.
A few migrants who could afford to do so, especially between 1880 and
1930, accommodated to separation from their wives and children in China by liv-
ing with Chinese concubines in Hawaii. In some cases the “first wife” and her
children never left China. In others the first wife was brought to Hawaii where
she and her children were installed along with the concubine and the concubine’s
children. As one would expect, this arrangement sometimes led to quarrels be-
tween wives and between their children, but one daughter of a “second wife,” or
concubine, wrote in the 1930s about the harmonious family life she had enjoyed
in such a household in Hawaii:
Ours is a large family. Father had eight children; four boys from the first wife
and four girls from the second wife. All of us children called the first wife
“mother” regardless of whose children we really were. The second wife we
call “Jah” which in Chinese means “second mother.” This seemingly strange
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Migrant Families
family situation can be explained by the age-old Oriental custom which al-
lows a man to have more than one wife….
Our family is closely integrated, and we all work for the welfare of the
home…. All earnings by the members of the family were turned over to fa-
ther. My brothers’ pay checks were given directly to father….
All of the boys were educated in private American schools…. Father
seemed more interested in them than in his daughters. Indeed, it is an ac-
cepted fact that in the Orient boys are more highly considered than girls. This
is so because they can carry on and perpetuate the family name, thus easing
the parent’s constant worry of family extinction….
However peculiar may have been the household situation, I can say with
sincerity that the happiness I found and the culture I received in my home are
equal, if not superior, to the culture that could be got under any other family
culture.7
That it was not unusual for Chinese migrants in the early decades of emi-
gration to take concubines rather than first wives overseas is shown by Dr. Paul
C. F. Siu’s study of Chinese families in Chicago in 1933. He found that not one
of the dozen or so Chinese women who had come to Chicago before 1900 was
a first wife; all were either second wives or concubines.8 This finding is con-
sistent with Chinese family values that placed great importance on maintaining
the ancestral kinship group, of which the sojourner migrant’s wife and children
were essential parts. Nevertheless, the situation in Hawaii seems to have differed
from that in other overseas Chinese communities. It appears that nearly all the
married Chinese women who came to the Islands were wives rather than con-
cubines. Personal documents and life histories contain occasional references to
Chinese migrants who had both a Chinese wife and one or more concubines, but
there is no evidence that the practice was common. Perhaps fewer concubines
were brought to Hawaii than to the mainland United States because Hawaiian
and part-Hawaiian women were accessible in the Islands whereas non-Chinese
women were relatively inaccessible to Chinese migrants on the mainland. There
were other differences between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland that appear to have
encouraged Chinese migrants to bring their wives (who were usually their only
wives) to the Islands: a higher proportion of the migrants in the Islands were
financially successful; Hawaii was more similar to South China in climate and
physical environment; legal entry was easier before 1924; transportation between
Hawaii and China was cheaper and quicker; there was less anti-Chinese agitation
and legal discrimination; there were more educational, economic, and social op-
portunities for Hawaii-born Chinese in the Islands’ multiethnic community.
Whatever the reason, the number of married Chinese women in Hawaii—the
best clue to the establishment of Chinese families in the Islands—increased
steadily over the census periods prior to 1930. There were 559 in 1890; 1,119 in
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1896; 1,409 in 1900; 1,555 in 1910; 2,416 in 1920; and 3,212 in 1930. Before
1910 nearly all these women would have been born in China; by 1930 about half
of them would have been Hawaii-born. Throughout this period married women
born in China, almost without exception, would have had Chinese husbands; and
before 1920 this would also have been true of the Hawaii-born Chinese married
women. Even though outmarriage of Hawaii-born Chinese women increased dur-
ing the 1920s, at least five-sixths of those who married in that decade married
Chinese men.9
It was particularly significant for the development of organized Chinese
community life in Honolulu that a high proportion of the Chinese families of
Hawaii were in that city—especially by about 1930, when at least half the fam-
ilies were still headed by men of the migrant generation. By 1930 Honolulu had
at least three thousand Chinese nuclear families with one or both parents living.
The number or Chinese family households in Honolulu was considerably smaller
since many families of the migrant generation were of the extended type: one or
more families of the married sons living with the sons’ parents and unmarried
siblings.
Whether the migrant’s family was located in Honolulu, in a smaller town, or
in a rural area such as a rice-growing district, it was generally recognized that es-
tablishing a family in the Islands brought stability into the migrant’s life. It also
gave his wife a welcome release from the constrictions of living with parents-in-
law in the village. In 1936 a Hawaii-born Chinese student explained how setting
up a family in Hawaii affected his own mother and father:
Before my dad got married he was very unsteady. He worked here and there
with no concern for the future. During his spare time, like most of his con-
temporary countrymen, he took to gambling. Sometimes he won but most of
the time he lost his money. This kept on until the arrival of my mother…. He
began to realize his responsibilities to his wife and family. His carefree days
were gone and he began to save his money. With what little he had he started
his own business. His friends all complimented his industry now. He was a
changed man….
My mother got economic security only when she came to Hawaii. While
she was in China she had to live with my paternal grandmother. A daughter-
in-law has no choice but to be under the domination of a mother-in-law. My
mother had to eat what grandmother bought and like it…. But as soon as
she came to Hawaii and raised a family she was her own boss. Dad gave her
money to spend and she was really independent.
In return for her economic security, my mother provided religious secu-
rity for my father. Mother celebrates the various festivals and holidays, and
often goes to the temple to ask blessings for father and his business. In times
of illness, mother is the one that prays to the gods for a speedy recovery.10
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Kinship Ties and Interfamily Relationships

The migrant family in Hawaii could not, of course, be a complete replica of
the family pattern within the village and clan in China, but within the migrant
Chinese community there developed a network of kinship ties and interfamily re-
lationships which partly grew out of old-world ties and partly replaced them. The
tendency of Chinese families in the early days to concentrate in the heart of old
Chinatown was an integral part of this process. Since most families of migrant
businessmen or craftsmen initially lived behind or above the shops, and since
partners and employees in these businesses were commonly kinsmen or heung
li, the wife from China was likely to find that her neighbors in Chinatown were
women she had known at home or knew about through others in her home vil-
lage. It was in Chinatown, or the districts adjacent to it, that Chinese family life
flourished most during the 1890s and the first fifteen years of this century. Here
was the greatest concentration of women and children, of family ritual, of com-
munal sharing of crises and celebrations among people whose culture to a large
extent isolated them from the community surrounding them. It is not surprising
that most of the leaders among the migrant Chinese were men who had families
in Hawaii. They were not only among the most stable and responsible—they also
had a greater stake in matters affecting the Chinese community than did the fam-
ilyless migrants.
With the growth of Chinese families in Honolulu, members of the Chinese
community were bound together in a way that would hardly have been possible in
an aggregation of mobile, familyless adult men. Relationships among such men,
each bent on his individual goals, exploiting the resources of a place where they
did not intend to settle and even exploiting each other, tended to be touch-and-
go—there was less regard for personal claims from the past or for building up
permanent ties in the new community. Children, especially within the Chinese
tradition, required the migrants to plan for the future. And by a subtle process
children brought parents, kinsmen, and fellow villagers into a chain of reciprocal
moral obligations that were even stronger than the claims exerted in the business
world.
Each event in the family life cycle, from birth to death, was accompanied by
ceremonials, rituals, and customs which involved not only the immediate family
but also more distant kinsmen, heung li, neighbors, the father’s business associ-
ates, and members of Chinese organizations to which the family, especially the
father, belonged. These activities varied from family to family, and even within
the same family over the course of time, because folk practices among the mi-
grants were not uniform, even though nearly all of them came from the same
small region in China. There were differences between Hakka and Punti, between
Cantonese-speaking families of Chung Shan district and those of the See Yup
districts, and even between those of different subdistricts of Chung Shan, such
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as Lung Doo and Kung Seong Doo. Chinese who had become Christians, even
though they retained many traditional Chinese cultural practices, observed dif-
ferent rituals than the non-Christian Chinese. In spite of these variations, there
was enough similarity to make for mutual understanding and participation by
most members of the Chinese community. Interviews with Hawaii Chinese and
observations by the writer from 1929 to 1937, life histories, and other personal
documents provide descriptions of some of the practices common among first-
generation and second-generation Chinese families in the Islands.
Birth of Children
The birth of a child in Chinatown usually initiated a round of solicitous and cer-
emonial activities. When a child was about to be born the pregnant mother’s
female relatives and friends who were living nearby gave her help. Some went to
the temple or prayed before family shrines for the safety of mother and unborn
child and besought the help and goodwill of the deities. Older women passed on
to the young mother the folk wisdom they had brought from China; they warned
the mother against doing anything believed to be harmful to her and the child;
they advised her on diet and prepared special food for her; they helped her pre-
pare for the delivery.
In the early days of Chinatown, the delivery was usually attended by a mid-
wife who was a relative or family friend rather than a professional and who
continued to help the mother through the child’s first days. Her services were usu-
ally repaid with gifts rather than a fee. On the third day after the child’s birth a
customary ceremony was to place under the infant’s bed an image of the god-
dess believed to be the protector of infants. The father commonly announced his
good fortune in the birth of a child, especially of a son, by sending to relatives
and friends trays containing hard-boiled eggs dyed red and pigs’ feet pickled in
ginger and black vinegar. It was customary for the tray to be returned, uncleaned,
with some money wrapped in red paper (li shee). During the first month friends
and relatives might also send the child such gifts as jade jewelry, gold chains and
bracelets, or gold-cloth emblems of Buddha and characters signifying long life,
happiness, and wealth to be sewn on the child’s bonnet. When a son was born, the
father might recognize ties with his kinsmen in China by arranging for a lantern
to be placed in the ancestral hall at the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival and
entering the son’s name in the family register and genealogy. The father would
probably send money for a feast to be held by kinsmen on that occasion.
During the first month it was expected that neither the mother nor the child
would leave the house. The end of this month was often celebrated by another
round of ceremonies. The child in a non-Christian family would probably have
his head shaved and would be taken, dressed in red garments, to the temple to
be introduced to the gods and receive a name, a prediction of his fortune, and a
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Migrant Families
blessing. Rites would also be carried out before a family shrine to announce the
addition of a new family member, especially if the child was a boy who would
eventually himself perform rites for deceased ancestors. The “full month” cere-
monies often ended with a banquet for dozens or even hundreds of guests, the
larger, more elaborate banquets being held for a boy-child who was the firstborn.
A rice planter’s daughter on Kauai, who had five sisters and four brothers, wrote
in 1937 about the rituals carried out when a grandchild was born into her family:
If the grandchild is one of her sons’, grandmother helps to shave the baby’s
tiny head before the baby is a month old. On this day, she boils a couple of
eggs and dyes them red. She places them in a pan of warm water which was
prepared for the shaving. She carries the baby gently in her arms over the wa-
ter, dampens his tiny head, rolls the egg around his head and repeats several
lines in Chinese. What these lines mean, I do not know. When this is over,
she starts shaving the baby’s head with a Chinese shaving razor.
If the child is the first boy, a large dinner is always given on the day he
becomes a month old and also when he is a year old. When he is a month old,
lots of boiled eggs, dyed red, and roasted pork, pickled ginger, and Chinese
sweet breads are wrapped up in packages and given to friends, neighbors,
and relatives. Brother is so happy that he offers cigars to everyone of his
friends and also to the men in the office where he works. The baby also re-
ceives a great many gifts from the family’s good wishers.
Two other Hawaii-born Chinese reported, about the same time, the customs
their families followed when a child was born:
The birth of my younger brother was climaxed by a “full month” party, when
my brother, a pink little bundle of noise, was displayed to the guests. Father
told me he spent more than five hundred dollars for that party and when I
[firstborn son] was a month old, he spent nearly a thousand. I asked him why
he didn’t save the money for our use when we come to college or start in
business. He said, “College education and careers are different things.” The
celebrations of the births of my sisters were the same, but in a far less inten-
sive degree.
When Sister was a month old, she was dressed in a pink dress. The dress was
pink because it was the nearest to red, the lucky color of the Chinese. She
also wore some gold trinkets symbolizing good luck and long life. On that
day we had a large roasted pig, called a “golden pig.” It was put on a stand
in the parlor and in front of it were placed candles and other ceremonial ar-
ticles. Father then bowed and prayed that the gods be generous and that they
protect the new-born babe. After that the paper money was burned. Then the
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pig was cut into slices to distribute to friends and relatives. Preserved ginger,
buns, and red-colored eggs were also distributed. These were all symbols of
good luck, health, and happiness.
At a full-month banquet guests who had not already given presents to the
child were expected to leave money, two dollars or more, conventionally wrapped
in red paper. In case the family did not celebrate the occasion by a banquet but
delivered the ceremonial foods to the homes of relatives and friends, the li shee
was given at that time.
Chinese Festivals
Traditional holiday periods such as Chinese New Year and the Moon Festival
were occasions for family festivities. Others, such as Ching Ming and the Mid-
Autumn Festival, involved ceremonial renewing of ties between living and de-
ceased members of a family. In the traditional observance of such festivals
interfamily visiting and obligations were important, and Chinese organizations
participated in the Ching Ming and Mid-Autumn Festival ceremonies. Accounts
of Chinese New Year written in the 1920s and 1930s by Hawaii-born Chinese stu-
dents illustrate the intrafamily and interfamily observances of this major annual
festival:
Chinese New Year is the greatest holiday of the Chinese people…. Months
ahead, preparations for its celebration are under way. I recall how my father
used to plant narcissus bulbs…. I recall how industriously my oldest sister
would work at the sewing machine to provide each member of the family
with a new suit of clothes. New Year was the time when everybody must
look his best, poor as well as rich. There were over ten in our family, so you
can imagine how my sister must have stitched till her eyes grew dim … in
order to finish the clothes in time…. I recall how mother would rise up early
in the morning to pound rice into flour for the rice pudding and other tooth-
some delicacies…. Then there was the grand house-cleaning day before New
Year…. The climax of the celebration is just when the clock struck twelve.
Firecrackers boomed … everywhere could be heard cries of “HAPPY NEW
YEAR.” Before the altar my father and mother would kaotow and beg divine
blessing of the gods for the coming year. Then they would distribute little
packages of money to all the children. As early as five o’clock the next morn-
ing, guests would be pouring into our house and some more of the tiny red
packages would be passed out. Giving away money wrapped in red paper
meant good luck, and the more generous a man was, the more prosperous
and fortunate his life would be the coming year.
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Mother is very particular about what we say on New Year, for it is believed
that everything one says on New Year is supposed to come true. So we have
to remember not to talk about bad things…. Then, too, on New Year’s Day
we must cleanse our bodies by bathing in water which has pomelo leaves in
it. Some of these superstitions seem silly to us, but we have to conform to
mother’s wishes since she believes in them.
On New Year’s Day when one goes to call on people, he must take oranges
and tangerines and a piece of pudding. “Li-see” are given to little children
for good luck. When a visitor arrives, tea is served. With the tea one must say
something congratulating the guest. If the visitor is young one wishes that
she will have many more sons. One wishes an older person wealth and long
life. After the visitor has finished drinking, more tea is poured into the cup,
as a symbol that there will be an increase in wealth, children, or years in life.
When the visitor leaves, one has to leave two oranges and two tangerines as
a symbol that there will be a continuing relationship.
At Chinese New Year we visit each other. At each home, we eat all over
again the special New Year’s monk’s food, which may be described as a veg-
etable stew. Relatives whom we sometimes don’t see for a whole year, we
dine with at this time…. Eating and drinking together, we once again resume
the family relationship, and at this time the old kindred spirit between the
visiting relatives and the host is revived.
Even familyless migrants were included in these holiday activities—men

who were actually relatives of a family and other friends of the father, who be-
came, as it were, honorary uncles for these occasions. The claims of friends and
relatives were taken seriously within the Chinese community:
The first-generation Chinese families seldom invite their friends over to Sun-
day night dinner as the Westerners do. When they do give a dinner it is
generally a ten-table affair and all their friends and relatives are invited so
that no one would be left out. Woe be to you, if you forgot to invite a rela-
tive. He will never forget it and he will generally draw the conclusion that it
is because he is poor that you neglect him, for who has heard of a wealthy
relative being neglected?
Education of Children
One matter of particular concern to migrant parents of Hawaii-born Chinese
was the education of their children—especially, at first, their sons. Most of the
migrants who came before Annexation had little formal education. The eco-
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nomic hardship most of them had lived with during their childhood had thwarted
any possibility of securing even elementary schooling. This very background,
however, coupled with the improved economic position of immigrant heads of
families in Hawaii and the age-old Chinese tradition that positions of highest
prestige went to the most erudite scholars, led migrant fathers to try to secure for
at least some of their children a good Chinese education.
In Chinese villages, beginners’ schools were usually supported by clans and
held in the ancestral hall under the supervision of a literate clan member. Vil-
lagers who did not belong to a clan prosperous enough to maintain such a school,
or members of a family too poor to pay even the minimal expenses involved in
sending a child to the clan school, could not take advantage of this schooling.
For several reasons clan schools were never established in Hawaii, and Chinese
families had been in the Islands several decades before it occurred to migrants of
various clan and surname identities that they could jointly establish Chinese-lan-
guage schools for their children. Between 1870 and 1910 the number of Chinese
children in Honolulu between six and fifteen years of age grew from not more
than a dozen or so to more than 1,700 and in all of Hawaii from less than a hun-
dred to more than 3,500. Few formal schools were established by the Chinese
themselves during this period, however. Most migrant families dealt individually
with their children’s education. Hundreds of Hawaii-born boys, especially eldest
sons, were sent back to China to live in the villages with their fathers’ relatives
and attend the clan schools. During late adolescence, and commonly after being
married in the village, the young men returned to Hawaii to work in their fathers’
businesses or enter some other occupation. Sometimes boys who returned in their
teens attended English-language schools in Hawaii to obtain the advantages of a
dual education in Chinese and English, even though their learning in each might
be limited.
A larger number of Hawaii-born boys and most Hawaii-born girls were not
sent back to the villages, especially as the years passed and migrants changed
from sojourners to permanent residents. It was the growing number of these
children who remained in Hawaii that led ultimately to the organization of
Chinese-language schools. Before such schools were established, some parents
arranged to have their children privately tutored at home by one or another mi-
grant who had enough knowledge of the Chinese classics to give lessons.11 At
least one teacher was brought from China, as an employee of a local Chinese
businessman, “to open a private school in Honolulu for Chinese” in 1893, but no
record of such a school was found.12
More important as precursors of the language schools were the mission
schools established by Caucasians in or near Chinatown. The first of these, ap-
parently, was the Bethel Mission School which opened as an evening school in
1869. Others established during the next forty years included the Chinese Chil-
dren’s English School (also known as the Chinese Mission Day School), Fort
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Street Mission School (later renamed Iolani School), Mills Institute (later called
Mid-Pacific Institute), St. Louis College, and the Honolulu Anglo-Chinese Acad-
emy. At first these schools attracted China-born adolescents and young adults
who realized the economic value of learning to speak, read, and write English.
According to a report published in January 1881, some 248 of the 265 students
enrolled in evening classes of the Bethel Mission School over the preceding
eleven years had been Chinese.13 An 1882 government report mentions Tang
Peng Sum as “teacher of Chinese” “with Adela M. Payson as principal” in the
Chinese Children’s English School, which had been given $404.50 in 1882 “for
the education of 50 boys and two girls in the Chinese and English languages.”14
Classes held in nearly all the Chinese Christian churches in the Islands were
less formally organized than the mission schools, but instruction in Chinese (both
Cantonese and Hakka dialects) was given by Chinese ministers, with Caucasian
Christian volunteers teaching English. The Chinese YMCA located near China-
town in Honolulu also organized classes for instruction in English and Chinese.
In 1891 Lee On, who had been a teacher at the Chinese YMCA in the 1880s,
was issued a permit in Hong Kong to reenter Hawaii where he was “required by
the YMCA to resume his duties in the education of the Chinese boys.”15 Most
mission schools admitted only boys, but girls from Chinese Christian homes who
reached school age in the 1880s and 1890s began to receive schooling in the
classes held in the churches. Some Chinese girls did attend the Kawaiahao Fe-
male Seminary in Honolulu, which later merged with Mills Institute to form the
Mid-Pacific Institute, but there were not many and their schooling was primarily
in English.
While children from non-Christian as well as Christian Chinese families
were admitted to the church classes and the mission schools, many non-Christian
Chinese parents disliked having their children educated under Christian mission-
ary influence. A missionary magazine, The Friend, clearly stated in 1882 the
objective of missionary education of Chinese youth: “It is one of the most useful
agencies now in operation for Christianizing and elevating of the Chinese in our
Islands.”16 C. K. Ai tells of the quarrels between Sun Yat-sen, his close friend and
classmate at the Fort Street School, and Sun Yat-sen’s older brother, Sun Mi, be-
cause of Sun Yat-sen’s attraction to Christianity. According to C. K. Ai this issue
“split the Chinese community in these islands.”17
An alternative to the mission schools was offered by the government schools,
which by the 1890s were taught entirely in English. The 1896 census reported
that 475 Chinese pupils—351 boys and 124 girls—were attending independent
schools and 140—117 boys and 23 girls—were in government schools. After
Annexation, when the American public school system spread to the Islands, the
majority of Hawaii-born Chinese children were enrolled in the public schools or
Protestant and Catholic schools. At first, higher proportions of boys than of girls
attended school: in 1900, some 802 boys and 423 girls between the ages of five
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and twenty were in school; in 1910, the enrollment was 1,924 boys and 1,317
girls. In 1910 about 80 percent of the boys five to twenty years old, and about 65
percent of the girls, attended school.
The fact that two-thirds of the Chinese girls between ages five and twenty
were attending school in 1910 is remarkable in view of the low value traditionally
placed by Chinese on the education of daughters. To be sure, school attendance
was legally compulsory for girls as well as boys, but enforcement was weak for
several years after Annexation. Quite probably Chinese girls went to school in
such high proportions because non-Christian as well as Christian Chinese parents
acquiesced in the wider community view that it was desirable to educate both
boys and girls. Chinese parents quickly realized that well-paid jobs were avail-
able to educated women, and since Hawaii-born Chinese girls were not betrothed
or married at as early an age as in China, it was to the benefit of the girls’ families
to see that their daughters could qualify for those jobs. It was also easier to find
husbands for girls who could earn money.
The development of an extensive system of private and tax-supported public
schools relieved Chinese parents of the necessity of operating schools for general
education at their own expense, as overseas Chinese did in most of Southeast
Asia and elsewhere. Nevertheless, since these schools were taught in English and
within the Western, specifically American, cultural tradition, there was a widen-
ing gap between migrant parents and their Hawaii-reared and Hawaii-educated
children—a gap that sometimes led to serious family conflicts. In his study of
the Chinese-language schools in Hawaii, Kum Pui Lai concludes that the migrant
generation’s primary objective in organizing such schools was to prevent or re-
tard “deculturization” or “deracialization” of their children. He translates, from a
statement prepared by the founders of a language school opened in 1911, a pas-
sage that speaks of Hawaii-born Chinese children becoming “foreignized”:
Our youths of school age number several thousands. Because they are
brought up here in an American cultural milieu, their speech, contacts, and
experiences tend to be foreignized. Concerning Chinese customs and man-
ners they possess no knowledge, and we are forced to bear seeing the process
of a racial transformation.18
Concern about the Hawaii-Chinese children’s knowing their ancestral culture

was not the only impetus for opening two language schools near Honolulu’s Chi-
natown only a few days apart in 1911. These schools—Wah Mun School and
Mun Lun School—were opened by rival Chinese political movements, a devel-
opment which is discussed in Chapter 12. Neither was a clan school like those in
the villages; both accepted students of all surname identities and both accepted
girls as well as boys. These two schools are still the largest Chinese-language
schools in the Islands. Over the years more than twenty others were opened in
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Honolulu, and at least three in rural Oahu, three in Hilo, three on Maui, and two
on Kauai. Some of these, like the first two, reflected political viewpoints among
the migrants; others were begun because of dialectical, factional, religious, and
commercial interests. All were designed to supplement American schooling by
providing institutions where Chinese boys and girls could be taught, after regular
school hours and on Saturdays, the rudiments of written Chinese and some appre-
ciation of their ancestral history and cultural heritage.
In the early 1930s children of migrant parents still made up about one-third
of the students in the classes Kum Pui Lai studied at Mun Lun School; the other
students were children of Hawaii-born Chinese parents. At that time from a third
to a half of the Chinese children five to fifteen years old in Honolulu were at-
tending Chinese-language schools.19 In spite of the factional differences between
their founders and supporters, the first two language schools played an important
role in the organization of Honolulu’s Chinese into a community, and they illus-
trate the significance of the family in this process.
Marriages
Through marriages, both of migrants and of Hawaii-born Chinese, relationships
between members of Honolulu’s Chinese community were strengthened and
new connections were set up. Prosperous migrants arranged marriages for eco-
nomically successful unmarried heung li with women in their home villages or
districts; a migrant with children still living with their mother and grandparents
in the village or Hawaii-born and Hawaii-reared was likely to be interested in the
children of other migrants from his home district as prospective mates for his sons
or daughters. These potential spouses might also have been living in the home
district or they might have been members of a family established in Hawaii. Sev-
eral hundred early second-generation young men went back to their fathers’ home
villages to be married to brides selected for them by their elders. Fewer of the
Hawaii-born girls of the early second generation went back: many of them would
be married to their fathers’ heung li in Hawaii.
Betrothals and weddings in the villages and in Hawaii were occasions for gift
exchanges between the families of the young couple as well as for the giving and
receiving of gifts among heung li, friends, and business associates. Weddings in
wah kiu families in the villages were far more elaborate than most nonmigrant
families could afford. Accounts of these weddings in China circulated among mi-
grant heung li in Honolulu, and the arrival of a village-reared bridegroom to join
his father’s circle of friends and acquaintances, or the return of the Island-reared
bridegroom, was celebrated in Chinatown. If the bride came to Hawaii later than
her husband, there were further celebrations after her arrival. After her arrival in
Hawaii, the China-born bride often lived with her husband’s family in Honolulu
much as she would have done had she married someone in a neighboring village.
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A third-generation Honolulu girl described the situation of her parents’ genera-

tion:
When grandpa’s sons were old enough to marry, he took them to China
where he made the arrangements for each son’s wedding. He selected his
daughters-in-law with the help of matchmakers. For each son’s wedding
there was a large wedding feast to which the whole village was invited.
Grandfather also paid for each daughter-in-law’s passage fare to Honolulu.
For many years all the sons and daughters-in-law lived together with grandpa
and grandma in the same house. During these days they had no freedom nor
authority to make any decisions. Grandpa supported the family; therefore, he
was the ruler and the head of the family. Mother and the other daughters-in-
law had to do all the cooking, ironing, washing, and other household duties
for the whole family. The women never had an opportunity to go out alone.
If ever they went out, grandma chaperoned them. Mother, who was only six-
teen when she was married, was naturally very much afraid of grandpa and
grandma. She was brought up with the idea that she was to obey and respect
her husband’s parents.
Marriages between Hawaii-reared Chinese girls and Chinese migrants in

Hawaii also helped to forge bonds within the migrant community. Many of these
marriages were “matched,” often as the girl was reaching late adolescence, by a
go-between who also assisted in the marital arrangements and acted as a sponsor
of the marriage. This type of marriage was an approximation of traditional village
customs—there was nothing like a Western courtship and the bride and groom
saw little of one another before the wedding. In the earlier decades it was possible
for parents to arrange economically more promising marriages for their daughters
with migrants than with Hawaii-born young men. Migrants were more likely to
have established themselves occupationally and to have saved enough to set up
a home. For migrant parents who had themselves come to Hawaii for economic
reasons, financial security would have been a major consideration in selecting a
son-in-law. Apart from the economic security the successful bridegroom could
offer his bride, there were often other business and financial advantages to be
gained, on both sides, from such an alliance. One immediate advantage was that
the unmarried migrant who married a Hawaii-Chinese girl saved the cost of a trip
to China. On their side, Hawaii-born girls of the early second generation, them-
selves trained in Chinese ways, acquiesced in such matchmaking.
Marriages brought about further interlinking of the Chinese population of the
Islands, new reciprocal obligations, new lines of mutual control. Betrothals, like
the baby ceremonies, typically involved dozens of people, and weddings even
hundreds. Gifts exchanged between the bridegroom’s and bride’s families were
selected with an eye to family appraisal and comment from other members of
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the Chinese community. There were farewell dinners in the home of the bride
and congratulatory dinners in the home of the prospective bridegroom and his
parents if he was a Hawaii-born Chinese. An elaborate wedding reception and
banquet was attended by relatives and friends on both sides. Gifts of money were
presented, representatives and friends of the couple’s families made congratu-
latory speeches, and there was much merrymaking and joking with the bride.
Old-world customs were revived and sometimes expensively elaborated. Non-
Christians worshiped at a temple, and if the bridegroom’s family had a shrine in
Hawaii the couple visited it and carried out rites honoring his ancestors. If the
bridegroom’s parents lived in Hawaii, the bride dutifully carried out the tradi-
tional ceremonies honoring them.
Each succeeding wedding increased the circle of interrelationships among
these residents of a new world—even though, as time and acculturation went on,
the pattern of the marriages themselves lost much of the old village character and
took on a modified Western form. Because of these interrelationships Chinese
children in Honolulu, instead of living in a world of Chinese strangers, had direct
or indirect kinship ties with a great number of other Chinese. The widening circle
of relationships in which individual Chinese were involved is illustrated by ge-
nealogical data given by thirty-six Hawaii-born Chinese who were students at the
University of Hawaii in 1937 (Table 12). They were asked to list by kinship those
persons they recognized as relatives, living or dead, in Hawaii, China, or some
other part of the world. Twenty-two of the informants had China-born fathers and
either China-born mothers (twelve) or Hawaii-born mothers (ten). Fourteen had
Hawaii-born fathers and either China-born mothers (three) or Hawaii-born moth-
ers (eleven).
Table 12
Relatives Listed by Thirty-Six Hawaii-Born Chinese: 1937
Kinship Living Relativesa Deceased Relatives
Residing Residing Residing Died in Died in Died

in Hawaii in China Elsewhere Hawaii China Else-
where
Paternal great- — — — 5 3 —
grandparents
Maternal great- 1 — — 3 2 —
grandparents
Paternal grandpar- 14 3 — 13 33 —
ents
Maternal grandpar- 21 4 — 17 18 —
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ents
Father 26 1 — 7 2 —
Mother 34 1 — 1 — —
Stepfather — — — 1 — —
Stepmother 1 — — — 1 —
Brothers 96 5 2 4 2 —
Sisters 108 3 — 3 1 —
Brothers-in-law 31 2 — 1 — —
Sisters-in-law 12 5 2 1 — —
Nephews 50 4 1 — — —
Nieces 39 1 2 — — —
Relatives through 210 133 14 7 26 5
father’s brothers
Relatives through 127 65 2 14 3 —
father’s sisters
More distant rela- 18 9 — 1 2 —
tives of father
Relatives through 230 34 6 3 9 1
mother’s brothers
Relatives through 281 42 33 14 2 —
mother’s sisters
Total 1,299 312 62 95 104 6
a Hawaii-born relatives who were students in China, on the U.S. mainland, or elsewhere were clas-
sified as living in Hawaii.
Of the 1,299 relatives listed as residing in Hawaii, 92 were of part-Chinese

ancestry and 25 were non-Chinese who had married Chinese relatives of the in-
formants. Since the total Chinese population in Hawaii in 1937 was only about
28,000, it is impressive that this small group of 36 Hawaii-born Chinese, mostly
in their early twenties, identified as relatives nearly 1,300 Chinese in Hawaii.
This number, in fact, falls far short of the total number of Chinese in Hawaii with
whom these informants could have traced family connections. For one thing, the
information they gave omitted several hundred Chinese in Hawaii with whom
they would have had an indirect kinship through their 31 brothers-in-law and 12
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sisters-in-law living in Hawaii. Moreover, they could have found family connec-
tions with hundreds of other Chinese married to siblings of great-grandparents
or grandparents who had settled in Hawaii or to descendants of those siblings.
The rapid multiplication of connections with each generation is indicated by the
fact that informants with one or both Hawaii-born parents listed 742 (86 per-
cent) of the 866 relatives living in Hawaii who were identified in the last five
categories of the table. Of the 1,673 living relatives listed, 1,299 (77 percent)
were living in Hawaii, only about 20 percent in China, and less than 4 percent in
other parts of the world. Of those living in Hawaii, more than 80 percent were in
Honolulu. With marriages and births adding new familial connections each year,
it is probable that by the 1950s Hawaii-born Chinese in Honolulu had to be very
cautious about criticizing one another—in any gathering of Honolulu Chinese,
one or more of those present would probably be related in some way to the person
being criticized.
One indication of the differences between the Chinese village community
and the Honolulu Chinatown community is the finding that more relatives living
in Hawaii were identified on the mother’s side than on the father’s side. In the
informants’ ancestral culture, for countless generations, a highly institutionalized
patrilineal kinship system had prevailed, and in the villages it is likely that most
of those recognized as kin would have been connected with the father’s side of
the family. The fact that in Hawaii relationships on the mother’s side were at least
as well recognized as those on the father’s side indicates not only that Western
ideas were influencing the Hawaii-born Chinese but also that interfamily connec-
tions were more elaborate than they would have been in China.
The data in Table 12 lead one to infer that the informants’ families were
settlers rather than sojourners and that Hawaii was the major locale of their fa-
milial world. Very few of the informants’ brothers or sisters had gone to China
to work and live; even fewer were residents of the U.S. mainland or other parts
of the world. The informants’ Hawaii-born cousins who were employed had also
remained in the Islands. Of 267 such cousins identified by the informants, 91 per-
cent (242) were employed in Hawaii, only 6 percent in China, and 3 percent in the
mainland United States. While the families of the 36 Hawaii-born students pro-
viding this information are not necessarily representative of the Hawaii-Chinese
population, the data do illustrate the trend toward a Hawaii-Chinese community
made up of a complex network of interrelated families.
Honoring the Elders

Among families that had been maintained in the Islands over several decades it
was possible to celebrate an elder’s fifty-first, sixty-first, seventy-first, and later
birthdays according to Chinese custom. Though many familyless migrants in
Hawaii also reached these traditional milestones, few would have been honored
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on these occasions in the way that parents and grandparents were honored by their
children in Hawaii. Even families of limited means, even when times were hard,
observed these occasions within their homes. In the 1930s a Hawaii-born Chinese
girl described how her father’s mother was honored by children and grandchil-
dren:
When my paternal grandmother was sixty-one, all her sons and daughters
and their children came to the birthday party. Old grudges against each other
were supposed to be forgotten, and everyone was merry and on good terms
with those present. Early that morning, grandmother had paid her respects
and thanks to the gods and ancestors who had let her live such a long life. She
had the priest bless some bowls and chopsticks and some metallic emblems
of her family name—all these things were later distributed to the guests. At
this rare occasion all her children and grandchildren were gathered. We all
took turns to pour her tea. Poor grandmother, how she must have been filled
with tea—there were over fifty such faithful descendants who poured for her.
She, in turn, gave us money wrapped in red paper as a sign of good luck.
In families that followed Taoist practices, the priest or priestess at a temple

might be consulted for auguries to determine whether such a day as the fifty-
first birthday was auspicious or whether the celebration should be postponed. The
sixty-first birthday, regarded as the beginning of a second life, was celebrated
more frequently than the others. On the morning of the banquet the elder might
worship before the family shrine or go to the temple to thank the ancestors and
the gods for having been permitted to live such a long life. Before the banquet it
was customary for all the descendants, beginning with the eldest son, to prostrate
themselves one by one before the honored elder and the elder’s spouse, to wish
them eternal happiness, to offer cups of tea ceremoniously, and to kowtow again
as the elders drank. Before the banquet long strings of firecrackers were usually
set off, and a Chinese orchestra might have been engaged to play during the feast-
ing and drinking. Guests offered salutations and gifts and received gifts in return.
Such a celebration in the 1930s was described by a third-generation Chinese girl:
I remember a relative of ours who was honored at a birthday party given by

his sons and daughters. He was celebrating his eighty-first birthday. Many
people were invited and nearly everyone made an effort to come as this man
was admired by many as having a “long, long life.” The Chinese believed
that if you ate something that pertained to an old man you too will have
a long life. Everybody was merry. People went up to him and wished him
eternal happiness. After the dinner each person was given a bowl, a pair of
chopsticks, some honored “long life” buns, and a string of gilded square-
holed copper money. It was an honor to receive these things from an aged
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person. When mother and father came home with these gifts they gave them
to the two youngest ones in the family and told them to take good care of the
bowls and said, “Use these bowls whenever you eat because it will bring you
long life.” As for the buns, mother divided them among all the members of
the family so that everyone could have a taste of the “long life” and live as
long as the owner or longer.
Funerals
The funeral of an immigrant grandparent or parent in a family established in
Hawaii—in contrast to the generally simple burial procedures for a familyless
migrant—became a complicated social ritual. Folk beliefs and customs were ob-
served fully and conscientiously by Chinese families in Honolulu forty or more
years ago. These beliefs and customs were concerned with successive phases of
dealing with death: what should be done as a family member was dying; what
should be done at home between the time of death and the wake; participation
of priests, musicians, and even professional mourners along with relatives and
friends at the wake, in the funeral procession, in the burial ceremonies; return of
family members from the cemetery to the home of the deceased elder; ceremonies
each seventh day for forty-nine days; varying mourning periods for relatives of
varying degrees of kinship (“the five degrees of mourning”). Two Hawaii-born
Chinese, writing in the 1930s, describe funeral practices followed in their fami-
lies:
The morning after [father’s] death, we began the period of mourning. In the
morning friends and relatives came over to the house. Most of these people
were familiar with our customs and everything was decided by them—the
clothes we were to wear, the kind of funeral, and the million and one things
that were to be done.
[Grandmother’s] descendants were gathered at her funeral. Priests chanted

day and night…. Her immediate relatives were dressed especially for her
sake…. When the hour before the funeral came, everyone gathered around
the corpse and cried, wailed, chanted, and what not. My oldest aunt would
start something like this: “Oh mother dear, life is just like a package of salt
thrown into the ocean, the salt dissolves, and life is just like that.” This is
only my poor translation of the original in Chinese. When she was through
with the verse, the whole mass joined in the chorus, which I could not make
out. This was a very sad event; still it united the kinsmen, and seeing each
other, gave each one more spirit to face this loss.
At the funeral of the head of a family, the immediate descendants, dressed in
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white mourning clothes, were expected to walk behind the coffin part or all of the
way to the cemetery, the eldest son leading the group, perhaps carrying the an-
cestral tablet or a large portrait of the deceased. One young Hawaii-born woman
wrote about her father’s funeral in 1937:
The mourning garments were made out of the cheapest grade of unbleached
muslin. My mother and us girls wore triangle covers which were long enough
to cover the face and the head. My mother’s cover was white to indicate
that she was married; my sisters and I wore blue covers which indicated that
we were unmarried. Around our heads were tied pieces of white muslin. We
wore cheap straw slippers. We wore mourning crepe on our right arms. My
brothers wore the same attire but minus the head covers….
As a duty of filial piety and because of social expectations each member
of the family had to walk part of the way to the cemetery. “What happens
if we don’t walk?” I asked my aunt. “If you don’t you would be the subject
of gossip in town. People will say that you lack reverence and love for your
father,” she replied. Due to the expectations of society we walked from the
undertaker’s until Washington Place on Beretania St. From there on we rode
in automobiles to the burial grounds.
From Aggregation to Community

Settlement of Chinese families in the Islands and their concentration in Honolulu
transformed the Hawaii Chinese population from an aggregation of sojourners,
largely individuals, into a community of persons bound together by reciprocal
relationships. As members of these families went through the phases of the life
cycle, the observance of traditions carried over from Chinese village life (even
though somewhat changed) formed a web of mutual expectations and moral
obligations of which Chinatown was the psychological and cultural, as well as
geographical, center. Whether or not they actually lived or worked within its lim-
its, Honolulu’s Chinese for several decades were part of a social world shaped by
the cultural, institutional, and moral order of Chinatown.
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CHAPTER 9
Group Identity and Early Migrant
Organizations
FEW of the villagers who emigrated from China before 1900 had ever belonged
to anything like a formally organized group such as a club, lodge, association,
society, or political party. Most of them no doubt were aware that their village
was part of an administrative system which ultimately culminated in the imperial
government in Peking, especially because taxes were collected in their village by
officials of that system, but they were unlikely to have had any sense of personal
identification with the government, even on the district level. In their villages the
main bases of group identification were families, lineage groups, and the clans
made up of these lineage groups. Some migrants who came as traders had been
associated in market towns with kung si, business companies that were essen-
tially partnerships; others, who were artisans, had belonged to guilds. However,
since most migrants had been agriculturists working on family-owned lands or
for village landlords, they would have had little experience in organizations out-
side their kinship groups.
It is all the more remarkable, then, that wherever numbers of Chinese were
located overseas, they formed themselves into a variety of groups that were
based on common interests rather than upon kinship. More than two hundred
groups were organized by migrant Chinese in Hawaii. Some of these did have
connections with organizations in China; some, although not directly connected
with organizations in China, were patterned after them; some were organizations
formed to carry out functions that in the villages had been taken care of by family
and clan. Others were set up to deal with problems the migrants faced in Hawaii
as part of their experience as foreigners; still others emerged as the migrants and
their descendants became a community within the Hawaiian community. Many of
these organizations disappeared as sojourner migrants returned to China or died
in Hawaii, as more of the migrants who remained in the Islands became settlers,
and as Hawaii-born Chinese lost interest in continuing them. Others changed in
character as the migrants themselves changed and as Hawaii-born Chinese took
over leadership from the migrant generation. Some remained essentially the same
in purpose though different in organizational structure; others which kept their
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Group Identity and Early Migrant Organizations
original names and formal structures actually changed in purpose and function.
Several of the organizations founded by wah kiu in Hawaii had names that
included the word tong. On the U.S. mainland and in Canada, especially in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, non-Chinese associated the word
tong with terrorist groups that struggled for power within Chinese communities,
especially in large cities. The word had many of the same connotations in the
minds of non-Chinese as the “mafia” has come to have in recent years. Such
phrases as “fighting tongs,” “highbinder tongs,” and “tong wars,” used in news-
paper and magazine articles and in lurid books purporting to reveal “the secret
world of Chinatown,” became firmly fixed in the popular vocabulary. That the
word tong was part of the name of many innocuous associations of law-abiding
Chinese residents was rarely publicized. In its literal sense, tong refers to a hall.
An organization that had, or planned to have, a headquarters or meeting place
might signify this by using tong in its name, such as Fook Yum Tong (a Christian
congregation), Hoy On Tong (a seamen’s guild), or Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong
(originally a benevolent society for migrants from Lung Doo district). Non-Chi-
nese frequently confuse the word tong with the word tang (in Kuo Yu; dong in
Chung Shan dialect), which refers to a political party, as in Kuomintang. Several
other Chinese generic terms for organizations were used in Hawaii, with vary-
ing romanized spelling because of dialectal differences: wui (wei, hui, hoey), wui
goon (hui kuan, wei quan, fui kon), hong, kee loo, kee lok bow, kung si (kong si),
say (sha, shah, sheh), and so (soh, saw, shaw). Most of the groups which have
used one or another of these terms have chosen variously the words “club,” “as-
sociation,” or “society” when translating the names of their organizations into
English.
Cemetery Associations
In view of the Chinese reverence for their ancestors and regard for spirits of the
dead, it is not surprising that the earliest reports of cooperation among the mi-
grants in Hawaii for other than business purposes refer to funeral services for wah
kiu who died in the Islands. In the early days when there was only a small Chi-
nese population in the Islands, a migrant who died there would not be likely to
have clansmen nearby who could carry out burial rites for him in accordance with
Chinese tradition; nor was it possible for his body to be returned to his village
for burial. In these circumstances the small aggregation of “domiciled Chinese,”
even though of different clan, locality, and dialectical origins, combined to pro-
vide a ceremonial burial. An American trader in Honolulu noted in his journal in
1838 that “Chinamen made a great parade at the funeral of one of their deceased
friends.” And in 1841: “At 9 A.M. the Corpse of Ahtai was carried up to Manoa
Valley to be interred after the manner and custom of the Chinese…. All the Chi-
171
namen were in the procession. Many residents were out to see the ceremony.”1
Manoa Valley, which in the early 1800s was several miles beyond the out-
skirts of the port town of Honolulu, is the site of the earliest known Chinese grave
in the Islands, dated 1835, of someone whose surname was Lau. In the years that
followed, other Chinese were buried nearby on land owned by a Hawaiian. In
1854 a group of Chinese merchants formed the Manoa Lin Yee Wui, the old-
est association, so far as is known, started by Chinese in Hawaii. The wui took
charge of burials in the plot in Manoa Valley and bought several acres there for
a Chinese cemetery. The association also put up a building and undertook the
tasks of exhuming graves at auspicious times, usually during Ching Ming, clean-
ing the bones and preparing them to be returned to China for reburial. In 1889 the
group received a charter of incorporation from the Hawaiian government under
the name of Manoa Lin Yee Chung (“Chinese Cemetery Association of Manoa”),
and in 1892 they obtained a clear title to the cemetery grounds. The 1835 grave,
honored as that of the tai gung (“great ancestor”) of Chinese in Hawaii, is the site
of ceremonies held in early April each year to initiate the Ching Ming season.2
Other cemetery associations were formed later as the increasing Chinese
population in Honolulu became differentiated into subgroups of different district,
dialectal, and religious backgrounds. In 1872 land was purchased in Pauoa Valley
(now, like Manoa Valley, a part of Honolulu) for burials of Hoklo peo-
ple—migrants from the Swatow area of northeast Kwangtung, who spoke a
Fukien-Chaochow dialect different from the Cantonese dialects spoken by most
of the wah kiu in Hawaii. Three other cemeteries in the Pauoa area were devel-
oped in the 1880s. One was for migrants from Sam Yup districts such as Nam
Hoy, Pun Yu, Shun Tak, Tung Kun, and Sam Sui which lie near the city of Canton
(Kwangchow); another was mainly for Hakkas; the third was for members of the
Ket On Fui Kon, a Hoong Moon (Hung Men) society whose members originally
were mostly Hakkas. Two cemeteries for Chinese Christians were begun in Hon-
olulu about thirty years later, one in Pauoa and the other in the Makiki section of
Honolulu.
In the early plantation period Chinese laborers who died while working on
sugar plantations were usually interred in a plot of land set aside by the plantation
for burial of workers of all racial and ethnic identities. Ultimately, as the rural
Chinese population increased, several Chinese cemeteries were established out-
side of Honolulu—at least three on Oahu, seven on the island of Hawaii, seven on
Maui, and six on Kauai.3 Most of these were developed by either a Hoong Moon
society or a Chinese Christian congregation rather than by an association formed
specifically for that purpose.
172
Hoong Moon Societies

The Tung Hing Kung Si, a Hoong Moon society, appears to have been the earliest
organization, except for the Lin Yee Wui, formed by migrants in Hawaii. Little is
known about this group, other than that it was started in 1869 by Hakkas and was
located in the Koolau area of Oahu, at that time remote from Honolulu because it
could be reached only on foot or horseback over a difficult mountain trail leading
from Nuuanu Valley. With the appearance of the Tung Hing Kung Si, an ancient
secret political and ritualistic society of China was transplanted to the Islands.
The parent organization, variously referred to as the Hoong Moon, Triad, or
Three Dots Society, had been formed in the latter part of the seventeenth century
after the invading Manchus established the Ching dynasty in 1644. The soci-
ety’s founders resented domination by an alien people and the Manchu decree
ordering Chinese men to wear the queue as a sign of subjection. The avowed pur-
pose of the society was to overthrow Manchu control and reestablish the Ming
dynasty—fan Ching fook Ming (“overthrow the Manchus, restore the Ming”).
The Manchu rulers, understandably, outlawed the organization but it continued
as a secret society whose members could expect to be executed if they were ap-
prehended. Members of the society in South China collaborated in the Taiping
Rebellion (1850–1864), and when it became clear that the rebellion was going
to fail many of them escaped capture by migrating to Southeast Asia, the United
States, and Hawaii. The presence of these rebels in overseas Chinese colonies
and the spread of the outlawed society overseas contributed to the Manchu gov-
ernment’s indifference to the welfare of Chinese migrants, which in turn made it
necessary for the wah kiu to organize to protect their own interests. In fact, over-
seas branches of the Hoong Moon society initially were little concerned with the
overthrow of the Manchus in China. Instead they were preoccupied with the prob-
lems Chinese migrants faced in dealing with other Chinese migrants and with the
“foreigners” under whose control they found themselves.4
The years of turbulence during the Taiping Rebellion weakened imperial
control in Kwangtung, and one result was that fighting broke out between the
Hakkas and the more numerous Puntis. By 1866 some 150,000 Hakkas are es-
timated to have been killed and more than that made homeless. Many of the
homeless Hakkas emigrated, some of them to Hawaii.5 It is probably not surpris-
ing that in Hawaii, where Puntis were more numerous and influential, it was a
group of Hakkas who in the late 1860s banded together in a secret society. Be-
tween 1869 and 1910 more than thirty other Hoong Moon societies were formed
in the Islands by other Chinese subgroups as well as by Hakkas. The societies had
many names, the most common of which was Chee Kung Tong. Several thousand
members, mostly illiterate agricultural laborers, were enrolled. Most of the soci-
eties were located in rural areas and small towns where such laborers were most
numerous and where there was little contact with government officials. At least
173
ten Hoong Moon societies were formed on Oahu, six on Maui, eight on Kauai,
and eight on the island of Hawaii.6 Several of them built clubhouses; others held
their meetings in such places as rice mills.7
In their early years some of these societies, like the Tung Hing Kung Si, ap-
pear to have been dominated by Hakkas, others by migrants who spoke a See
Yup dialect, still others by Puntis from Chung Shan district. The writer was told
that when Ket On Fui Kon, a Honolulu society, began it was “for Hakkas,” while
two other Hoong Moon societies in Honolulu (which later merged into the Chee
Kung Tong) were “for Puntis.”8 A Hoong Moon society established in Kohala,
Hawaii, in 1886—Tung Wo Kung Si—was dominated by non-Christian Hakkas
whereas Christian Hakkas and Puntis and non-Christian Puntis joined together in
a rival society—Lock Shin Tong—with their own clubhouse within shouting dis-
tance across a gorge from the Tung Wo Kung Si clubhouse.9 In rural areas where
there was only one Chinese clubhouse—usually a Hoong Moon—migrants of dif-
ferent dialectal and locality origins in China found it worthwhile to cooperate
in the local society’s activities. This was especially common after Punti-Hakka
antagonisms (which never became violent in Hawaii) declined. In 1931 a mem-
ber of one of the Maui societies claimed that “before, about all the Chinese on
Maui belonged” to one or another of the six Hoong Moon societies on that is-
land. Another, recalling the men he lived with in plantation camps in the early
1900s, said: “All other fellows join. I join with the gang. Chinese want work to-
gether, have good times together, join all same society.”10 The Christian Chinese,
however, having rejected Taoist beliefs, were less likely than non-Christians to
participate in a Hoong Moon society with its Taoist rituals. For them a Fook Yum
Tong (Christian church) was the place for social contacts and a source of mutual
assistance as well as a religious center.
Although the original Hoong Moon society in China was organized to bring
about dynastic change, it does not appear that the Hawaiian societies were polit-
ically active before 1900. They were primarily concerned with matters affecting
their local members. Hoong Moon societies that did not have their own ceme-
teries nevertheless provided funeral services and burial for deceased members
and made financial contributions if necessary. Far more important for the young
familyless migrants were the social, recreational, mutual aid, and protective ser-
vices they received through membership in these societies. Young migrants found
themselves surrounded by migrants of other clans and other dialects who were
almost as strange as the non-Chinese, the fan kwai, they had to deal with. The
Hoong Moon society offered these young migrants a substitute for their kinship
groups and at the same time inducted them into a new kind of communal world.
The migrant who joined a Hoong Moon society had to undergo an elaborate
secret initiation by entering through the Hoong Moon (Hoong “gate” or “door”)
into the “Hoong family” or “Hoong brotherhood.” These rites could take several
hours, even an entire night. Although many, probably most, of the migrants who
174
joined were illiterate, some of the leaders who were literate could read copies
of the manual of dialogue, oaths, and regulations which had been brought from
China.11 In Kula, Maui, a Hakka, Ho Seong, who taught in the Chinese-language
school there, served at one time as priest in the Ket Hing Fui Kon initiation ritu-
als.12 The initiate took thirty-six oaths in the course of the ceremony. According
to a set of the oaths translated for Hawaiian government officials in 1884, one of
these was: “After being admitted to the Hoong family, you shall treat the sworn
brothers the same as your own brothers. If you do mischief to them you shall die
in the cross roads.” Another was: “After being admitted in the Hoong family, if
your brothers of the same parents raise a controversy with our sworn brothers you
must, without partiality, exhort them to peace; and if you aid and abet your own
brothers to fight, you shall be drowned in the seas.”
The initiation, then, seems to have been designed to transform unrelated in-
dividuals into a brotherhood with obligations as deep and powerful as those to
one’s own kinsmen. The initiate who had been alone amidst strangers was incor-
porated into a group that protected and controlled him as had his kinship group
at home. This bond was symbolized by other oaths that stipulated: “If any of the
sworn brothers, by giving a sign, desire to seek for a lodging for the night, you
must welcome him” and “If you meet any sworn brother in the road who is on
his way to make his fortune, and he gives you a sign, you must not rob him.” The
initiate was taught the signs by which he could recognize and be recognized by
other society members.13
Significantly, this set of thirty-six oaths which was being used at the Hung
Sin Tong, the Hoong Moon society then active in Hanalei, Kauai, had no refer-
ence to overthrowing the Ching dynasty and restoring the Ming, but the oaths
prescribed several kinds of mutual aid among members. Among other things,
members were obligated to deliver letters and money for a sworn brother, to care
for any sworn brother’s son “committed to you,” to give financial aid to a sworn
brother unable to support himself.
Hawaiian government officials came into possession of these oaths and other
information about this society after “Chinese secret societies” were publicly
charged with criminal acts. This was fifteen years after the first Hoong Moon
society had been formed in Hawaii, and after others had been organized on all
the main islands. Planters had been aware for several years of the existence of
such societies in their localities, even where no clubhouse had been built, but
had had no objections as long as the societies’ activities seemed to be concerned
with providing funerals for deceased Chinese and furnishing aid for ailing or
impoverished Chinese laborers. In the early 1880s, however, local newspapers
published the claims of some planters that “Chinese secret societies” on the is-
lands of Hawaii and Maui were helping Chinese laborers on Caucasian-controlled
plantations to escape their indentures, presumably to take employment on Chi-
nese rice plantations or in other Chinese enterprises using Chinese laborers.14 The
175
editor of Planters’ Monthly wrote in a front-page article of the May 1883 issue:
Chinese are cunning, and quick to perceive their advantages, and to avail
themselves of all the protection which civilized law affords, but they are able
to evade the restraints of the law as no other people can. Their clannishness
and secret organizations give them a power which is difficult to meet.
At about the same time the Reverend Frank W. Damon spoke against what he
called “the evils of secret societies”; he regretted “especially to see what a strong
hold the Chinese secret society, the ‘Triad Organization’, has on Kauai; it is a
great hindrance to Christian work. When will our Government take energetically
in hand the task of investigating and suppressing this baneful association?”15
In 1884 it was reported that “a serious riot” had occurred at Hanalei, Kauai,
during which “a number of Chinamen—known to be connected with certain
secret societies—threatened to take the life of the District Justice and Deputy
Sheriff of Hanalei.” Five men, presumably leaders of the Hanalei Hoong Moon
society, were arrested and indicted for holding an unlawful assembly. According
to the report the men “pleaded guilty to the charge, and received light sentences,
with injunctions not to engage in any combinations to oppose the law.” In con-
nection with the arrests the sheriff of Kauai had seized several objects containing
Chinese characters, among them the thirty-six oaths.16
The authorities were particularly disturbed by some of the oaths—such as
the one requiring that “if any sworn brother who is in trouble shall come to your
house you ought to harbor him, and you must not in any way inform the public
officers and lead for his apprehension. If you do so, you shall be torn to pieces by
(tying you to) five horses, and being dragged by them.” Three other oaths dealt
with protecting sworn brothers in trouble with the law. Observers of activities at
the clubhouses mentioned that physical culture and Chinese arts of self-defense
were popular among the younger members. This training might have had special
significance in view of the oath requiring that “if any sworn brother create a con-
troversy with other people in the streets, or in the markets, and gives a sign, you
ought to aid him.”
The government was warned of the danger of allowing these secret societies
to exist, at least without some official control. Local newspapers called attention
to the criminal activities carried on for decades by Triad secret societies in Borneo
and the Straits Settlements before the Dutch and British colonial governments
took steps to suppress or control them. Five months after the revelation that
oaths of the Hanalei society required members to obstruct government attempts
to impose law and order, the king signed an act “to prevent unlawful secret asso-
ciations.” This act was similar to the Dangerous Societies Suppression Ordinance
the British had adopted in Malaya in 1869. After the act became law in Hawaii,
secret societies already in existence or seeking to be organized were required to
176
apply for a license. The application was to contain a statement under oath of the
object of the group; the government might refuse to grant the license and licenses
could be revoked; members of a secret society that continued to exist without a
license could be imprisoned.17
The new law, of course, did not end the troubles with secret societies. A year
and a half later a Honolulu journalist implied that the government had not really
begun to “put the law into motion” and claimed that secret societies in Honolulu
had been levying contributions on Chinese businessmen—“who dared not refuse
for fear of reprisals”—in order to maintain “two or three thousand Chinamen in
idleness in this city.”18
In October 1888 something that had been widely assumed was publicly veri-
fied: the “social and recreational” activities in some if not all of the Hoong Moon
meeting places included opium smoking. When a meeting place in Kaneohe,
Oahu, was raided and police seized some opium, they were attacked by “a mob of
about thirty Chinese armed with sticks.” One Chinese injured in the melee died.19
Drastic action was taken in 1889 in a criminal case involving leaders of the
Yee Wo Kung Si, a Hoong Moon society in Hilo. On 7 July 1888 some members
of the society, allegedly bent on robbery at a Chinese camp on Waiakea Plantation
near Hilo, were believed to be implicated in the death of a Caucasian employee of
the plantation. Several suspects were arrested, but their supposed leader was re-
ported by the attorney general to have “escaped to Honolulu, where he was taken
under the care of a secret society formed in large part of Chinese criminals.” A
Chinese detective sent from Hilo to Honolulu to help apprehend this man “dis-
appeared without a trace.” A second Chinese “detective or informer” working on
the case was murdered. The attorney general’s report asserts that the murder of
this man, in which “at least ten persons took part,” was decided upon “in a meet-
ing of the chief officers and some of the trusted members” of the Yee Wo Kung
Si. The report goes on to say that some members went into the crime reluctantly
feeling bound by their oaths and fearing to resist “the edicts of the society whose
power they knew.” The head of the society was convicted in a jury trial, sentenced
to death and hanged. Two others tried with him were acquitted “for lack of di-
rect evidence.” The Yee Wo Kung Si apparently went out of existence.20 No other
reports of criminal acts by the Hoong Moon societies in Hawaii comparable to
those of the Yee Wo Kung Si have been found in archival materials; nor is there a
record of fighting between these societies such as occurred during the nineteenth
century in Southeast Asia and in the continental United States.21
Concern about illegal activities by Chinese secret societies arose in the late
1880s when opposing factions in the Hawaiian and Caucasian population were
challenging the Hawaiian government, which in 1889 put down the Wilcox in-
surrection. Government ministers suspected that Honolulu Chinese financed this
outbreak.22 A government report issued in October 1889 spoke of “the danger to
the community by reason of the Chinese secret society organizations; their wan-
177
ton disregard for human life; their concealment and assistance of criminals; and
their reckless perjury in Courts of Justice.”23 The president of the Board of Immi-
gration, in supporting importation of Japanese laborers in preference to Chinese,
wrote in a similar vein in his 1890 report:
The Chinese are secretive, systematically shielding and assisting Chinese

criminals. It is but rarely that a Chinaman will testify against a fellow coun-
tryman, and perjury to rescue another from the clutches of the law is looked
upon as a cardinal virtue.
… The Chinese have the faculty of combination and organization de-
veloped to such an extent that their secret societies number many thousand
members in the country. Their societies are criminal in their objects and
methods; their principal officers are criminals, and they do not hesitate at any
crime to accomplish their ends. Three known murders and several suspected
ones, during the past biennial period, are the direct work of these societies.24
While these reports exaggerated the occasional criminal actions of a few secret
society members, it is true that the Hoong Moon societies did little, if anything,
to discourage gambling and opium smoking among their members.
Most of the Hoong Moon clubhouses were built during the 1900–1912 pe-
riod, after immigration of Chinese laborers had been cut off. The characteristic
two-story clubhouses of the Hoong Moon societies in the small towns and rural
areas cost more to build than ordinary members could afford. They could con-
tribute their labor, but money for land, building materials, and furnishings were
usually supplied by wealthy Chinese planters and storekeepers who wanted stable
and peaceful relations among Chinese in their area. The clubhouse usually had on
the ground floor a large hall which was used as a social and recreational center,
open at festive events to the wives and children of members and to nonmembers.
In 1928 three brothers held a banquet for some three hundred guests at the Tung
Wo Kung Si clubhouse in Kohala, Hawaii, in honor of the ninety-first birthday
of their mother, Mrs. Chau Ng, who had come with her husband to work in the
cane fields of Kohala Plantation more than sixty years previously. Caucasians and
Hawaiians as well as Chinese were among the guests.25 In Kula, Maui, the Hoong
Moon clubhouse, as described by Diane Mei Lin Mark, was a community cen-
ter for the Chinese: “On Sundays, the society building was a bustling gathering
place. People throughout the Kula region would lay down their labors for the day
and go to the society to eat, drink, gamble, trade stories, and listen to news of
China.”26
A Chinese who grew up in Kula described the Sunday gatherings at the Ket
Hing Society:
On Sundays my father and I (I’m the oldest) used to go over there [Ket
178
Hing Society] and then there was a gambling joint there. All the men folks
would be gambling. And they would all be listening to the storytellers. They
would have a couple of people who had communication with China. This
man would sit down and everybody would gather around him and he would
be telling stories, especially of the history of China, of Confucius, and the
Taoist way of life.27
Tin-Yuke Char also describes social activities at these clubhouses:
Ground floors were used as school rooms for teaching the Chinese lan-
guage, as game and recreational rooms, and as an assembly hall for festive
occasions like the Chinese New Year celebration when the wider commu-
nity participated—haoles, Hawaiians, and others. The Tong Wo Society in
Kohala conducted bazaars with tents out on the lawn to sell home-cooked
Chinese food and homemade handicrafts. Of course, the familiar pig oven
was worked overtime to produce roast suckling pig, duck, chicken, and char-
siu (“barbecued pork”).28
For many years, use of the upper rooms of the clubhouses was restricted to
members for such purposes as initiations and meetings. One of the upstairs rooms
usually had an altar with representations of Kwan Dai, patron deity of the society,
the five founders of the parent organization, and such deities as the Heaven and
Earth gods. When families became established in areas far from Chinese temples,
images of deities worshiped especially by women were placed in the clubhouses.
On ceremonial occasions worship was carried out before the altar. Some soci-
eties had a building behind the clubhouse for gambling and for opium smoking,
as well as another small building on the clubhouse grounds to which an ailing
member would be taken when death was imminent, following a custom prevalent
in China.
Whether or not a society had a clubhouse, it had important values for the mi-
grants. The ordinary member could expect the society to help him when he came
into conflict with other Chinese in a situation where he distrusted the officials of
the “foreign” government, and he was far from his kinship group which would
have helped him at home. In 1935 an elderly member in a rural area talked about
this role of the society:
When a Chinese got in trouble with another Chinese, it was a good thing to
belong to the society. If he belonged to no society at all, there was no way of
getting help. If he did belong to the society, then he had the backing of the
other men who were members. If both people who got in trouble belonged to
the society, then they could bring up the matter before the headmen to settle
it.29
179
Members generally knew that the society elders (the officers) would arbitrate dis-
putes between members, that the disputing members would accept the elders’
decision, and that it was better to settle such disputes within the society than to
go to court. Several of the oaths taken at initiation specified appropriate relations
between members, the duties of members toward elders, and the role of elders in
settling disputes among members.
The situation was more difficult when a member of the society itself was in
trouble with non-Chinese. A part-Hawaiian informant talked about this in 1931:
Many of the disputes between the Chinese are settled at the meetings of their
society. But in cases where the Chinese are in trouble with other races, they
need someone who knows English. My brother used to handle many of their
cases for them. He was one of the most outstanding lawyers [on Kauai]….
About [twenty-five] years ago, Governor Carter threatened to close up
some of the Chinese societies, because there seemed to be a feeling that there
were too many illegal things going on in them. The societies were unable to
defend themselves because they had no members who could speak English
well, and who could get a hearing. That was how I happened to be asked to
join the Chee Kung Tong. I was sent personally to the governor, and with
the governor we toured the island of Kauai. We went into all the Chinese or-
ganizations. It was at the time that there were the most Chinese on Kauai.
There were five branches of the Chee Kung Tong—at Hanalei, Kapaia, Ka-
paa, Lawai, Hanapepe. The charge against them was gambling. The governor
had also threatened Kamehameha Lodge, too. After this tour on Kauai, he
withdrew his threats.30
After Chinese laborers were no longer brought to Hawaii and the Hoong
Moon societies became increasingly made up of older migrants, the societies’
welfare functions became more important, especially in the rural areas. Among
the thousands of members were hundreds who had never made the fortunes for
which they had come to the Islands and who had, in fact, become destitute. Some
had never earned very much; others had lost fortunes at the gambling tables or
had spent their earnings on opium. Sick members were given temporary care at
the clubhouses and aged and impoverished members were allowed to live there
permanently. Collections were taken up to return indigent members to China or
to provide burial for indigent deceased members.
Meeting the costs of these welfare activities became increasingly difficult as
more and more of the successful migrants returned to China or left the rural ar-
eas and towns for Honolulu. Some of those who moved to Honolulu shifted to
Hoong Moon societies there; others simply dropped out altogether. Even as early
as 1909 one of the Honolulu Hoong Moon societies, in a Chinese newspaper,
begged members to pay their dues. As time went on, clubhouses in rural areas
180
were no longer centers of Chinese community life and became the residences of
the few aged Chinese remaining behind after most of the other Chinese had left.
In 1935 when the writer visited Kohala, Hawaii, five elderly men were living on
very meager means in small buildings behind the Tung Wo Kung Si clubhouse.
Few Chinese were left in this district where more than a thousand Chinese had
once lived, and members of some of the remaining families claimed that provid-
ing for the welfare of indigent Chinese in the district was becoming increasingly
burdensome.
Of the more than thirty Hoong Moon societies once active in the Islands,
only two continue to hold even annual meetings. And neither of these carries
out many of the societies’ earlier functions. Both are in Honolulu; both have in-
comes from rental property and other investments; both have clubhouses where
members, usually descendants of the original members, can gather to chat, play
mahjong or cards, read, have something to drink. Some of the income is still used
for welfare purposes, some for entertainment. The Ket Hing Fui Kon clubhouse
at Kula, Maui, is maintained by former members’ descendants who still live in
the district. The Tung Wo Kung Si clubhouse in Kohala, for a time abandoned,
has been renovated but there is no active organization of Hoong Moon society
members to maintain it. In other places most of the clubhouses that have not dis-
appeared are dilapidated, looted, and abandoned, with no members left to care
about them or their history.31
The China Fire Engine Company

When Chinatown was becoming the center of the migrants’ business and social
life, Honolulu itself was still a frontier town even though it was the capital of the
Hawaiian kingdom. Public services and utilities were gradually developing, but
fires were still fought by private volunteer groups. Fire was always a danger in
Chinatown and it was against this threat that the Chinese of Honolulu first orga-
nized themselves for mutual protection.
As early as 1847 Samsing & Co. brought the first fire engine to Honolulu. It
was to protect their own property, but they made it available to others for a small
fee. This hand-pumped contraption with water placed into it by a bucket brigade
did not, however, prevent losses of about $25,000 to Afong and other merchants
in a fire in 1855.32 Steps were taken in the 1850s to establish a fire department
in Honolulu, and a few volunteer fire companies were organized among the Cau-
casians, but the inadequate protection they provided was demonstrated by a fire
in the Caucasian business district in December 1877 which caused over a quarter
million dollars’ damage. Two weeks later one of Afong & Achuck’s stores on the
edge of Chinatown burned down with losses of about $30,000. Before the end of
January 1878 a number of Chinatown’s leading merchants met and decided to un-
181
dertake their own fire protection. One reason for this decision was the particular
vulnerability of the Chinese quarter. Since most of the early migrants considered
their stay in Hawaii to be temporary, they did not invest in buildings that would be
fire-resistant and insurable. Not only were most of their stores and shops flimsy
wooden structures but Chinatown lots were crowded with cookhouses and lodg-
ing quarters adding to the fire hazard. A further reason for the Chinese to organize
their own protection was their doubt that they could rely on the Caucasian fire
engine companies in a conflagration affecting both Chinese and Caucasian estab-
lishments.
Early in February it was announced that the Chinese were to introduce the
first “steamer” in Honolulu, a steam fire engine manufactured by a New England
firm. When this became known, the Caucasian-controlled newspapers urged that
government (not the Caucasian residents) also purchase a steamer so that Hon-
olulu might “be amply provided for emergencies.” The legislature appropriated
money for such a purchase and an engine of the same make arrived on the same
boat as the one ordered by the Chinese. A new company of Caucasians known as
Honolulu Fire Engine Company, No. 1, manned the government-owned engine.
A group of about fifty Chinese who had formed themselves into a “Chinese Fire
Company” shortly before their engine arrived sought to be recognized as part of
the Honolulu Fire Department. They received this recognition and for a while the
company was known as China Engine Company, No. 2. A Chinese-Hawaiian was
selected to direct the operation of the engine. When the fire department held its
annual parade in February 1879, the Chinese company was the last but largest
in the procession, and a newspaper reported that “the Chinese Company looked
particularly well dressed in their new uniforms.”33
Recognition of this company as part of the Honolulu Fire Department was
granted on condition that it adopt a constitution and bylaws and govern itself in
accordance with these formal provisions. During 1879, therefore, a constitution
and bylaws similar to those of the Caucasian fire engine companies were drawn
up. These documents included, among other stipulations, a detailed account of the
duties of each officer and the penalties to be levied for failure to carry out these
duties; annual elections of officers; the frequency of regular meetings and drills;
obligations of members and the fines to be imposed for their neglect; the method
of making amendments; and two pages describing the rules of order.34
Such items were familiar to Westerners acquainted with the constitutions and
bylaws of formal organizations, but for the Chinese migrants all this documenta-
tion was entirely new. Chinese villagers were accustomed to acting on the basis of
unwritten tradition rather than written regulations. They were more likely to meet
their obligations because of personal claims than because of formal penalties; at-
tempting to compel behavior by fines or threat of expulsion was quite foreign to
their tradition. To be sure, hundreds of immigrants were joining Hoong Moon so-
cieties during this same decade, but these societies were not then structured along
182
Western lines. Even the formal oaths, though written down, were based upon a
kinship pattern, not a contractual relationship. It was not until after the act of 1884
requiring secret societies to register that Hoong Moon societies undertook to state
their objectives for public scrutiny and to draw up constitutions and bylaws. Even
then, the English versions of their statements may not have conveyed the intended
impression or the real purpose of the societies. A Hoong Moon society on Oahu,
for instance, stated in 1899 that “the objects of said association shall be to care
for, protect, and support with comforts of life the indigent, decrepit, and imbecile
Chinese in the Hawaiian Islands.”35
It is significant that immigrants were introduced to the Western pattern of or-
ganization partly as a result of their desire to deal with a problem faced by all the
residents of Chinatown, whatever clan, village, district, or dialect group they had
come from. At the same time, the formal structure of the engine company, one of
the earliest organizations in Chinatown, came about because of the Chinese res-
idents’ effort to cooperate with other groups in a multiethnic community; in this
effort they used as a model the pattern set by the Caucasians upon whom they
drew for counsel.
For several years the China Engine Company was the most colorful part
of the annual firemen’s parade. The Daily Bulletin’s report of the 1886 parade,
which took place during the Chinese New Year period, gave the details of the
Chinese participants:
The Chinese Company’s decorations, besides several curious Mongolian fan-

cies, consisted partly of the irrepressible and ubiquitous triangular yellow
dragon flags…. A jolly Chinaman wearing an enormous mask representing
the head of a lion, followed by some half-a-dozen attendants bearing a gor-
geous train representing the body and tail of the monster; standard bearers
carrying aloft banners and flags; companies of halberdiers and trident bear-
ers, were features of the Chinamen’s (No. 5) turnout that created a furore of
excitement, particularly among the small boys, all along the route of the pro-
cession. The force turned out altogether about 150 strong.36
Whatever its place in the community’s fire protection services (its fire-fight-
ing efficiency seems to have been questionable),37 the China Engine Company
appears to have been important in developing community consciousness and con-
tributing to the growth of other organizations among Honolulu’s Chinese. The
experience of drawing up a constitution and bylaws acceptable to the govern-
ment was highly useful in the following decades when an elaborate network
of Chinese organizations came into existence. Any organization wanting to buy
property and build a clubhouse (wui goon) needed a charter of incorporation for
which an acceptable constitution and bylaws had to be submitted. Contacts be-
tween members of the engine company and government officials provided further
183
experience which was particularly useful to those Chinatown organizations, such

as the United Chinese Society, which dealt with relations between the Chinese
and other groups in the community at large. Lau Cheong (Lau Chong Kong), for
example, who was the intermediary between the China Engine Company and Fire
Department officials for many years, was one of the organizers of the United Chi-
nese Society and its first treasurer.38
The United Chinese Society

In the same period that the China Engine Company was formed to deal with
disasters originating within Honolulu’s Chinatown, the United Chinese Society
emerged in response to developments threatening the Chinese from the wider
community and from the Hawaiian government. Chinese migrants, who had been
welcomed when the booming sugar industry desperately needed laborers, were
becoming targets of suspicion, antagonism, and discrimination—especially from
Caucasian residents who were not directly involved in sugar production and from
certain sections of the Hawaiian population. To meet increasing demands for
restriction of Chinese immigration and also to encourage the importation of la-
borers of other ethnic origins, the Hawaiian government in 1877 inaugurated a
policy of differential treatment of Chinese immigrants. Bonuses for importation
of Chinese laborers were stopped although the government continued to spend
millions of dollars to assist the importation of Portuguese, German, Norwegian,
Russian, and Japanese workers. Special regulations which were imposed on ships
arriving from plague-infested ports of South China required disembarking Chi-
nese to submit to health inspections and treatment not imposed on other migrants.
At the same time, Chinese businessmen were being subjected to new regulations
designed to restrict their activities.
These discriminatory regulations eventually led the Chinese to organize a
united front in order to cope with the new hostility. The initiative for this move-
ment, however, did not arise within the Chinese migrant population, which for
more than a decade had been too divided to take concerted action. In fact the
initiative came from the Chinese government, which formerly had been indif-
ferent to its overseas subjects. After the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 with the
United States, the Chinese government became more interested in its relations
with foreign countries and also in the Chinese living in these countries. In 1877
the imperial government appointed Ch’en Lan-pin as envoy extraordinary and
minister plenipotentiary to the United States of America, Spain, and Peru, with
legation headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Ch’en was aware of the mounting difficulties facing the Chinese in Hawaii.
In addition to reports of Hawaiian official actions affecting Chinese immigration,
complaints from some undetermined source in Hawaii had reached Canton and
184
Peking that Chulan & Co., a Honolulu Chinese firm which recruited contract la-
borers for sugar and rice plantations, had “obtained Chinese to be used … as
Coolies or slaves” and the governor of Canton had arrested the son and brother
of Wong Kwai, a major partner in Chulan & Co., major rival firm of Afong &
Achuck.39 One of Ch’en’s commissioners was sent to Hawaii to investigate con-
ditions in the Islands. China had no treaty relations with the Hawaiian kingdom,
but Chinese authorities, on the basis of the commissioner’s report, decided to ap-
point a Chinese resident of Hawaii as “Commercial Agent” (shang tung) “for the
Chinese Empire in the Hawaiian Kingdom” with authority to report on Chinese
matters to Minister Ch’en.40
Afong (Chun Fong), who was appointed to this post in 1879, was probably
the wealthiest Chinese in Hawaii, but it appears that many Chinese as well as
some of the government’s cabinet members did not regard him as the leader of
the migrant group. His personal connections were at least as close, if not closer,
to people outside the Chinese group as to those within it. He lived with his
Caucasian-Hawaiian wife, of an elite family, and their children in a residential
district of wealthy Hawaiian and Caucasian families. He appears to have been
particularly close to Hawaiians near the throne. As an importer of Chinese goods
and laborers he also had many dealings with Caucasian government officials, par-
ticularly those in the Ministry of the Interior, the Board of Immigration, and the
Customs Office.41
Little is known about Afong’s service to the Chinese community during the
two years or so that he served as commercial agent. He was involved in a dis-
pute concerning the signing of contracts by several hundred laborers who arrived
unexpectedly and were forced into quarantine because of smallpox aboard their
ships. Sometime after Afong’s appointment as commercial agent, the Board of
Immigration had appointed two Puntis as “shipping masters” to recruit more Chi-
nese contract laborers for sugar and rice plantations, whereupon Hakkas protested
in a petition to the Board of Immigration. They said they had not been consulted
in these appointments and that because of the differences between Puntis and “the
Ha Ka clan” a Hakka shipping master should also be appointed. Afong, whom the
Board of Immigration referred to as “the head of the Pun Ti clan,” recommended
that the Hakkas’ petition be granted. This apparently did not dispel the Hakkas’
distrust of Afong. When he tried to act on behalf of the quarantined laborers,
the Hakkas claimed that since he was only a commercial agent, not a consul,
he had no right to intervene in the matter. Afong’s report to Minister Ch’en in
Washington led Ch’en to report to the governor-general at Canton that there was
“a real slave trade” in Chinese laborers in Hawaii which should be investigated.
This report, together with a letter Afong had written to a Chinese newspaper in
Hong Kong, led the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Hawaii to write his consul in
Hong Kong, denying that Chinese had not been properly treated in Hawaii. When
Afong sought to be appointed Chinese consul in 1881, the Hawaiian government
185
was unreceptive and early in 1882 Afong ceased to be commercial agent. Ap-
parently he had little effect in uniting the Chinese community. He seems to have
inaugurated an organization called the Hak Seong Wui Goon (“Guest Merchants’
Association”), but it was dissolved when he was no longer commercial agent.42
When Minister Ch’en passed through Honolulu on his return to China in
1882, he talked with several Chinese migrant businessmen about conditions fac-
ing Chinese in the United States and Hawaii. He also contributed a thousand
dollars toward building a headquarters in Chinatown for community affairs. Later
in 1882 his successor sent to Honolulu two commissioners who were familiar
with the organization of the Chung Wah Kung Saw—the Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Association, the so-called “Six Companies”—in the San Francisco
Chinatown. The commissioners urged that a similar society be formed in Hon-
olulu to coordinate and represent the interests of the entire Chinese community.43
A benevolent organization called the Wah Yun Lin Hop Wui (“Chinese
Union”), which had been formed in 1880 and which held its meetings at the
building of the China Engine Company, apparently was the nucleus for the more
formal and inclusive organization that seemed to be needed. A meeting of some
twenty-five leading Chinese merchants, both Hakka and Punti, at the Chinese fire
station in late 1882 was the beginning of the Chung Wah Wui Goon in Honolulu.
This organization, referred to at first in English as the “Chinese Union,” later as
the “United Chinese Society,” was to play the leading part in Chinese community
affairs for at least half a century.44 A Punti, C. Alee, was chosen as president and
a Hakka, Goo Kim, as vice-president. It was understood that the commissioners
and the minister in Washington would recommend that the Chinese government
appoint these officers as commercial agent and vice-commercial agent in Hon-
olulu. The society also elected a secretary and assistant secretary, a treasurer and
assistant treasurer, and twenty-four directors. One of the English-language news-
papers, in an article about the society’s organization, reported that “all Chinese
are eligible to join this club provided their conduct is upright and respectful.”45
The selection of C. Alee (Ching King Chun) and Goo Kim (Goo Kim Fui)
as the chief officers of the society reveals the organization’s role in the emerging
Honolulu Chinese community. The choice of a Punti and a Hakka signifies devel-
opment of a “we-consciousness” that included all Chinese immigrants regardless
of dialect, kinship, or native locality. These old-world identifications were still
important within the Chinese community, but migrants who had lived in Hawaii
for several years had come to realize that such differences meant little to other
groups and that discrimination affected all Chinese as belonging to the same cat-
egory. They had become aware, also, that quarrels between the Puntis and the
Hakkas weakened their defense against such categorical treatment. In the selec-
tion of C. Alee and Goo Kim the society recognized as leaders two men who were
both long-time residents of Hawaii and who had vested interests in gaining re-
spect as well as toleration and equal treatment for the Chinese as a group.
186
At the same time, Alee and Goo had quite different backgrounds and roles in
the Chinese community. Alee was a partner in the firm of Chulan & Co., which
had been established by his relatives about 1860 and which in the 1860s and
1870s was one of the two largest Chinese businesses in the Islands. He was one
of the first Puntis to bring his wife from China and establish a family in Hon-
olulu. Goo was more of a self-made man. After coming to Hawaii in 1866, he
had worked first in a machine shop owned by a Caucasian and then gone into
business for himself and established several successful enterprises. Unlike Alee,
Goo had married a Hawaiian woman, though he remained closely identified with
his fellow Chinese. He was an active leader in the Chinese Christian community
of Honolulu. Both Alee and Goo had the goodwill of influential Caucasians and
Hawaiians, which made them valuable as intermediaries between the immigrant
Chinese and the Hawaiian government.46
More than a year after the organization’s first meeting Alee and Goo submit-
ted to the government a petition for a charter of incorporation for the United Chi-
nese Society. Although the society actually had broader objectives, the petition
stated that its primary purposes were benevolent and charitable. The following
arguments were advanced for granting the charter:
By reason of the difficulties in the way of intercourse between their country-

men and the Hawaiian and English population of the country, there is much
needless misunderstanding and actual suffering on the part of poor and sick
Chinese; which suffering, and in some cases deaths, might be controlled or
avoided were there means at hand for intelligent alleviation.
Petitioners respectfully represent that it is their opinion and belief that
the organization of a Chinese Benevolent Society may result in great good
to their people, that to some extent such organization already exists, but it is
imperfect, and not yet developed to its fullest usefulness.
… The principal place of business of said society when incorporated will
be the City of Honolulu, but the field of its operations shall extend through-
out the Kingdom.
… That the object for which a Charter of Incorporation is asked is for
the purpose of cultivating friendly feeling among the Chinese, and for acts of
benevolence and charity among those of Chinese descent … in the Hawaiian
Kingdom….
The king in Privy Council was extremely cautious in granting the charter.
Correspondence from Alee and Goo indicated that apart from approaching the
government as commercial and vice-commercial agents of the Chinese govern-
ment they would be representing a society which would bring about “friendly
feeling” between the Puntis and Hakkas in the local Chinese community. The
government was disturbed, however, by the proposal for a new Chinese society at
187
a time when officials were confronted with unlawful activities, and allegations of
such activities, by Hoong Moon societies that had been formed without the gov-
ernment’s knowledge and approval. The government’s concern was not allayed
by the Chinese name given in the petition for the United Chinese Society, Chung
Wa Hui Quon, or by the statement that it was to be a benevolent society. The
name was similar to the Chinese name for the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
Society in San Francisco—an organization known to non-Chinese as the “Chi-
nese Six Companies” with a reputation for having a powerful hold on Chinese
migrants and for protecting, if not actually engaging in, criminal activities among
the Chinese.47
A special committee consisting of the attorney general and two other Cau-
casians was appointed to investigate the application for a charter and to examine
the proposed constitution and bylaws. These had been prepared by the society’s
officers in collaboration with a Caucasian lawyer. Upon the recommendation of
the committee, some unusual provisions were written into the charter: the annual
elections of officers were to be subject to the veto of the Minister of Interior; his
approval was to be secured before the Board of Trustees could remove any of the
officers from their positions; he was empowered to examine at any time a certi-
fied copy in the English language of the original minutes of all meetings and of all
records; any changes in the bylaws and constitution were subject to his approval;
and he might “require the officers in control of the property of the corporation to
give and file with him proper bonds.” Even so, it was six months more before the
king in Privy Council approved the granting of the charter. Only two days later
King Kalakaua signed the act passed by the legislature “to prevent unlawful se-
cret associations.”
While waiting for the charter, the officers of the society bought a lot in the
Chinatown area and proceeded with their plans for a two-story wui goon—club-
house or headquarters. Work on the building began in May 1885, but the formal
opening ceremonies were not held until the following February, on the first day
of Chinese New Year holidays.48 According to one account, “the streets in Chi-
natown were transformed into beautiful vistas of chromatic light, from thousands
of lanterns ranged in mathematical lines from above and below the everlast-
ing verandahs.” At the clubhouse “a magnificent triangular yellow flag, with an
enormous dragon spread on it—the Chinese Imperial flag—floated from the tall
flagpole on the roof…. Over the doorways were hung Hawaiian and Chinese
flags, tastefully arranged. The rooms [on the upper floor] were handsomely fur-
nished.” The Royal Hawaiian Band and the Reformatory School Band furnished
music for the gala occasion. The most spectacular part of the day’s ceremonies
was the dragon dance:
The clamor of a hundred Chinamen on Nuuanu Street … announced the

coming of the Chinese dragon. The procession stopped in front of the prin-
188
cipal houses, and while batteries of firecrackers were exploding, the dragon
would rush forward with mouth open and fangs projecting, as though to
destroy imaginary victims, but retreating at the fantastic movement of a mag-
ical wand in the hands of a coolie.
The guest list for the formal opening luncheon shows that a major objective
of the organization was to raise the status of the Chinese as a group in the Hawai-
ian community. The guests included H.R.H. Princess Liliuokalani, ministers of
the Hawaiian kingdom, the attorney general, the justices of the Supreme Court,
the ministers, commissioners, consuls, or other official representatives of the
United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Netherlands, Belgium, Peru, Spain, and Japan, a number of lesser officials of
the Hawaiian kingdom, and other prominent Caucasians and Hawaiians. These
guests were presented to and entertained by officers of the United Chinese Soci-
ety who were “gorgeously costumed” in silk mandarin gowns and hats. Members
of the society were assisted at the reception by the Reverend Frank Damon, the
Caucasian most active during this period in smoothing relations between Chinese
and others. The guests were served “a splendid collation”—“turkey and other
meats, salads, sandwiches, wines, and tea.”
President C. Alee had prepared an address which he delivered to the guests in
Chinese, and an English translation was read by C. Winam, a Hakka who was the
English secretary of the society. The speech, published in the two leading English
newspapers of Honolulu, reveals that the society was intended to serve as medi-
ator between the Chinese and others in Hawaii and as an agency for mutual help
and control among the Chinese themselves. Alee’s appeal to his non-Chinese lis-
teners for understanding is apparent, especially in his closing remarks:
Our object in forming this association is to exercise a care and supervision

over such of the Chinese residents as shall connect themselves with this So-
ciety; to make them acquainted with the laws and ordinances of the Hawaiian
Government, particularly with those laws and ordinances which concern in
any way our Chinese residents; to render assistance and advice to such as
may stand in need thereof, especially to sick Chinese and those in destitute
condition; to prevent and settle disputes among Chinese if possible, and to
prevent, as far as it may be in our power, all unlawful combinations or post-
ing of seditious or otherwise objectionable placards, and to render such aid
to the Government as they may request or authorize in matters pertaining to
the Chinese residents in this Kingdom. All the future funds for maintenance
of this Society are to be raised from the Chinese residents. We therefore trust
that the purposes of this Society shall be attained, that it will grow in its
benevolence and usefulness, and that its officers shall ever administer its af-
fairs in the spirit in which it was founded, that it may be of advantage not
189
only to ourselves but to the non-Chinese residents of this community, and

that through it you may obtain true glimpses of Chinese customs and man-
ners. We, by virtue of the official position delegated to us as President and
Vice-President of the United Chinese Society, declare this hall open.
190
CHAPTER 10
Migrant Organizations and Commu-
nity Crises
THE development of the United Chinese Society in the early 1880s could hardly
have come at a more crucial period for the Chinese in Hawaii. Anti-Chinese ag-
itation was building to its peak, anti-Chinese groups such as the Workingmen’s
Party were pressing the government for action, and the government itself was
putting into effect discriminatory measures against the Chinese. Although the
United Chinese Society had no real power itself or backing from the Chinese im-
perial government in dealing with the Hawaiian government, it did nevertheless
undertake various defensive measures against threats to the Chinese migrants and
the Hawaii Chinese community.
Reaction to Immigration Policy

Most important to the migrants were laws and regulations designed to restrict the
right of Chinese to enter the country. Only a few months after the organizational
meeting of the United Chinese Society, the government took the most drastic ac-
tion against the Chinese that had occurred up to that time. When several thousand
unrecruited Chinese men—some infected with smallpox—had arrived unexpect-
edly early in 1883, the government asked authorities in Canton and Hong Kong
to allow no more emigrant ships to leave those ports for Honolulu. Later in the
year the government permitted the entry of more Chinese laborers asked for by
sugar and rice planters, but the men were to come only in ships approved by the
Board of Immigration and landed first at a quarantine station in order to prevent
the spread of smallpox.
With these events, the officers of the United Chinese Society became con-
cerned about the future status of Chinese immigrants and immigration. This
concern was expressed in the first communication of Alee and Goo, “representing
the Chinese Union,” to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. This letter, sent in
September 1883, expressed satisfaction “that there is a likelihood of a speedy
reestablishment of Chinese immigration” but went on to say:
191
Migrant Organizations and Community Crises
Facts, connected with the admission of Chinese arriving at Honolulu from

China, during the early part of this year, naturally lead to inquiries in refer-
ence to the conditions under which future immigrants will be allowed to land,
as to whether these will be the same as are applicable to all nationalities, or
whether the Chinese are to be subjected to other or special regulations. Es-
pecially are we desirous of learning the amounts of fees which individual
immigrants will be obliged to pay before permission is given them to land,
and the nature of regulations relative to their detention at the Quarantine Sta-
tion or other given places….
We would avail ourselves of this opportunity to express the hope that
the plans now proposed for Chinese Immigration may tend to strengthen the
friendly relations already existing between the Hawaiian and Chinese peo-
ples.1
The minister’s reply was probably not very reassuring to the new society’s
officials:
Whilst the Government is desirous to place all immigrants on the same foot-
ing without reference to the existence or absence of Treaty stipulations on
their behalf, yet, in regard to your fellow countrymen, in view of their all
coming from ports infected by diseases (from the importation of which the
people of this Kingdom have suffered so much), also in view of the fact that
the ordinary immigration from China consists almost wholly of males, it is
necessary that the Chinese should be treated in an exceptional manner…. It
appears necessary to impose a short quarantine, probably not exceeding, in
the best cases the period of three (3) days, in order to enable the physician of
the Board of Health to make that thorough general examination which can-
not be made on board, and also for the purpose of proper fumigation. This
will involve some small charges on the immigrant, enough to meet the costs
of their food and medical attendance, and pay of guards. Beyond this, and
the usual passenger tax, the Government recognize no fees or expenses what-
ever, as chargeable to the immigrants.2
About four months after receiving this reply, Alee and Goo submitted the
petition for a charter of incorporation of the United Chinese Society. The fol-
lowing month (March 1884) the government issued new regulations restricting
the number of new Chinese immigrants to twenty-five per vessel but providing
for “outward passports” and “permits to return” to be issued to Chinese residents
who wished to return to Hawaii after visiting China. Three months later more
than eight hundred Chinese, including entrepreneurs who needed more workers,
joined other Hawaii residents who were dissatisfied with various government
policies in signing a petition demanding that the government ministers resign.3
192
The cabinet did not resign, but when ships arrived in 1884 and 1885 with thou-
sands more Chinese the immigrants were allowed to land.
After it seemed that Japanese contract workers would fill the sugar planters’
labor requirements, new regulations and frequent revisions of regulations on Chi-
nese immigration were issued between 1885 and Annexation in 1898. Through-
out this period government officials knew that Chinese anxious to come to
Hawaii and Chinese residents in Hawaii anxious to bring other Chinese to the
Islands were using various means to evade the regulations. At first any Chinese
resident could obtain the outward passport and permit to return for one dollar.
The authorities soon became convinced, however, that sojourner migrants, es-
pecially laborers, who did not intend to return to the Islands were selling their
passports and return permits in China to men who wanted to emigrate to Hawaii.
The Hawaiian consul general in Hong Kong was instructed in 1885 not to “accept
an outward passport as proof that any individual has resided formerly in these
Islands…. Any case of real hardship (if any can arise) caused by this return to
a literal enforcement of the Regulations can be dealt with through the Chinese
Commercial Agents here Messrs. C. Alee and Goo Kim (Ching King-Turn and
Ku Kum-fai).”4
Later that year, when evasions continued, the authorities restricted outward
passports to well-established Chinese immigrants who owned property in Hawaii
assessed at a thousand dollars or more and could show receipts for taxes paid
upon it. After a meeting of the United Chinese Society, Alee sent a protest against
the regulation to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He received the following one-
sentence reply: “For your information I desire to state that I am not prepared to
grant return passports to any Chinese, whatever may have been his occupation,
who cannot show his tax receipt for taxes on real or personal property within the
Kingdom.”5 The United Chinese Society was able to obtain only a minor con-
cession, and that was with legal help. Almost fifty years later a Chinese migrant
recalled this situation and the feelings it aroused:
We Chinese in Hawaii who live far away from home must look towards
others for a living. Therefore, discriminating laws are never ceasing and op-
pressive laws are always being passed. Before 1900 a regulation was passed
stating that a Chinese must have properties amounting to $1,000 before he
can receive a return passport. This oppressive law did not stop at this. It also
placed a charge of twenty dollars for this passport. This Society, at the re-
quest of the Chinese people, held a meeting and hired a lawyer to dispute the
law. In the end this law was slightly changed. The twenty dollars charge was
reduced to five dollars.6
In 1887 the government and the United Chinese Society worked out an arrange-
ment by which a Chinese seeking a passport first obtained an official “Chinese
193
Commercial Agent’s Certificate” from C. Alee. This certificate was also referred
to as the “Chinese Benevolent Society’s ticket” and as the “Chinese passport.”7
The Minister of Foreign Affairs informed the consul general in Hong Kong that
the Chinese commercial agent charged three dollars for this passport and that
two dollars of this was “paid to the funds of the Chinese Benevolent Society.”8
This system probably did eliminate some of the fraudulent evasion of the regula-
tions, because the government dealt with individual Chinese migrants only after
they had been certified by leaders of the Chinese community who were officially
recognized by the Chinese government and generally trusted by the Hawaiian
authorities. Apparently the cultural and social distance between the government
officials and most of the Chinese residents was so great that officials found it eas-
ier to use the Chinese organization for carrying out regulations than to enforce
them directly. To this extent the United Chinese Society was tacitly recognized as
a government within the government with some of the functions of an extraterri-
torial system.
United Chinese Society finances improved greatly through the fees it col-
lected for issuing the certificates. More important, this arrangement enormously
enhanced the prestige of the Society and its leaders among the migrants and con-
sequently accelerated the organization of the Chinese community. It also gave the
Society, whose membership was made up of the more responsible and wealth-
ier migrants, a mechanism for controlling migrants who could not leave the
Islands until they had met their obligations to other Chinese. In this way also,
it had a quasi-governmental function. A Chinese editor remarked that “in the
first place, the United Chinese Society has been like a ‘government of a small
country’”—primarily in Honolulu’s Chinatown, secondarily among the entire
first-generation Chinese population.9
As leaders of the United Chinese Society, Alee and Goo tried to ease re-
lations between the migrants and the government by serving as a channel for
communicating information about government regulations to the Chinese af-
fected by them. Frequent changes in the regulations made it difficult for migrants
who read neither English nor Hawaiian—or Chinese for that matter—to keep
posted, and this was even more true of prospective immigrants in the Chinese vil-
lages. In a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Alee and Goo indicated their
awareness of this role:
It is, as Your Excellency will readily perceive, of the very greatest impor-
tance that exact information should be obtained upon all such points, in order
that those proposing to immigrate to these Islands may do so with a knowl-
edge of what awaits them, and the conditions of admission. In this way much
inconvenience may be spared such immigrants, and possible causes of com-
plaint and dissatisfaction removed.10
194
The government’s willingness to use the officers of the United Chinese So-
ciety in this way is shown in the numerous letters to the heads of the Society
during the 1880s and 1890s asking them to inform the Chinese of changes in the
regulations affecting migrants. One letter begins: “His Excellency the Minister of
Foreign Affairs will be obliged to Mr. Goo Kim if he will cause to be notified to
all Chinamen intending to apply for passports from this Department authorizing
reentry to this Kingdom that….”11
Several modifications of the regulations restricting Chinese immigration
point to the influence of local Chinese. Late in 1887, for example, when sugar
plantations were importing Japanese laborers but Chinese rice plantations needed
Chinese laborers, the law was changed so that three hundred Chinese workers per
quarter would be issued permits for entry. Moreover, “special classes” of Chi-
nese, including merchants and travelers, could obtain permits to enter the country
for a six-month period under $500 bond. Children under fourteen (with parents
in Hawaii) and women could obtain entry permits. That same statute also showed
the influence of local Caucasians in that permits were to be issued to Chinese ser-
vants for non-Chinese employers.12
These were politically turbulent years. In 1887 a reform legislature, con-
trolled by Caucasians and a few Hawaiians, brought about a constitutional monar-
chy which reduced King Kalakaua’s powers. Then an unsuccessful countermove-
ment led by a part-Hawaiian in 1889 was followed by events leading to the
deposing of Queen Liliuokalani, the formation of a provisional government in
1893, and another unsuccessful revolt led by a part-Hawaiian in 1895. There
was widespread dissatisfaction with the Republic of Hawaii established under
the control of pro-American Caucasians who succeeded in bringing about an-
nexation of Hawaii to the United States. During these years Chinese residents,
including some officers of the United Chinese Society, were occasionally sus-
pected or accused of conspiracy and bribery—that is, attempting to influence
Hawaiian members of the legislature and giving financial help to Hawaiians in
the unsuccessful counterrevolutions.13 Neither the president nor vice-president of
the Society was involved directly in these charges, however, and they sent a letter
recognizing the provisional government on the very day it was proclaimed.14
For years the president and vice-president of the United Chinese Society, in
their joint capacities as Chinese commercial agents, met the ships bringing Chi-
nese immigrants, observed the disembarkation, and interceded for men who had
grievances. During the 1895–1898 period, when the proplanter officials of the
Republic of Hawaii allowed more than fifteen thousand Chinese arrivals, this was
a particularly onerous task. In January 1897 President Goo Kim asked for gov-
ernment permission to send Chinese “deputies” to the quarantine grounds where
Chinese laborers were disembarking and signing labor contracts. This request
was granted and representatives of the two main speech groups, Hakka and Punti,
were appointed.15
195
When Annexation was imminent, the United Chinese Society employed a

Caucasian lawyer to represent Chinese interests before authorities in Washing-
ton. There were two objectives. The first, which was not attained, was to prevent
American laws excluding Chinese from being applied to Hawaii when it became
a U.S. territory. The other, which Japanese groups also supported, was to en-
sure enforcement in Hawaii of American legislation against contract labor—thus
freeing several thousand Chinese and Japanese laborers from the contracts under
which they had been brought to the Islands during the three years preceding An-
nexation. The latter objective was achieved. Several thousand Chinese who might
have been returned to China under conditions imposed by the republic were al-
lowed to remain in Hawaii.
A Caucasian lawyer was again retained by the Society in 1899 when Ameri-
can immigration officials refused to honor return permits issued by the Hawaiian
government before Annexation. According to The Friend, 482 Chinese were
“cruelly detained at the quarantine station … for several months … while holding
the permits of the Hawaiian government to return to their former residences in
Hawaii.” The case was pushed through to a favorable decision from the Hawaiian
Supreme Court. The Society then sent the lawyer to Washington, where authori-
ties finally recognized the validity of the Hawaiian reentry permits.16
In 1908 and again in 1916 and 1921 the Society sent delegates and Caucasian
legal representatives to Washington in the interest of securing congressional leg-
islation which would exempt Hawaii from application of the American laws
barring Chinese labor immigration. In its petition to Congress in 1916 the Society
asserted that “all we ask is to be treated the same as people of other oriental na-
tions. Is it justice to single out the Chinese for exclusion? We fear this has an
effect of lowering China in the eyes of the world.”17 None of the three attempts
succeeded.
Reaction to Economic Restrictions

Legislation aimed at restricting their businesses and occupational competition
was the greatest threat to Chinese sojourners who had already gained entry and
were attempting to make the most of the economic opportunities on the Hawaiian
frontier. The two most vehemently anti-Chinese organizations in the mid-1880s,
the Anti-Asiatic Union and the Workingmen’s Party, held meetings at which they
protested Chinese competition, especially in skilled jobs. Other Caucasian and
Hawaiian residents, though deploring the extreme rhetoric of these organizations,
also favored legislation that would restrict Chinese economic activities. It was
said that Chinese were “threatening to overrun the country”—from the late 1870s
to the mid-1880s Chinese males had increased from about one-fifth to about half
of the adult male population. Chinese businessmen were said to be “ubiquitous,”
196
and it was felt that too many Chinese were in Honolulu and other towns as arti-
sans or as “vagrants” instead of working on the sugar plantations.
To counter the mounting anti-Chinese agitation and legislation proposed
by the reform legislature, representatives of the Chinese community met at the
United Chinese Society clubhouse in 1887 and formed a special organization: the
Bow On Guk (“Self-Defense Society” or “Protective Bureau” as it was variously
called in English by Chinese spokesmen). Members were urged to contribute a
dollar or more depending on ability to pay and merchants were asked to contrib-
ute twenty-five cents for each hundred dollars their firms handled in business that
year.18 Articles in the Chinese newspaper Lung Kee Sun Bo urged Chinese to join
and help finance the new organization; handbills were distributed with the same
objective. One of the handbills, as translated into English stated:
We Chinese in Hawaii left our home villages to make our fortunes. At first
we lived peacefully and happily, but later on conflicts arose among ourselves
as we cut each other’s skins. And because of this weakness we were fre-
quently subject to foreign exploitation. Fellow countrymen, don’t say that a
spark of fire cannot burn a large plain nor that a tiny cloud cannot cause a
rainfall, for drops of water will form a river and a little work each day will
move a mountain. If we are not harmonious among ourselves and promote
friendship among our countrymen, how can we protect our property and life?
This is why the establishment of a Protective Bureau in Hawaii is the most
pressing need. Remember the massacre of Chinese in Peru, also the driving
out of Chinese in the United States and the burning of stores there. Beware
that we don’t fall into the same trouble. Although we see that the interests
of the Chinese should be protected here, we cannot go on without financial
support. Let all our fellow countrymen come together to defend themselves.
Since we need money urgently, we are sending people to canvas for funds.
We sincerely hope that all countrymen, no matter how rich or poor, open their
purses that this worthy work might be accomplished. The fur patched to-
gether becomes a coat; the pollen gathered by the bees becomes honey. May
we all be in accord with one another, cooperate, and eliminate all suspicion.
If we can accomplish this, we can protect ourselves and live happily. This is
the purpose of our organization. Please sign your name.19
Several thousand dollars were collected and a two-story building in Chinatown

was bought as headquarters.
According to one Chinese account of this period there was fear that anti-Chi-
nese agitation would lead to physical attacks on the Chinese residents or their
places of business. Honolulu Chinese held meetings to plan self-protection. Some
rifles were bought and watchmen were hired to patrol the Chinatown area at
night. Leaders urged their countrymen to refuse to do business with members of
197
the Workingmen’s Union and Caucasian firms most active in the anti-Chinese ag-
itation.
Actions of the 1888 session of the Legislative Assembly alarmed the Chinese
community even further. One law promised to be particularly disadvantageous
to Chinese businessmen, the group which provided most of the leadership of
the United Chinese Society and the Bow On Guk. This act required all licensed
businessmen to keep accounts “in the English, Hawaiian or some European lan-
guage.” While not explicitly mentioning Chinese businesses, the act in effect
was aimed at them since most Chinese migrants in that decade would not have
been able to meet this requirement, and there were few other businessmen in the
Islands who could not have kept accounts in at least one of the required lan-
guages. While the assembly was still in session, Chinese petitioned for repeal of
the act. The petition was discussed but rejected. One legislator claimed that be-
cause “Chinese have perpetrated frauds against their creditors” the bill was “made
necessary by the Chinese themselves.” The assembly overrode the king’s veto of
the measure, but the act was later declared unconstitutional when Caucasian at-
torneys brought a test case before the Supreme Court.20
Even more threatening was a constitutional amendment recommended by a
special legislative committee on Chinese and Asiatic restriction. It would give the
assembly authority to limit, even prevent, Chinese employment in occupations
“in any line whatsoever” as specified by legislation, except that the assembly
could not disbar Chinese from engaging in the rice and sugar industries. The
amendment would also have allowed the assembly to limit the right of Chinese
to acquire and hold land and deny Chinese the right to remain in the country for
more than six years. The proposed amendment also provided that “no such laws
shall be declared unconstitutional because confined in their operation to Chinese
or any body or class thereof.”
The intensity of the Chinese protest against such discriminatory legislation
and the unity of the Chinese community in the protest are apparent in the Daily
Bulletin’s long report of a mass meeting held on 30 August 1888 at the Chi-
nese Theater. According to the report, “Every business house in Chinatown was
closed, and almost every Chinaman turned out to the meeting. The building
was jammed full … and … there was a crush outside of people unable to gain
admittance.” The chairman of the meeting, W. S. Akana, said that the proposed
legislation would “be ruin to the Chinese; therefore they should do their best to
protect themselves.” C. Monting, a leader among the Hakkas who said he had
come to the Islands ten years earlier as a rice cultivator, was the first speaker. His
remarks, like those of all the other speakers, were interpreted into English for the
benefit of reporters from the English-language press. According to the Daily Bul-
letin’s report:
C. Monting said that when he came to Hawaii the islands were not as pros-
198
perous as they are now. The Chinamen had done much to bring the country
to its present condition of prosperity. They went to work on waste and worth-
less lands and … made them productive and profitable. The Chinamen leased
lands from white men, to whom they paid rent. He paid $3,000 a year in rent
and taxes. The revenue of the Government is $1,200,000, of which amount
the Chinese pay $500,000, or more than one-third of the whole. They do not
grumble at this, but pay their taxes cheerfully…. Chinamen pay taxes as well
as others, then why should they not have the same rights? … The speaker sat
down amidst deafening applause.
C. Monting was followed by sixteen other speakers, including nine mer-

chants, a teacher, a watchmaker, a carpenter, two drivers, an ex-policeman, and
a cook. At the end of the meeting “a committee was appointed to wait upon the
legislature.” Two members of the committee were officers of the United Chinese
Society; the others were all Honolulu businessmen and probably members of the
United Chinese Society.
Six days later the committee submitted to the Legislative Assembly a
“memorial” written in English pleading for justice. After saying “we understand
the great pressure which has been exercised inducing a part of the members to
make laws without regard to justice and forbearance,” the memorial goes on:
But we have at all times looked forward with confidence that the sentiment of
fairness which lives in the educated white men, as well as the natives, would
prevent the passing of any laws to drive us from the country or to take from
us the right of earning a living by honest labor….
We have lived among this people whom you represent for years and will
not and cannot believe that any injustice done to us would be approved by
them….
There is a saying written on the wall of your chamber, “Let justice be
done though the heavens fall.” We ask not to be favored only that the protec-
tion which justice gives us be not taken away from us.
Shortly before the assembly was to vote on the amendment, the Bulletin
noted that “the Chinese attorneys [Caucasian attorneys employed by the Chinese]
appear to be satisfied with the amendment.” Presumably this was because in its
final form the amendment stipulated that provisions regarding occupations, prop-
erty ownership, or deportation would not apply to Chinese already residing in
Hawaii. Faced with already enacted legislation that restricted Chinese immigra-
tion, the Chinese residents apparently decided to concentrate on the new threats
posed by the amendment. The memorial had expressly stated that the question of
restriction on further immigration was not the immediate concern, “excepting that
it will be carried out … without oppression or cruelty, and expecting confidently
199
that all legislation concerning us, our position and our property will be just, tem-
perate, broad and magnanimous.”
The Chinese did not rely entirely on their petition for justice and fair play.
Four days after the mass meeting the Bulletin reported that “twenty to thirty rep-
resentative Chinese were present in the Legislative Hall this morning” and sixty
were there the day the memorial was read. The amendment was defeated when
it was voted on the following day. Two days later the attorney general charged
that several Hawaiian members who had voted against the amendment had been
bribed. One accused man who admitted to taking a bribe informed on others, say-
ing that “one day we went to Ahlo’s store and a Chinaman said he would pay $50
to each native voting against the amendment…. [After the vote] I received a $50
Spreckels certificate.” Loo Ngwak, a partner in Sing Chong Co., was also impli-
cated. Three of the accused Hawaiian legislators were expelled from the House
and a fourth severely censured. According to the newspapers this was the first
time legislators had been expelled for bribery, although it was by no means the
first time legislators were known to have been bribed. Newspaper reports con-
tained no mention of any Chinese being charged with paying the bribes, although
the penal code made the bribing of a legislator or government official a criminal
offense.21 Bribery would not have been regarded as particularly corrupt or un-
usual by the migrants themselves. In the villages of China from which they came
government officials were regarded as generally venal,22 and in Hawaii migrants
became aware that government employees were frequently receptive to bribes.
A rather pathetic attempt to impress legislators with the Chinese power to re-
taliate had been made by one of the speakers at the mass meeting, but his point
was not included in the memorial to the Legislative Assembly:
Foreigners seem to think that the Chinese Government does not care for us,
and that they can do as they like. China has plenty ships of war, cruisers,
whose business it is to go around the world and protect her people….
… A little country like Hawaii thinks it can drive the Chinamen away.
All nationalities come and settle here, and whether there be a treaty or no
treaty they should be treated alike…. The laws against the Chinese are not
right. A memorial has been sent to the ambassador at Washington and an-
other to the Viceroy of Canton, and it is believed they will takes steps to
render help.23
The Chinese leaders in Honolulu knew as well as Hawaiian government officials

that little help could be expected from China or its representative in Washington.
In moments of frustration, Tin-Yuke Char tells us, migrants were likely to say
“yat poon sarn sa (China is like ‘a pan of loose sand’).”24 The Minister of Foreign
Affairs was well aware of the Chinese government’s unwillingness to intervene
on behalf of the wah kiu as indicated in a confidential message from the Hawaiian
200
minister in Washington:
As to the Chinese treaty the Chinese minister told me privately that the
Viceroy said that if they made a treaty with Hawaii, and then any trouble
grew up, they would be obliged to enforce the rights of the Chinese and that
might lead to trouble, that now if a Chinaman complained they could say
well, you know we have no treaty there, and so avoid trouble. He said that
the Viceroy was evidently disgusted with foreign treaties and thought that
Chinese had better stay at home.25
Although the proposed constitutional amendment was defeated, there was

no letup in anti-Chinese legislation and regulations. One common and effective
countermove by Chinese leaders was employing Caucasian attorneys to assist in
drafting petitions and protest statements, to lobby at the legislature, and to take
test cases to the courts (through to the Supreme Court if necessary). Recourse
to the Supreme Court in order to have anti-Chinese legislation declared uncon-
stitutional was the counterattack that anti-Chinese legislators had tried to block
by provisions of the defeated constitutional amendment. A similar constitutional
amendment, adopted along with accompanying legislation at the 1892 session,
specifically prohibited additional Chinese from going into trade or mechanical
occupations, but the overthrow of the monarchy soon after the session ended de-
layed enforcement.
Early in 1894 the Provisional Government considered a “licensing act” to
achieve the objectives of the 1892 anti-Chinese legislation. The act would require
“all Chinamen to pay one dollar each for a license before engaging in any trad-
ing or mechanical occupation” and would forbid “such licenses to be issued to
any Chinaman not previously so employed.”26 Within a few days Chinese lead-
ers called another Chinese mass meeting; more than 2,500 Chinese men were
reported as gathering inside and outside the Chinese Theater for the heated two-
hour meeting.27 According to the Hawaiian Star, “As a mass meeting the event
was in every way a success…. The proceedings throughout riveted the attention
of all. There were frequent outbursts of applause and positive expressions from
the audience. Half a hundred of the leading Chinese had seats on the stage.” The
Star was apparently alarmed by the belligerent tone of some of the speakers, but
the cabinet of the new government would not have been worried by the remarks
of the first speaker: “If [the new government] will not listen to us, let us instruct
our representative to communicate with the Chinese minister at Washington and
ask him to write the home government about our troubles.” The next speaker,
more realistically, “said they were assembled to see if all were of one mind re-
specting the situation.” Other speakers expressed the indignation and humiliation
that Chinese residents felt at being discriminated against:
201
“I have been in this country for fifteen years,” said Ching Ling Him, a clerk
for the Hawaiian Hardware Company, who says he hopes to become a mer-
chant…. “If this bill passes no man can do business except the one allowed
him by the law. The Chinese pay most of the taxes, and were it not for us
the white merchants of Honolulu would be ruined. I cannot be a rich man
if this law passes, and we are treated worse than dogs…. We must stick to-
gether….”
Chung Kim, a lawyer’s clerk, who brought his speech from C. W. Ash-
ford’s office, said … the Chinese have been extremely patient. They have
borne oppression which would from almost any other race have provoked
revolution. The Government seems to have formed the opinion that no injus-
tice heaped upon the Chinese will be opposed or resented. This is a mistake.
Even a worm will turn when trodden upon, and so it may be with the de-
spised Chinese should the oppression be carried too far…. By what right do
our white-skinned brothers lord it over us to say that we shall do business
and trade and live and breathe only by their consent? Is it only because our
skins are brown and theirs are white? The Government is glad enough to col-
lect taxes from the Chinese, but when it comes to finding a class upon whom
the spite of all cranks shall be expended, they at once light upon the patient
and long-suffering Chinaman…. The Hawaiian constitution declares that the
Government is established for the equal benefit of all men and all classes, but
if the Chinese license act shall pass it will show that the Government intends
to deny to us the equal benefit of the laws….
Lee Chu, a carpenter, is a radical. Said he: “We are descended from great
fathers. Why should we be treated differently from others? I say that if we do
not do our best to overcome this law we will show that we have no blood in
us.”
A committee of thirteen was selected to transmit a set of resolutions to the

Minister of Foreign Affairs. Some of these resolutions stated feelings that had
been expressed by many speakers at the meeting:
We, the Chinese residents of Honolulu … do solemnly protest against the

injustice, degradation, and insult threatened to be imposed upon us and our
race….
… We respectfully assert our right, under the principles of enlightened
justice and the provisions of the Hawaiian constitution, to dwell in Hawaii
and be accorded the protection of the law upon terms of equality with those
of other nationalities here sojourning.
… While we ask for nothing more than equality with other residents of
equally good behavior, we shall be satisfied with and shall support and re-
spect nothing that accords to our race a lesser degree of consideration and
202
justice than residents of other nationalities enjoy.
Again the committee members selected to transmit the resolutions to govern-

ment officials were mostly businessmen, several of them officers in the United
Chinese Society. During the same crisis a petition was drawn up at a meeting of
the United Chinese Society “praying that the councils refrain from enacting into
a law the pending anti-Chinese bill.” This petition, signed by some hundred and
fifty leading Chinese in the city, was submitted to the government. The bill did
not become a law.
Nevertheless, the government did revive a law that had been enacted in
1892. It did not affect Chinese already residing in the country but applied to
some ten thousand new Chinese contract laborers brought in during 1895–1898
on condition that unless they worked in the rice and sugar industries or as do-
mestic servants they were to be returned to China. As some Caucasian planters
had anticipated, these new workers turned out to be more troublesome than the
Chinese contract laborers of earlier decades. The latest contract laborers were
recruited mainly from the same districts of Kwangtung as most of the earlier
ones, Chung Shan and See Yup, but these young men were more sophisticated
than their predecessors. Most of them came from villages which had been influ-
enced by wah kiu returning from Hawaii and the continental United States. Many
were kinsmen of migrants already in Hawaii. They knew more about life on the
Caucasian-controlled sugar plantations and about the rights of laborers; they also
had more information about the money to be made away from the plantations if
they could escape their contracts.
The head of the United Chinese Society during this period pressed the au-
thorities in Honolulu several times to intervene when he felt injustice had been
done to indentured Chinese plantation laborers. Complaints by the workers, of-
ten quite at variance with reports by plantation managers and local government
officials, were sent through him to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and to the
attorney general. Goo Kim complained about the treatment of Chinese laborers
at Lihue Plantation, Kauai, and asked the Board of Immigration to investigate the
causes of a riot there in which a Chinese contract laborer had been killed. Goo
also transmitted to the board complaints he had received from Chinese contract
laborers at Olowalu Plantation on Maui. In both cases the complaints were found
to be justified and the secretary of the Board of Immigration, who investigated
them, took corrective action.28 Later in 1897, at the suggestion of the Chinese
minister in Washington, Goo asked the Hawaiian government to make “a general
investigation by a government official of the condition of Chinese laborers in this
country.”29 A denial by the government that such an investigation was necessary
brought a request for letters of credentials for seven Chinese, appointed by Goo,
to conduct an investigation for him. Also in the interests of the indentured la-
borers, Goo and the United Chinese Society, together with Japanese leaders, had
203
succeeded in getting their contracts declared void and the men permitted to re-
main in the Islands.30
Defense of Political Rights

The provisions of the new constitution of 1887 which most offended long-term
and well-established Chinese residents had to do with voting rights. Article 59
specifically gave Caucasian male residents who met certain property qualifica-
tions the right to vote whereas male residents of Asian birth were denied this
right, even those who had become naturalized Hawaiian subjects. Apparently
the Chinese were offended not so much by denial of the vote as by the blatant
differentiation between Caucasians and Asians. A Chinese in 1913 wrote: “They
[Chinese migrants] had not meddled with politics; they were peace loving and
law abiding, and all they had ever expected was the right to engage in commerce
and trade without molestation.”31 Concerned Chinese were embittered by the fact
that while naturalized Asians were denied the franchise, Caucasians could qual-
ify to vote without becoming citizens of Hawaii. C. Monting, one of the Chinese
who attended a mass meeting of people opposing the new constitution for vari-
ous reasons, spoke against the provisions affecting persons of Asian birth, asking
for equality and fair play. Eventually one concession was made: the constitutional
provisions were interpreted as allowing the vote to Hawaii-born Chinese and
other Hawaii-born Asians, but probably less than a hundred Hawaii-born Chinese
were old enough to vote in the late 1880s.32
After the monarchy was overthrown and while the proposed new constitution
for the Republic of Hawaii was being considered, Chinese leaders were even
more offended because Japanese migrants but not Chinese were to be given the
franchise on the same basis as Caucasians and Hawaiians. Obviously, Japan’s
having a more powerful government than China, together with treaty agreements
between the Japanese and Hawaiian governments, gave Japanese migrants more
political leverage.
Nearly four hundred “leading Chinese merchants” signed a petition to the
Council of the Provisional Government asking that Chinese be given the fran-
chise and also representation on the council. Goo Kim, in an interview to the
press, stated why Chinese in Hawaii had earned the right to the franchise much
more than had the Japanese, but he added that the Japanese would not be men-
tioned in the petition. Although Goo, by right of his presidency of the United
Chinese Society, was recognized as Chinese commercial agent, this position did
not enable him to make a protest on behalf of the Chinese government; the peti-
tion itself contained a plea for renewal of efforts to get a treaty with the Chinese
government. The petition ended with a request that the Chinese be given “equal
rights with those of all other alien residents, subjects or citizens.”
204
An editorial in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser conceded that a number

of long-time Chinese residents might have a good case, but asserted that “the
overwhelming majority of Chinese migrants are not … identified with Hawaii’s
interests, social, as well as material.” When the constitution was adopted it did
not extend the franchise to the Chinese.33
Following annexation to the United States, Chinese and others who had be-
come naturalized subjects of Hawaii achieved full American citizenship, as did
Chinese born in Hawaii, but American laws barred further naturalization of alien
Chinese, with few exceptions, until 1943.
Concern about Civil Rights

Most Chinese migrants were wary of the Hawaiian courts and law enforcement
agencies. Apart from the villagers’ age-old distrust of government officials,
migrants generally were not convinced that they could get justice under the
Hawaiian legal system. Experience on the Haole-controlled sugar plantations led
them to believe that sheriffs, constables, police, and the courts were agencies of
the planters, used to enforce plantation contracts and regulations. Afong, the Chi-
nese commercial agent in 1881, expressed this opinion in a letter to the Chinese
minister in Washington: “The interests of all the Judges of the Island are in Sugar
Plantations; consequently, there is no possibility of the case being decided impar-
tially.”34 The converse of the Chinese attitude was the belief of many Caucasians,
during the first decades of Chinese immigration, that Chinese testimony in court
was not reliable. In March 1892 the Supreme Court of Hawaii declared that a
juror was “not disqualified to sit on a case of a Chinaman charged with selling
opium, who says that Chinamen are not to be equally credited with a Hawaiian or
a white man, provided his other answers show that he will not disregard the tes-
timony because it is from a Chinaman, and bears the impress of truth, but would
weigh it without prejudice.”35
The social distance between Chinese migrants and other groups helped ac-
count for these feelings. Communication between the Chinese and officials was
difficult; few government functionaries understood the Chinese language, Chi-
nese attitudes, or Chinese traditions. Chinese newcomers were baffled by Western
principles and methods of justice. The migrants’ distrust of the courts was some-
times reinforced when older Chinese residents used Western procedures to take
advantage of other Chinese. Even the government’s attempt to facilitate law
enforcement by employing Chinese detectives, police officers, and court in-
terpreters aroused some animosity among migrants; those who accepted such
positions were often regarded as informers and traitors.
Chinese commercial agents and leaders of the United Chinese Society knew
that in many respects Chinese migrants were discriminated against by law en-
205
forcement agencies and in the courts, and from time to time they appealed for
fairer treatment. Quarantine regulations, for example, that were applied to Chi-
nese—not only new immigrants but returning Chinese residents—and not applied
to Caucasians were galling. Chinese representatives tried to speed up the release
of Chinese from quarantine when the government maintained that differential
treatment was necessary for health reasons. When regulations adopted in the late
1880s required Chinese residents to submit profile and full-face photographs for a
passport and return permit not required of persons of other nationalities, the regu-
lations were contested but unsuccessfully.
It was commonly felt that Chinese were arrested and convicted on gambling
charges more frequently than Caucasians or Hawaiians involved in gambling.
Even the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, no advocate for the Chinese, recognized
this situation: “Gambling among Chinese is put down by the strong arm of the
law whenever an opportunity arises, but it very rarely happens that gamblers of
other nationalities are interfered with by the police.”36 There were cases in which
it seemed clear to the Chinese community that Chinese charged with criminal of-
fenses or violation of some law were convicted on insufficient evidence. In other
cases it appeared that non-Chinese, particularly Hawaiians and Caucasians, were
not punished for offenses against Chinese persons or property. Even when a Chi-
nese was murdered and the evidence seemed conclusive, the offender sometimes
escaped penalty. Some of the complaints sent by leaders of the United Chinese
Society to the government in the 1890s were concerned with these indications of
unequal regard for the lives of Chinese residents.37
Nevertheless, the Society did assist the Hawaiian government in some seri-
ous criminal cases. In April 1892, for example, Alee, as president of the United
Chinese Society, offered a reward for the arrest of “the parties” who had mur-
dered a Chinese. Similarly, in October 1893 Goo Kim, then president of the
Society, added $200 to the $100 reward the government had offered for the cap-
ture of a Chinese who had been identified as the murderer of a Chinese farmer on
Oahu. Offering a reward, of course, was meant to encourage action different from
that of the Hoong Moon societies whose oaths required members not to inform
on each other. In the 1893 case the “Chinese murderer” was apparently sheltered
for several days by Chinese who recognized him and then helped him to board a
ship for the island of Hawaii; it was on that island two weeks later that another
Chinese helped capture him.38 Whatever the motivations of individual Chinese in
such situations, the aim of the United Chinese Society was apparently to bring
about a more favorable attitude toward the Chinese as a group by cooperating
with the authorities in these criminal cases.
206
Defense of Personal and Property Rights

During the last decades of the nineteenth century Chinese migrants sometimes
felt, with some justification, that their property rights were disregarded and their
personal rights ignored in a humiliating way by government officials. The out-
standing instance of what Chinese felt to be gross disregard for their personal and
property rights occurred during the plague of 1899–1900 and the Chinatown fire
connected with it. According to Li Ling Ai, her father, Dr. K. F. Li, diagnosed
the first case of bubonic plague and reported it at once to the government health
officials.39 When this and two other cases proved fatal later the same day in
Chinatown (12 December 1899), the Board of Health immediately started daily
house to house inspections and the next day the whole Chinatown area was de-
clared under quarantine. The area was divided into fifteen districts for cleansing
and disinfection. On the fifteenth no one was allowed to enter or leave the area,
and soldiers were posted along the borders of Chinatown to prevent anyone from
doing so. According to one source:
Many of the restrictions … were placed exclusively on Orientals or were

framed with the Asiatic in mind. This resulted, generally, from associating
the Chinese and Japanese with slums and squalor—as revealed in China-
town—and from the belief that the filthy environment of the Oriental was a
breeding ground for plague germs. Many cases of plague originated in Chi-
natown, and the restrictions thus gained a logical support. Whether necessary
or not, the regulations certainly displayed the Board of Health’s power dur-
ing the epidemic.40
One of the first measures to arouse Chinese protest was the cremation on the
quarantine station grounds of the bodies of all those who died of the plague.41
Even though the board knew that Chinese opposed cremation, the protests were
ignored. The board’s next step, which also violated Chinese feelings, was taken
because a Sanitary Commission report led the board to conclude that Chinatown
conditions were so unsanitary that it was impossible to disinfect the area by “ordi-
nary means.” The board resorted to burning buildings in which persons had died
of the plague. Between 31 December and 19 January several fires were set. Ac-
cording to The Friend, these were “admirably handled” by the Fire Department.
According to the account Dr. Li and his wife passed down to their daughter, the
guards and inspectors were rude and intemperate. When someone died, others liv-
ing in the building were herded into the streets. Their clothing was removed and
burned, and the evicted residents were forced off to detention camps.42
One account of the plague reports that before the first fire was set the res-
idents’ belongings and goods from the stores were removed by the Board of
Health and stored until the quarantine was lifted.43 Correspondence between the
207
Chinese consulate and the government shows that the United Chinese Society and
the Chinese consul protested what they regarded as indiscriminate destruction of
merchandise of Chinese stores and personal belongings in the lodging quarters,
along with the burning of the buildings. The Minister of Foreign Affairs replied
that the Board of Health had “summary powers in cases of this kind to order
the removal or destruction of anything that is a cause of sickness, nuisance, or
pestilence.”44 Chinese who did not wish to have their property destroyed should
provide a suitable building where their goods could be fumigated, arrange for
transporting such goods to the place, and store their belongings in warehouses
outside Chinatown until the plague was over and the quarantine lifted. Many Chi-
nese regarded these measures as unnecessary and too expensive. More protests
were made when fires designed to burn certain condemned buildings also de-
stroyed neighboring buildings not condemned, but the Minister of Foreign Affairs
said little more than that the merchants had been warned “to pack their goods so
that the same could readily be removed.”45
Other effects of the quarantine added to resentment among people confined
in Chinatown. Chinese and Japanese merchants not forced out of business by hav-
ing their premises burned sustained heavy losses because they could not carry on
normal business. Unemployment increased in Chinatown and contributed to de-
cline in trade. Plantation laborers, servants in Haole homes, and other people who
happened to be in Chinatown when the quarantine was imposed were confined
there, jobless and without income.
After the pestilence had continued for more than a month, authorities decided
to try to end it by burning buildings more quickly after deaths from the plague
occurred in them. It was anticipated that this measure would increase the claims,
but the cost would be more than balanced by earlier resumption of normal busi-
ness activities. Financial losses outside Chinatown were also mounting. Business
was almost at a standstill while quarantine in the city and between the islands was
in effect and shipping between Hawaii and the rest of the world was disrupted.
Shortly after this decision was made a fire on 20 January destroyed the buildings
on about thirty-eight acres and nearly completed the burning of the entire Chi-
natown area. Although the government contended that the fire got out of control
because of a sudden shift in the wind, it was widely believed among the Chinese
that the authorities had purposely allowed their quarters to be burned out. Ex-
cerpts from the report in The Friend indicate some of the conditions on the day
of the fire:
By the unexpected conflagration of Chinatown, nearly 4,500 persons were

driven hastily into the street from their burning dwellings. It was a distressful
and panic-stricken mass of humanity. This feature of the great disaster far ex-
ceeded every other….
To a great extent, these crowds were in a state of panic, as well as of
208
anger at the whites who, as they believed, had deliberately burned them out.
In their fright they had saved little of their belongings from the flames which
so rapidly swept down upon them. Among them were many violent men who
urged their fellows to attack the armed guards who were controlling their
movements…. Wives were often separated from husbands and children from
parents, and wailing in distress….
The citizens of Honolulu rose at once fitly to the situation with rapid and
efficient organization. Several hundred citizens were at once armed with im-
provised clubs such as pick-handles, to assist the military and police. Form-
ing in lines along the streets, the frightened crowds were driven between the
brandished clubs, but without a blow struck, to the large Kawaiahao church
yard, a distance of three-fifths of a mile. The weaker women and children
were carried on drays. The men were loaded down with their effects…. Most
happily there were no losses of life, and scarcely an injury to person.46
Years later a Chinese woman who was among those evacuated told about the
handicaps of the women with bound feet:
Before we knew it, the fire was upon us. We were taken to the quarantine
station in trucks [wagons?] but the men had to walk…. We were in the same
building with Mrs. Y—and Mrs. T—. [They], and many others, who have
bound feet, were perfect nuisances, for they had to be helped across many
muddy spots. I was never so thankful for being born of poor family as I was
then.47
The Friend, a missionary paper generally more pro-Chinese than other

English-language publications, tried to convey the attitudes of the authorities and
Caucasian residents toward the “panic-stricken mass of humanity” being herded
away from Chinatown:
These people must be controlled, calmed and comforted. They must be

placed in safety. They must especially be prevented from scattering, to dis-
seminate through the city the germs of plague from their insanitary and
infected abodes. They must continue to be quarantined, as they had been for
weeks before, having been guarded from leaving the district.48
While some residents of the city would do nothing for the homeless people
in the detention camps for fear of contracting the plague, others who saw the need
for compassion and aid volunteered help. The Friend reported the response of
those who felt that people in the detention camps must be made “as comfortable
as circumstances would permit. They must be fed, and in many cases, clothed.
All of the bright Sunday the work of relief went on. The women of Honolulu or-
209
ganized to prepare clothing for the destitute women and children for whom the
sewing-machines buzzed all day throughout the city, instead of Church or Sunday
School.”
Lana Iwamoto also tells about aid from many sources:
Citizens spontaneously offered supplies of all kinds; merchants liberally

gave food, clothes, cash, and the use of vehicles to convey goods. On Sun-
day, the day after the fire, the women of Central Union Church organized
relief work and committees and assisted the public authorities in the work of
meeting the needs of the destitute refugees. And a number of Nuuanu Valley
ladies started a sewing bee to make women’s and children’s clothing for the
homeless. They eventually produced 350 articles.49
Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiian societies also actively helped the needy.
According to a Chinese source, “the unfortunate people, old and young, raised
their cries to Heaven, and proceeded to the United Chinese Society headquar-
ters.”50 Shortly after the fire, when the private resources of many of the homeless
were exhausted, Chinese again went to the United Chinese Society and proposed
a charity drive. A committee soon raised more than twenty thousand dollars. Free
food was distributed; emergency assistance was given. The Society interceded
for impoverished Chinese who wished to enter claims for their losses but were
deterred by the requirement of a fifty-dollar deposit for court costs, and the re-
quirement in these cases was waived. The Society also provided legal assistance
for carrying these cases through court. For his efforts on behalf of the Chinese at
this time, the president of the Society was awarded a gold medal by Chinese res-
idents. The Chinese consul was similarly rewarded.51
The United Chinese Society in Other Chinatown

Crises
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Chinatown was
growing most rapidly, migrants concentrated there went through many critical
times because of the hazardous conditions under which they lived. They had to
be largely self-reliant in dealing with fires, accidents, and sickness. Under ordi-
nary circumstances the migrant whose building collapsed or burned, or who was
sick, might get help from kinsmen in Hawaii, heung li, or other personal sources.
When, however, large-scale disasters struck Chinatown, or when migrants had no
personal ties in the community, these sources were usually unavailable. Govern-
ment assistance was limited because health and welfare agencies had not yet been
organized. Often the United Chinese Society took over functions that generally,
in the Western system, would have been handled by government authorities. Two
210
such situations were the 1886 Chinatown fire and the cholera epidemic in Hon-
olulu in 1895.
The 1886 fire broke out less than three months after the newly organized
China Fire Engine Company had participated in the annual firemen’s parade. Al-
though the company reached the scene before other fire companies, it could not
stop the fast-moving flames. The Advertiser commented caustically that any other
company could have done so. The fire destroyed buildings over about thirty-
seven acres—most of Chinatown—and caused losses, estimated at $1,500,000,
sustained mostly by Chinese. Authorities were unable to handle the catastrophe in
an orderly way; hundreds of terrified Chinese and other residents of the area were
not restrained from frantic efforts to salvage their belongings or from crowding
the streets. This disorder interfered with efforts to control the fire, which were
hampered anyhow by the maze of temporary, flimsy buildings in the area.52
The United Chinese Society building, which had been opened with elaborate
ceremony only two and a half months earlier, was burned, but the Society con-
tinued to function. Some of the several thousand homeless Chinatown residents
went to live with people in other parts of Honolulu, the Chinese particularly with
Chinese farmers in the Honolulu district. The president of the United Chinese
Society secured permission from the government for Chinese who could not be
taken care of otherwise to camp on the immigration depot grounds. In response
to an appeal from the Society for funds to assist the many who were left penni-
less, the government granted ten thousand dollars, of which three thousand went
to Hawaiians and seven to Chinese. The Chinese Christian Church, along with
other church groups, provided meals and lodging for many of the fire victims.
The Legislative Assembly enacted laws to regulate the rebuilding of China-
town in accordance with fire and sanitary precautions, but though many of the
old wooden buildings were replaced with brick structures, new frame buildings
were put up in violation of government rules. The United Chinese Society still
owed several thousand dollars for its first headquarters, which the treasurer, Lau
Cheong, was charged with having neglected to insure, but the Society decided
nevertheless to erect a new Chinese community building “in order to promote the
feelings of the people from the same villages.” The new building, similar to the
first, was opened with a banquet in the spring of 1887.53
In August 1895 a number of deaths in Honolulu raised fears of a cholera epi-
demic. Health authorities carried out a plan for “city cleaning … with liberal use
of lime and disinfectants.” Newspaper accounts of inspectors’ reports focused on
conditions in Chinatown. According to one item, “many foul places were cleaned
out, especially in Chinatown…. One of the bad places was the ground under the
floors of the old fishmarket.” Another article said that “the Japanese quarters
were found to be very much cleaner than those of the Chinese, the latter being in
an extremely filthy and altogether disgusting condition.” In parts of Chinatown,
it was said, “the ground reeks with contagion…. It is a shame that human be-
211
ings should have to live in such close proximity … to pestilential exhalations.”

One newspaper, referring to a few malodorous buildings in one part of China-
town, stated that “Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiians are so crowded together …
that there cannot be immunity from tainted air.”
Later, as more people died, certain sections of Honolulu, including China-
town, were divided into districts in which every resident was to be inspected
twice a day in order to identify and remove those who had become sick; no one
was permitted to leave the city or spend a night away from his residence without
a written permit. Church services and other large assemblies of people were for-
bidden for a three-week period.54
The United Chinese Society formed a special bureau to help Chinese who
were in distress because of the epidemic. The Society contributed $250 and a
committee raised an additional $850 from wealthy Chinese. Two meal tickets a
day, each worth ten cents, were given to those who applied for them. The tickets
could be used at any Chinese restaurant, which would be reimbursed in cash
for all tickets returned to the bureau. Any Chinese who could not afford to buy
medicine could have the bureau sign a prescription which would be filled at any
Chinese drugstore. The United Chinese Society was asked by the Board of Health
to provide Chinese doctors to assist the Caucasian physicians who had been ap-
pointed to supervise daily inspections. At a meeting of the Society ten Chinese
doctors (herbalists) were selected to serve.55
A makeshift hospital was set up at the quarantine station to which individuals
diagnosed as being sick from cholera were taken. Soon items appeared in the pa-
pers regarding complaints about the facilities and the handling of patients at this
hospital, while health authorities repudiated the grounds for the complaints. Most
of the deaths were of Hawaiians (seventy-seven of eighty-five), especially those
living in the Iwilei section of Honolulu, an area about half a mile away from Chi-
natown. Many Chinese, as well as some others including a German physician, did
not believe that cholera was the cause of the deaths, and it was not until the epi-
demic was over that reports of laboratory tests from the United States confirmed
that the deaths had indeed been caused by cholera infection.56
Probably because of complaints among Chinese about the hospital at the
quarantine station, the United Chinese Society decided that there should be a
place under Chinese management where sick Chinese could be taken care of, es-
pecially in emergencies. A committee was appointed to discuss the matter with
the other general Chinatown organization, the China Engine Company. A peti-
tion circulated among leading Chinese was submitted to the legislature, with 327
signatures, asking for a grant of land “in or near Honolulu” upon which the So-
ciety might erect and maintain, under government supervision, “a hospital for the
care of the sick and also in connection therewith a home for the aged, infirm and
helpless Chinese.” Land in the Palama section of Honolulu was granted. A cam-
paign was organized to raise money; the China Engine Company donated $1,950,
212
the United Chinese Society bureau formed during the epidemic contributed its re-
maining funds, and other money was collected among Chinese and Caucasians.
In March 1897 the Wai Wah Yee Yuen, or Chinese Hospital, was opened
by Goo Kim, still president of the United Chinese Society, at a ceremony at-
tended, according to The Friend, by “the leading Chinese merchants and officials
together with some thirty whites including most of our prominent Christian work-
ers.” The ceremony included “the Doxology and two anthems played by the
Hawaiian Band, a prayer, a hymn, a reading from the Bible, a closing hymn and
benediction,” in addition to the main talks by Goo Kim and the Rev. F. W. Da-
mon. The writer for The Friend noted that “the peculiarly Christian character of
the opening exercises is largely due to the great influence of Mr. Goo Kim, so
well known as an early convert and a long and able Christian worker, as well as a
successful merchant.”
Some of the regulations indicate how the hospital was intended to operate:
Any Chinese who is sick and desires to enter this hospital must have a cer-
tificate from the president and vice-president of the United Chinese Society
and the director of the hospital. These will make investigations of where the
patient came from. If the patient is found to be poor and has nobody to de-
pend on, all services in the hospital are free to him….
Patients who unfortunately die in the hospital may be taken out and
buried by the relatives. Otherwise, the hospital undertakes this procedure, for
which a sum of fourteen dollars is paid by the relatives. If the deceased is
exceedingly poor and has nobody to depend on, the hospital buries him at a
lesser price.
The Manoa Chinese Cemetery will be the burial ground. The province
of the deceased together with his names will be recorded.57
C. K. Ai, president of the United Chinese Society from 1901 to 1906, reports
that during those years he became deeply concerned about the wisdom of contin-
uing to maintain the hospital. After a good start “the Chinese doctors in charge
relaxed their discipline and the hospital became discredited.” Chinese had spent
more than ninety thousand dollars on a hospital which was being used as a “house
of death” and as a burial society for indigent Chinese. Moreover, because of the
great losses to Chinese merchants caused by the 1900 Chinatown fire, Chinese
contributions to the hospital had decreased. In Ai’s words:
The hospital was very unfortunate from the very start. No Chinese ever
brought in a patient until it was too late for the physician to do anything. We
tried to teach our people to bring the sick in earlier, so as to give the doctor
a chance to help them, but all to no avail. Therefore, practically all those ad-
mitted into the hospital as patients went out in coffins. To hide this sad sight
213
from living-dead, I had a high fence built behind….

… In 1906, I called a meeting of the hospital committee and announced
my decision to discontinue taking charge of the hospital. I told the committee
there was no sense of carrying on a hospital when only those were brought
in that were about to die…. Our hospital had really been nothing more than a
mortuary or morgue. The other committee members finally came to my point
of view.58
The Wai Wah Yee Yuen was closed later that year.
Group Consciousness and Organized Action

The United Chinese Society, it is apparent, was only partly successful in de-
fending Chinese migrants against discrimination, but it symbolized and to some
extent made effective a basic change in the orientation of migrants in Chinatown.
Migrants who had come to Hawaii, especially during the earlier years of immi-
gration, with almost no sense of identification with Chinese of other villages or
districts, found themselves categorized and treated as “Chinese.” In this situation
migrants developed a willingness to act with other Chinese in their common inter-
est and supported the United Chinese Society. Every new act of the government
which imposed special requirements or restrictions upon the Chinese intensified
their sense of oneness—their “we-consciousness.” In Chinese mass meetings, on
handbills, and in the Chinese newspapers appeals were made to “fellow coun-
trymen”; speakers and writers talked about “we Chinese.” In addition to sook
jut (“uncle-nephew”; that is, kinsmen) and heung li, a new phrase came into use
among the migrants: tung bau (“fellow countrymen”). The new feeling was ex-
pressed in the slogan, “Unity is what we want and must have—unity in mind and
action. If we unite we will gain our point.”59
Having been organized originally to voice the protest of Chinese migrants
against discrimination and to take whatever collective action was possible in cop-
ing with it, the United Chinese Society was ready to organize other kinds of
mutual assistance in times of crisis. It became important not only because it acted
on behalf of the migrants but because, representing all elements of the Hawaii
Chinese population, it was a centripetal force in the emerging Chinese commu-
nity.
214
CHAPTER 11
Differentiation and Integration
THE Chinese migrants, fending for themselves in an often hostile world, could
well appreciate the value of a United Chinese Society which could speak, and
sometimes act, in their common interest. At the same time, the migrants who
made up the Hawaii Chinese population were by no means a homogeneous group
with strong personal loyalties to one another. Hakka and Punti, Sam Yup and See
Yup, Christian and non-Christian, of this or that clan, of one village or another,
from different districts—these and other identities were the bases for subgroups
within the Chinese community. Unlike the situation among Chinese on the U.S.
mainland, especially in California, the United Chinese Society preceded the evo-
lution of formal organizations based on these varying old-world identities, but
development of a sense of affinity with tung bau did not replace older and deeper
subgroup loyalties.
The first district association was formally organized in 1890, eight years after
the beginnings of the United Chinese Society; the first village club came in 1897;
the first surname society in 1889. Eventually migrants organized more than forty
societies based on these subgroup affiliations, but even then such societies were
only a minority of the more than two hundred formal organizations developed by
the migrant generation.1 Associations founded on old-world subgroup loyalties
multiplied most rapidly as anti-Chinese agitation in Hawaii was dying down, but
this was also the period (1889–1930) when Chinese political organizations ap-
pealing to tung bau loyalty were most active.2
The District Associations

Among the strongest and most important of the migrant organizations were the
district associations, most of them established between 1890 and 1907, mainly
a sojourner period. Each district association was made up of members who had
migrated from or were somehow identified with a specific geographic locality in
Kwangtung province. Some of these districts covered only forty or fifty square
215
miles, but from one small area, with a population of more than 100,000, migrants
came to Hawaii from at least eighty-three different villages.
Chinese migrants came to Hawaii from just a few districts of Kwangtung
province (Table 13). In fact, more than half the contract laborers arriving during
the years 1895–1897 came from See Yup—the “Four Districts” of Sun Ning (Toi
Shan), Sun Wui, Yen Ping, and Hoi Ping (see Map 1, on endpapers). A little less
than one-third came from Chung Shan district, but Chung Shan had been the chief
recruiting ground for laborers for more than a generation before this, and it is
likely that a large majority of the six thousand Chinese “free immigrants” who
arrived in the Islands during the same three years came from Chung Shan. Prob-
ably one-tenth of the contract laborers in these years were Hakkas. The number
coming from all other districts of Kwangtung was negligible.
Table 13
Origin of Chinese Contract Laborers (1895–1897) and Chinese Women (1893–1898)
Granted Permits to Land in Hawaii
Area of Origin Number of Number of

Chinese Chinese
Contract Women Migrants
Laborers 1893–1898)
(1895–1897)
Heung Shan (Chung Shan) 2,269 190
See Yup districts
Sun Ning (Toi Shan) 2,132 15
Sun Wui 778 10
Yen Ping 607 —
Hoi Ping 414 2
Hok Shan 23 2
Hakka districts
Sun On (Pao On) 436 54
Kwai Sing 109 19
Tung Kun 90 25
Other Hakka districts 36 3
Other districts 60 16
Unidentified 143 73
216
Total 7,097 409
Note: Data tabulated under the direction of the writer from records of the Board of Immigration now
filed in the Archives of Hawaii. The records for men refer to Chinese brought in under “conditional
permits” as contract laborers, mostly for the Haole-controlled sugar plantations. The figures for
women refer to permits issued to Chinese women by the Board of Immigration validating their right
to land. Not all the women actually arrived in Hawaii.
The local origins of the Chinese women immigrants closely approximated

the origins of all Chinese migrants in Hawaii—the largest element from Chung
Shan, the Hakkas more numerous than the See Yups, with an insignificant re-
mainder of Puntis from other Kwangtung districts, including some in and near
the city of Canton.3 The district associations organized in Hawaii by the Puntis
reflect, in their number and nature, this distribution.
Because of the general illiteracy and immobility of Chinese villagers for
generations, considerable dialectal and cultural differences existed even between
areas as small and close together as these districts. A modern Westerner can
scarcely comprehend the social distance between migrants even from neighbor-
ing villages, much less between those of different districts. As one migrant stated,
the district had been the universe for the ordinary Chinese villager and like most
universes it contained conflicting groups—in the Kwangtung districts and vil-
lages these were competing clans. However, migrants who would have had little
to do with each other at home in China were drawn together in Hawaii by their
common local origins. Abroad, old-world rivalries, distrust, and feuds became
subordinated to the fellow feeling among those who spoke the same dialect, ob-
served the same local customs and had similar childhood memories.
The first three district associations formally organized in the Islands were for
migrants from three of the ten doo (subdistricts) of Chung Shan district, and all
but three of the other district associations were also organized by migrants from
Chung Shan.4 (See Map 2.) The other three district associations were formed by
migrants from See Yup (“The Four Districts”). Because they spoke a different
dialect of Cantonese and were culturally different in other ways from the numer-
ically and economically predominant Chung Shan migrants, See Yup migrants
tended to be a separate group apart from the main Chinese community. Chung
Shan people generally claimed to be closer dialectally and in other ways to the
city of Canton, the cultural center of Kwangtung province, than the See Yup peo-
ple whom they regarded as more rustic than themselves. Heavy migrations of See
Yup contract laborers to the sugar plantations between 1895 and 1898 were im-
portant in making the See Yup Wei Quan the second largest association in the
Islands, at one time claiming three thousand members. Factions led to the forma-
tion of the other two associations: Yee Yi Tong open to migrants from all four of
the See Yup districts and Kong Chau Wei Quan open only to migrants from Sun
217
Wui. The following list presents the district associations organized in Hawaii. In
some cases the year given is only the approximate year of founding:
Map 2. Chung Shan District
Source: Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains (Honolulu: University

Press of Hawaii, 1975), p. 17
Honolulu
1890 Chuck Sing Tong (Wong Leong Doo) (“Wong Leong Doo Chuck Sing
Tong”)
1890 Duck Doo Kee Loo (“Duck Doo Society”)
1891 Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong (“Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong Benevolent
Society”)
1897 See Yup Wei Quan (“See Yup Benevolent Society”)
1901 Yee Yi Tong (“Yee Yi Tong”)
218
1901 See Dai Doo Wui Goon (“See Dai Doo Society”)
1907 Leong Doo Wui Goon (“Leong Doo Society”)
1907 Kong Chau Wei Quan (“Kong Chau Benevolent Society”)
1930 Kung Seong Doo Luen Heung Wui (“Kung Seong Doo Society”)
1930 Gook Doo Sam Heung Tung Heung Wui (“Gook Doo Sam Heung”)
1950 Chung Shan Tung Heung Wui (“Chung Shan Association”)
Hilo
1904 Wong Leong Doo Kung So (“Wong Leong Doo Benevolent Society”)
Membership in the district associations was open to any migrant whose “na-
tive place” was a village in the district. Every association had an admission fee,
generally two or three dollars, but no annual dues. Most associations required
that migrants returning to China subscribe an additional sum, generally two dol-
lars. Representatives of the association would be at boatside at embarkation time
to collect the admission fee if it had never been paid, as well as the departure
contribution. Indigent migrants being helped to return to China were exempt
from these fees. As an association’s expenses increased, especially when a head-
quarters building was put up, admission fees were sometimes raised and special
assessments levied against affluent members. Sometimes admission fees were
lowered later and a scale of fees for admission of sons of members was adopted.
Wealthy members who made voluntary contributions in addition to the regular
fees were formally recognized. The See Dai Doo Wui Goon had this bylaw on
special donations:
Each … member who makes an extra donation of $50 or more shall be re-
warded with a first-class silver medal, and his portrait shall be hung on the
wall of the meeting hall to show him respect; each … member who makes an
extra donation of $25 or more shall be rewarded with one first-class medal;
and each … member who makes an extra donation of $10 or more shall be
rewarded with a second-class medal; each … member who makes an extra
donation of $5 shall be rewarded with a third-class medal.
The Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong, the largest association, illustrates the nature
and functions of the district associations. In the mid-1930s it had more than 4,250
members—about 15 percent of the Hawaii Chinese population at that time. When
this society applied for a charter of incorporation in 1905 the fifty-six petitioners
stated that they were “by occupation, merchants.”5 Like most migrant organiza-
tions, it was to have a president and vice-president, a Chinese secretary and
assistant secretary, an English secretary and assistant secretary, a treasurer and
assistant treasurer, two auditors, and a board of directors. The forty-eight board
members were all to be appointed by the officers who were to be elected annually.
It appears that in this as in most of the other associations the board or execu-
219
tive committee members were mainly yau ming mong (a name looked up to: “big
names”), prominent members, and large contributors who were given the prestige
of the position without being expected to take on routine chores of the organiza-
tion which were left to the officers. Only twelve of the forty-eight were needed
for a quorum in a meeting of the board. Concentration of power in the hands of
the officers is indicated by a bylaw providing that “thirty members shall consti-
tute a quorum at any meeting of the Society, where notice is given by posters.”
Lists of officers submitted annually to the Hawaiian government by this and other
district associations commonly showed the same names year after year, some-
times moved from one office to another. Chu Gem, for example, was president of
the See Yup Wei Quan from its incorporation in 1897 until his death in 1924.
The Lung Doo association, like many others, began informally when suc-
cessful merchants and other clansmen of the district were approached for help by
migrants from the district who were in distress. In the 1930s the president of this
association, who had known several of the founders, gave his version of how it
got started:
The men who started this society were all merchants and were all living in
Honolulu at the time. I think about ten or twelve of them got together and de-
cided that the Lung Doo people ought to have their own society. Before they
have society, if a man need kokua (“help”), maybe he go to one of the busi-
nessmen in Honolulu who is Lung Doo man, ask him to kokua him. Maybe
he from the same village in Lung Doo. By and by the men who give all this
kokua have meeting of these people. By that time some of them are getting
old, they get sick, they don’t want to go the hospital, they have all kinds pi-
likia (“trouble”). Then they start Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong. This society do
all kind welfare work. At the first time, they have no building. They have
meetings ‘round different places—maybe in store of one of the members.6
District associations, in the constitutions filed with the government when

they applied for charters of incorporation, affirmed that their main or sole object
was to be benevolent societies. The Lung Doo constitution stated: “The Lung
Doo Chung Sing Tong Benevolent Society is founded for the purpose of aiding,
assisting, and supporting disabled, sick, and indigent Chinese.” The bylaws of
this association were more explicit than those of some other associations in stat-
ing its benevolent objectives and how they were to be implemented:
All persons of Chinese nationality and descent who are not members of the
Lung Doo … Society, arriving in Honolulu from any part of the Territory of
Hawaii other than the Island of Oahu, and who have no shelter or work or
means of subsistence, shall, on their arrival at Honolulu, be furnished by the
Society with lodging, for a period not exceeding two weeks….
220
Any member who is ill, and wishes to stay at the Society for treatment,
or who desires temporarily to reside on the premises, must first make his in-
tention known to the Secretary. The records must show that such member has
paid his initiation fee before he can be allowed to lodge there….
All members of the Lung Doo Benevolent Society in good standing and
of good moral character, who are infirm from illness or old age, or indigent
or unable to earn their subsistence by labor, shall, upon application to the So-
ciety, be furnished with means to return to their homes in China, and with
such further assistance as may be needed, provided the Executive Committee
of the Society shall so determine….
If any member shall die within the Territory, the Society will undertake
to defray the expense of collecting his remains and ship them back to China.7
At first most of the district associations rented buildings in Chinatown for

their headquarters, which became known as the societies’ wui goons (“club-
houses”). After the Chinatown fire of 1900 the larger associations bought land
and built clubhouses in the area to the north and northeast of the old Chinatown
quarter. Most of these buildings had three stories. The first floor was rented, usu-
ally to a member, for business purposes, the rents going toward the upkeep of the
entire building. The second floor was equipped as the society’s headquarters—a
large room, with an altar in the rear, where members could gather for gossip,
exchange of news, tea, friendly games, and individual worship at the altar, and
where general meetings or meetings of the officers could be held. The third floor
had rooms where temporary lodgers could stay, sick members could be cared for,
or indigent members could live. Sometimes buildings were also put up behind the
headquarters, including a cook house and additional space for lodgers.
A few associations lent surplus funds to members, but most invested these
funds in real estate in areas where many Chinese lived, at a time when Honolulu’s
land values were low. Some built and rented tenements. One of the wealthier as-
sociations was reported in 1931 to own property valued in excess of $100,000
and to be collecting between $6,000 and $7,000 annually from rentals. Members
of a society were given preference as renters in its tenements; in the beginning
such tenements were occupied mainly by Chinese single men and families com-
ing from the same district. Members unable to pay their rent were often allowed
to accumulate large debts to the society, many of which were never paid.
Providing rooms at the clubhouse where sick migrants could be cared for ap-
pealed particularly, of course, to members without families or relatives in Hawaii
to care for them in times of distress. Though the Chinese hospital in Honolulu
existed for several years, its general unpopularity was implied by one district as-
sociation when speaking of the advantage of membership in its own organization:
221
The main purpose in establishing this Wei Quan is to provide a temporary

place of stop-over … and as a temporary resting place for those who are sick.
In the earlier days there was no Chinese hospital; and although “under
the eyes” [at present] there is one now, individuals find it hard to come out
and go in freely. Here, our Wei Quan functions like a hospital for our fel-
low villagers; and the conveniences and comforts provided are well known
to every friend.8
For sick members unable to meet the expenses of their illness, the association
would engage a Chinese doctor or herbalist and buy the prescribed medicines at
a Chinese drugstore. There were always men living at the clubhouse who could
prepare medicinal brews, cook meals, and care for other needs of the sick.
Opium addicts who were becoming physically and financially helpless and
faced dependency upon some public institution commonly found a more tolerant
attitude toward their affliction at the district clubhouse than elsewhere. Here, in a
place rarely entered by non-Chinese or by Chinese from other districts, the addict
would feel secure from molestation by outsiders and at the same time be among
people willing to meet his needs. District associations did not as a rule use their
funds to supply penniless addicts with opium, but individual members sometimes
helped them secure the drug.
By the 1930s Hawaii-born Chinese physicians whose fathers or grandfathers
had come from the members’ districts were contributing medical services and
thus reducing the cost of caring for the sick in the district association clubhouses.
Such services appear to have been not entirely gratuitous. Some Hawaii-born
Chinese physicians, like other Western-trained professionals, realized that their
success depended considerably upon the confidence and goodwill of the older
generations, at least until the elders were no longer influential in the Chinese
community. Partly for this reason, some Hawaii-born Chinese physicians and
dentists were active in immigrant institutions such as the district associations and
agreed to serve as officers or on the charity committee, as well as contributing
their services to indigent members.
One way the Lung Doo association tried to help migrants “infirm from ill-
ness or old age, or indigent or unable to earn their subsistence by labor” was by
arranging their return to their native villages where, it was assumed, they would
be cared for by their clans. The association did not pay all the traveling expenses
for such a man but contributed a certain amount, perhaps ten or twenty-five dol-
lars. Moreover, officials would prepare a document, stamped with the society’s
seal, giving the man’s name, indicating his desire to return to China, designating
the amount the society had advanced, and asking members and friends to contrib-
ute. The migrant then took the document from member to member, from person
to person of his own surname, from store to store, and had donors sign the doc-
ument and the amount of their donations. Shortly before the man left for China,
222
a notice of thanks would be published in one of the Chinese newspapers with the
names of the contributors and the amounts they gave.
By the mid-1920s a growing proportion of indigent migrants were disin-
clined to return to their native villages in South China. They had been away thirty
or forty years or longer; parents, uncles, brothers, in fact most of the relatives they
had known before leaving home were dead or were themselves overseas. The
aged migrant would return to strangers; a younger generation of relatives might
be contemptuous of an elderly, broken-down migrant who had spent a lifetime
in the “Sandalwood Mountains” and had returned penniless and dependent. Mi-
grants came to realize that moneyless returned wah kiu were not likely to enjoy
their last days in a village, even in one where old age had been traditionally re-
spected.
Few migrants, at the time they joined the district associations, would have
expected to remain in Hawaii the rest of their lives. Many of the unsuccessful
ones, however, postponed their departure time after time as various misfortunes
used up the savings with which they had planned to reestablish themselves in the
village; others who were improvident had saved nothing for their old age. Some
had become eligible for pensions from plantations or other employers; others had
personal claims upon Chinese in the Islands who had fared better than they and
were more likely to be of help than unknown relatives in the village. Public relief
agencies were avoided for a long time by the Chinese, but in the depression of the
1930s hundreds of elderly Chinese applied for old age assistance. It is significant
that they preferred even meager public relief to asking the district associations
for help in returning to China. Remaining in Hawaii, they were spared the loss of
face they would suffer by returning impoverished to their home villages.
Consequently, the district associations were asked in the 1920s and 1930s to
provide shelter and subsistence for many of their aged, indigent members. In fact,
more needy members remained in Hawaii than most of the associations could or
would provide for. Some penniless old members were allowed to build shacks on
grounds owned by the associations and then to shift for themselves as best they
could. The demands of others were often simply ignored. When the 1937 legisla-
ture enacted legislation making Hawaii eligible for federal old age assistance, the
increased monthly pensions gave further help to indigent migrants, and several
district associations continued to shelter elderly members until the old men died.
Another charitable function referred to in the Lung Doo association’s bylaws
had to do with sending the remains of any member who died in Hawaii back to
his clan and village. The sentiment of wishing to be buried near one’s childhood
home or with one’s relatives is common enough the world over, but the desire
of the Chinese migrant to be buried near his native village was more than this.
It was intimately connected with the Chinese villager’s conception of a person’s
spiritual life after death. The spirit of each dead person must be cared for and
propitiated—not only for the comfort of the spirit but also for the well-being of
223
living descendants. Hence the great desire for a line of male offspring who would
assume responsibility for carrying out the proper rites for dead ancestors. The
spirits of the dead were believed to return to the place where the bones lay at the
times of the festivals for the dead. To die without male heirs was terrible in it-
self; to be buried in a spot unknown and uncared for by any relatives was to be
condemned to an eternity of being a wandering spirit—a much more terrifying
thought.9 It is difficult to exaggerate, therefore, the reassurance the migrant re-
ceived in joining his district association, knowing that if he died in Hawaii instead
of in his village the association could be depended upon to dig up his grave a few
years after his death and burial, collect his bones, place them in a container with
the correct identification, and transport them to China for delivery to relatives for
the proper rites of a final burial.
This purpose of the district associations, at least until the Peoples’ Republic
of China established control over South China in 1949, probably was carried out
more conscientiously and more continuously than any other objective for which
the associations were organized. For the poorer members some associations ex-
panded the scope of this service to include partial or complete payment of the
burial expenses. A few associations owned sections in the Chinese cemeteries;
others provided a free plot in a cemetery for a poor member. Some of the poorer
migrants were members in funeral societies organized by undertaking establish-
ments serving the Chinese group. For one who had made no such provision and
without relatives to pay the funeral expenses, the association to which the migrant
belonged commonly paid for a minimum-priced funeral. By the 1930s, however,
some associations were avoiding such expenditures by arranging for a county
burial and simply furnishing a plot in a Chinese cemetery.
With increasing concern among Chinese over status and appearances in
Hawaii, group participation of association members in funeral rites became an
important activity. Particularly when the deceased migrant had had superior status
in the Chinese community or in the association, members would march with the
mourners in the funeral procession and otherwise assist in the burial rites. One of
many notices of thanks appearing in a Chinese newspaper in 1909 concerned this
aspect of the district association’s activities:
We wish to thank See Dai Doo Wui Goon, Wing Lock Hong, Kwock On Wui
friends for contributions for the medical care of our uncle during his illness.
Unfortunately the drugs were inefficacious, and on the tenth of this month he
died.
Thanks to See Dai Doo Wui Goon, Wing Lock Hong, Kwock On Wui
members, and to relatives and other friends, for contributing funeral ex-
penses.
We also like to express appreciation to the different wui friends, uncles
and cousins, for directing the funeral affair and for participating in the fu-
224
neral on the day of the procession.10
Punti migrants from districts of Kwangtung other than Chung Shan and See
Yup were so few that the only organizations they formed in Honolulu were two
cemetery associations already described—one for Hoklo people from districts
around the port city of Swatow and the Tung Sin Tong by Chinese from dis-
tricts around the city of Canton.11 Chinese from over twelve districts belonged
to the latter tong, which had about two hundred members in the mid-1950s. As
well as participating in funerals for deceased members at their cemetery in Pauoa
Valley, members were invited to take part in ceremonies and a feast at the ceme-
tery grounds during Ching Ming (April) and on the fourteenth day of the seventh
month and the fifteenth day of the ninth month. At some of these occasions the
births of sons to society members were recognized.12
The district associations provided their members another form of mutual aid
through religious services. Apart from the deities and spirits he associated with
home and clan, the Chinese villager generally believed that every district had a
“place god”—a deity who was particularly concerned with the district’s fung shui,
good or bad fortune. When the earlier district associations built clubhouses, the
place god of the association’s home district was given a position of great honor
among the images of other deities on the altar in the meeting room. Thus installed
in the heart of the immigrant colony overseas, the deity was expected to look after
the fortunes of the Chinese of the district who were temporarily on foreign soil in
the midst of alien gods. Oil lamps were kept burning before the altar and incense
sticks were placed there morning and evening by the caretaker. Migrants could
come to the altar of their district association whenever they pleased; anniversaries
of the gods were celebrated and other religious occasions observed. Chinese im-
migrants, it is true, like most immigrants usually found little time for their gods,
and the longer they were away from their home district the less they seemed con-
cerned about the gods they had left behind. In the clubhouses of the 1930s, with
the altars rarely visited and the images barely lighted enough by small oil lamps
to reveal the accumulated dust, the gods appeared to be almost forgotten.
Various other benevolent services were undertaken by the district associa-
tions as occasions arose. They tried to help relatives in China and elsewhere
locate migrants who had not been heard from for years, or find out if they had
died and under what circumstances. The estate of a migrant from the district who
had died in Hawaii but had no relatives in the Islands was sometimes turned over
to the district association with the understanding that the association would serve
as administrator and deliver whatever balance remained, after debts and other ex-
penses were paid, to the man’s nearest relatives in China.
Though their ostensible purpose was to provide benevolent services, district
associations controlled migrants from their districts in China in some ways that
could hardly be called benevolent. Leaders of these associations during the 1890s
225
and early 1900s included employers of large numbers of migrants, especially

in the rice industry; some were labor recruiters and labor contractors. “Free”
migrants (that is, men who had not been recruited on contracts to the sugar plan-
tations) were met at the boat on arrival and housed temporarily by an association.
Members of the association could then employ the newly arrived migrants in one
of their enterprises on terms the immigrants would feel obliged to accept. Many
new arrivals actually were already indebted to heung li who were members of the
association and who had advanced money for their passage.
The government unwittingly strengthened the district associations’ control
over their members when, in 1887, it arranged to issue passports and return per-
mits only to migrants who had obtained a “Chinese Benevolent Society’s ticket.”
Since leaders of the district associations were also leaders in the United Chinese
Society which issued these tickets, district association officers could be alerted
when heung li from their district were about to leave the Islands. This made it
possible to bring more pressure on the departing migrant to pay any debts he
might have to association members and other Chinese than a creditor alone could
exert—the migrant might not get his ticket until the Society was satisfied he had
repaid as much as he could.
A more openly acknowledged role of the older and stronger associations was
that of arbitrator of disputes between members. The scope of disputes accepted
by a society for arbitration and the machinery and regulations by which it was to
be carried out are set forth in the bylaws of the Lung Doo association:
Natives of LOONG DOO DISTRICT, HEONG SAN, who have come to the
Territory of Hawaii for any lawful purpose, whether resident in the City of
Honolulu, or in any part of the Islands, shall treat each other fairly, and in
their transactions with each other, shall deal honestly and justly; they … shall
peacefully carry on their various pursuits; they shall endeavor to avoid any
conversation which may cause trouble; if any trouble occur through the con-
versation of any member, the Society shall not uphold such member in his
wrong doing.
Any members whose actions may cause others to attack him, without
fault on his part, may lay his grievance before the Society…. Where com-
plaint is made, the Society shall decide, according to the evidence, as to the
best course to be pursued under the circumstances, but is not bound to pursue
any specific course….
Whenever any member having a controversy with a fellow-member has
made complaint to the Society, he must abide by the decision of the Society
as to such controversy.
Should any member not abide by the decision of the Society as to his
controversy, the Society shall nevertheless do its utmost to reconcile the dif-
ferences of which complaint has been made….
226
Most disputes brought to the association were economic, and successful arbi-
tration depended largely on the prestige and power of those chosen as arbitrators.
The disputants’ willingness to accept the arbitrators’ decision was influenced by
the arbitrators’ clan and ancestral village connections as well as by their sta-
tus in Chinatown. The number of disputes handled by the associations steadily
diminished, however, and arbitration had little part in the activities of district
organizations established after 1920. In 1931 the president of the Lung Doo asso-
ciation described arbitration in his society:
Many years ago, the society used to settle lots of disputes—plenty of them,
but now not many. Now the people go to the courts. But last year we had
some members in pilikia who came to the society to complain. Most of the
time they come because some member doesn’t want to pay what he owes to
the other member. This year already we had one case. A man was having
trouble with his wife; they came to the society and we told them what to do.
I think now they take it to court.
When a Lung Doo man has pilikia with another Lung Doo man over a
little thing, he brings it to the society. He doesn’t want to take it to the courts.
If you go to the court, you have to pay for a lawyer, and it costs you lots of
money—maybe more than the man owes you. The society does this for noth-
ing….
When a man comes to our society with his pilikia, the notice is sent out
to all the officers and the committee and they are all supposed to come. Most
of them look at the notice and say, “It’s just a little thing, I don’t want to
go.” Only a few will come—more than two or three, but not many. Whoever
comes, helps to decide what ought to be done.13
The associations’ bylaws usually stated specifically that migrants from their
district should be law-abiding and that the society would not handle the cases of
law violators. It might even expel such members if the violations were serious.
The Lung Doo association’s bylaws on this point stated:
Natives of Loong Doo District … shall observe the laws of the Territory of
Hawaii and of the United States of America…. No member shall have the
right to lay before the Society any grievance arising from the keeping of
houses of prostitution, or from gambling, or from any breach of the law.
… Any member guilty of a serious violation of the laws of the Territory
of Hawaii, or of other grossly immoral or dishonest conduct may be expelled
from the Society by a 3/4 vote of the Executive Committee, but only upon
notice to such member, and after he has been given ample time and opportu-
nity to be heard in his own exculpation.14
227
Village Clubs and Lineage-Village Clubs

In 1935 a Hawaii-born Chinese, talking about the way migrants identified them-
selves, said: “When there were only a few Chinese, a man would say with pride
that he came from such and such a district—say Heung Shan, perhaps the district
in which people spoke his dialect; when more Chinese came from that area, he
began to speak about coming from such and such a doo, such as Lung Doo; then
after many more migrants from that district came to Hawaii he would answer the
question ‘Where are you from?’ by saying he was from such and such a village,
such as Lung Tau Wan or On Tong.”
Migrants from Chung Shan were numerous enough to organize and support
several village clubs as well as seven district associations. In contrast, the less nu-
merous migrants from See Yup organized only the three district associations and
no village clubs. In the mid-1930s, when the Lung Doo association listed over
four thousand persons on its membership rolls, the members came from families
in eighty-three villages. One village was represented by 445 persons, five villages
by 200 to 299, nine villages by 100 to 199, and nine villages by 50 to 99. In this
same period the See Dai Doo Society had almost 1,200 members who came from
forty-nine villages: eight of the villages had 50 or more members each—one vil-
lage had 111. There undoubtedly were other migrants from these villages who
had not joined their district’s association. Buck Toy village, for example, was said
to have about 350 emigrants in Hawaii at that time, but only 125 of them were on
the district society’s membership list.15
Typically, village clubs evolved from the gatherings of heung li at Chinatown
stores. Stores remained the main social centers for migrants from most villages,
but nearly a score of village clubs were formally organized and three of
them—the Buck Toy Villagers’ Club, the Oo Sack Kee Loo Society, and the On
Tong Villagers’ Club—had clubhouses in Honolulu. All of the following clubs
except one—Poo Get Tung Heung Wui—were formed by Chung Shan villagers
(in some cases dates of formal organization are only approximate):
Village Clubs
1897 Oo Sack Kee Loo (Gook Doo) (“Oo Sack Kee Loo Society”)
1898 Buck Toy Tung Heung Wui (Leong Doo) (“Buck Toy Villagers’ Club”)
1890s Yung Mark Kee Loo (Gook Doo) (“Yung Mark Society”)
1921 Siu Yun Quon Chark Say (See Doo) (“Siu Yun Villagers’ Club”)
1926 Lung Tau Wan Tung Heung Wui (Lung Doo) (“Lung Tau Wan Villagers’
Club”)
1930 Poo Get Tung Heung Wui (Pao On district) (“Poo Get Pao On Associa-
tion”) (Hakkas)
1940s Lung Tong Tung Heung Wui (Lung Doo) (“Lung Tong Villagers’ Club”)
1950 Choy Hung Tung Heung Wui (Dai Doo) (“Choy Hung Village Club”)
228
1950s Kong Tow Tung Heung Wui (Lung Doo) (“Kong Tow Society”)
1950s Chung Tau Village Club (Lung Doo)
Lineage-Village Clubs
1926 Lum: On Tong Tung Heung Wui (Lung Doo) (“On Tong Villagers’
Club”)
1927 Chun: Cha Yuen Wai Bok Say (See Dai Doo) (“Cha Yuen Villagers’
Club”) (Also includes Chuns from Poo Shan and Sing Tong villages)
1931 Ching: On Kai Say (On Ding village, Dai Doo) (“On Kai Society”)
1931 Mau: Mau Shee Tung Heung Wui (Kung Seong Doo) (“Mau Club of
Hawaii”) (Hakkas)
1940s Pang: Ling How Hing Pang Tung Heung Wui (Lung Doo) (“Ling How
Pang Society”) (Pangs from Ling How Hing village)
1940s Young: Sun Ming Ting Tung Heung Wui (Lung Doo) (“Sun Ming Ting
Association”) (Youngs from Sun Ming Ting village)
1954 Au: Cho Pu Tow (village) (See Dai Doo) (“Au Clan”)
Each of the seven organizations listed as lineage-village clubs was made up
of persons who had come from a village where all the residents, except perhaps
the storekeepers and a few other “outsiders,” had the same surname. In some vil-
lages the residents belonged to a set of genealogically interrelated lineages best
denoted by the term clan. Some of the clubs included members of the same clan
who came from neighboring villages. One important reason for the organization
of village associations, especially those of the lineage-village type, was the dis-
trust between migrants from different parts of Kwangtung, even from different
villages within the same doo, and the carryover into Hawaii of rivalries between
different clans. Antagonisms between clans of the same or neighboring villages
were endless, notorious, and often devastating. Strong clans took advantage of
weak clans; villagers from other parts of the trade area surrounding a market town
were wary of one another. One migrant gave as his reason for coming to Hawaii
the ruin of his formerly wealthy clan because of a feud with another clan in his
village. As late as the 1930s an informant attributed the recurrent factionalism
and discord within the district associations to clan rivalry.
Village clubs had some of the same functions as the district associa-
tions—among them, mutual aid and settlement of disputes—but carried out much
more informally. Village clubs did not usually stipulate in their bylaws the kinds
of assistance they would give members or under what conditions; members were
helped according to needs as they arose. Financial matters were also handled
more personally. Whereas the district associations usually forbade loaning their
funds to members, specifying that surplus funds were to be deposited in banks or
invested in real estate, village clubs would often circulate surplus funds among
members as loans. At first club members were not usually required to sign notes
for such funds or give any form of surety for repayment; members were expected
229
to meet their obligations without such formalities—and in the earlier years they
usually did.
Similarly, settlement of disputes by formal arbitration would have been in-
congruous in an organization made up of people with close personal ties both in
the home villages and in Hawaii. When there was trouble between heung li they
took the problem to respected leaders of the village club for solution rather than
to officers of the district association. Not only would they have more confidence
in people from their own village but other heung li would press them to settle
squabbles within the village club rather than let them be talked about in China-
town. This concern about avoiding gossip, not only in Chinatown but also back
in the village, made it easier for club leaders to persuade the quarreling parties to
accept a solution. Nevertheless, a club composed of members from several clans
could have trouble in getting consensus:
It must be hard for one who is not a Chinese to realize how strong the family
ties are. This is the reason, I think, why the —— Villagers’ Club was never
very strong. There are twenty-one clans represented. The —–s and the—–s
are the strongest; families always stick together, which means that the club
never had very much solidarity itself. The different families couldn’t get to-
gether.16
An informant provided another clue to the reasons for discord within village
clubs. He said that the strongest family in the club in which he was a member was
more successful than other families in getting loans from club funds.
The Hakka Association

For over fifty years the distinction between Hakkas and Puntis was the most
keenly felt division within the Hawaii Chinese population. “Hak-ka” is a combi-
nation of two Chinese characters which mean “people who are guests”—in this
context, “outsiders.” Among Puntis the term had many derogatory connotations
signifying a despised, low-status, aggressive group. Among Hakkas in turn Punti
was often used in a pejorative way as indicating oppressive people with a supe-
riority complex and unclean personal habits. “Pun-ti” literally means “the root of
the ground” and designated the “natives”—the original (more accurately, earlier)
Chinese settlers in Kwangtung as distinct from the Hakkas who began migrating
into Kwangtung in about the thirteenth century. In Hawaii Punti was generally
an in-group term referring to any Chinese originating in Kwangtung who was
not a Hakka.17 While there were dialectal variations among the Cantonese-speak-
ing Puntis, Hakkas belonged to a quite different speech group, speaking a form
of Chinese nearer the Mandarin spoken in northern and central China and com-
230
pletely unintelligible to the Puntis. Since Hakkas were latecomers to Kwangtung

and of lower status in the districts from which most Puntis came to Hawaii, they
had to learn enough Cantonese to communicate with Puntis, few of whom made
any effort to learn the Hakka language.
Migrants brought to Hawaii attitudes that had developed during generations
of rivalry, economic struggle, persecution, and periodic warfare between Hakkas
and Puntis. Though there is no record of open, violent conflict between Hakka
and Punti migrants in the Islands, there were tensions from time to time. When
the Hawaiian government in 1881 introduced a new immigration policy that gave
the Puntis, perhaps unwittingly, a monopoly of labor agent licenses, Hakka mer-
chants and labor recruiters stated in a complaint:
There are now in this Kingdom about four or five thousand of the members
of the said Ha Ka clan whose language, manners, customs, prejudices and
feelings are wholly distinct from those of the Pun Ti, and other clans, and
that from time immemorial, irreconcilable differences have existed between
them…. Owing to the said differences, it is quite impossible for members of
this clan to have business dealings with members of the other clans in regard
to the shipping of contract laborers, without engendering suspicions which
cause long continued discontent and ill feelings.18
One might have expected that since Hakkas made up over a fifth of the mi-
grant population they would have formed their own association when the district
associations were being developed by Punti migrants, but there was no general
Hakka society until 1921. There were several reasons for this. In the first place,
Hakkas did not come from only a few districts as most of the Puntis did, and there
was no large number from a single district. They came from at least twenty-one
districts in Kwangtung, from the extreme northeastern section of the province to
districts south of Canton.19 A few migrated from Chung Shan and See Yup dis-
tricts where they lived in generally poor Hakka villages near the villages from
which Puntis migrated to Hawaii. In the second place, Hakka migrants did not
concentrate in Honolulu as heavily and rapidly as the Puntis. Even though the
rural Hakka colonies eventually were depleted by movement to Honolulu, this
took a long time. For many decades there were not enough wealthy, influential
Hakkas in Honolulu to provide the initiative and leadership needed to organize an
Island-wide Hakka association.
Even more important, perhaps, was the fact that Hakkas became acculturated
to Western beliefs and practices more rapidly than the Puntis and began to give up
Chinese ways earlier. Christian missions were markedly more successful among
the Hakkas than among the Puntis. The movement toward Christianity is at once
an index of acculturation and a means through which it took place. From the
1880s to the 1910s, when Puntis were organizing so many migrant associations, a
231
larger proportion of Hakkas than of Puntis were becoming Christians and helping
to organize Chinese Christian churches and the Chinese YMCA. Proportionately
the Hakkas were more active than the Puntis in groups that were oriented toward
fitting into the multiethnic community structure, such as the American Chinese
Federation and the Chinese-English Debating Society.
A movement—mostly by Hawaii-born Hakkas—to establish a Hakka asso-
ciation finally got under way after 1910, but the response among the Hakkas was
not very encouraging. Although as many as five or six thousand Hakkas may have
been in the Islands at the time, several years went by before as many as nine hun-
dred agreed to join.20 The organization was called the Nyin Fo Fui Kon (“People
Peace Association”) after an all-Hakka organization of the same name established
several decades earlier in San Francisco. It was formally launched in June 1921.
The objectives set forth in its constitution indicate an orientation quite different
from that of the more inward-looking district associations:
A. To promote closer unity and sympathy and to exchange knowledge

among the Chinese in Hawaii in general and the Hakka people of the Chinese
race in particular, and to cooperate with all the Hakka organizations through-
out the world.
B. To encourage and promote education, charity, and benevolence.
C. To aid and succor all members of this Society against poverty, injus-
tice, and oppression.
Through the 1920s the organization continued to have trouble enlisting sup-
port for a program of activities. Years passed without prospect of raising enough
money to build a clubhouse. In 1931 a new set of leaders petitioned for a char-
ter of incorporation as a preliminary step to putting up a building. Another six
years went by before the association opened headquarters—not in a clubhouse but
on the second floor of a building in the center of Chinatown. In that year, 1937,
the organization also changed its name to Tsung Tsin Association “to correspond
with [Hakka] associations in other cities throughout the world which are devoted
to the welfare of the Hakka people.”21
Surname Societies
As is generally known, Chinese social structure is unusual in that China, with
hundreds of millions of inhabitants, has fewer than 450 surnames.22 There were
only fifty different surnames among the 4,254 Chinese on the membership list
of the Lung Doo association in the mid-1930s. Just ten of these surnames—Lee
(582), Lau (455), Young (428), Lum (306), Chong (278), Pang (273), Siu (245),
Chun (188), Wong (175), and Yee (163)—accounted for more than 3,000 of the
232
4,254.
According to ancestral cult tradition, persons of the same surname, whether
or not common lineage could be traced genealogically, were bound together by
reverence for the common ancestor believed to be the founder of the surname
and also by worship of a patron deity.23 Because of such folk beliefs, migrants
in Hawaii found themselves mystically connected to people of the same surname
from different districts, speaking different dialects, with whom they would have
had no contact before leaving the home village. For most sojourner migrants of a
given surname the mystical bond of a common ancestor from centuries, even mil-
lennia, earlier was too tenuous a connection to serve as a basis for organization
in Hawaii. Their various backgrounds, diverse origins, and cultural differences,
however minor, hindered the development of cohesion and loyalty among them.
Common district and village origins were much stronger bonds.24 Although sev-
eral surnames were shared by large numbers of migrants in Hawaii, only three
surname societies were established by the wah kiu before 1920: the Lum Sai Ho
Tong in 1889, the Wong Kong Har Tong in 1902, and the Lung Kong Kung Shaw
in 1919. Several others were organized after 1935, mostly initiated by Hawaii-
born Chinese.25
The Lum Sai Ho Tong was established by and for migrants with the surname
Lum (Lam, Lim, Lin). In 1932 this group reported members from sixty-four
villages in Kwangtung; thirty-three of these villages were in Chung Shan, twenty-
nine in the See Yup districts, and two in the Sam Yup districts. The Wong Kong
Har Tong for migrants with the surname of Wong (Huang) claimed about 1,200
members in 1930, a year in which the Chinese population in Hawaii was about
27,000. The Lung Kong Kung Shaw, commonly called the Four Brothers’ Asso-
ciation or the Society of the Four Families, was open to persons of four surnames:
Chong, Chu (Chiu, Chew), Lau, and Quon (Kwon).26 Despite the diversity in
their memberships, these early surname societies attempted to foster harmonious
relations and mutual aid among their members, as indicated in the bylaws of the
Lung Kong Kung Shaw:
The objects of this association are to establish and promote peace and love
among the members thereof, to continue the good principles inculcated by
the forefathers of the members, to encourage the coming generations to
practice the virtues and good principles of our ancestors, to give aid and as-
sistance to the needy and infirm members of the society and the widows and
children of deceased members, and generally to promote the welfare of the
community….
The Motto of this Society shall be Righteousness and Peace. If any
member of this society shall intentionally violate any of the rules, regula-
tions, or bylaws of this Society, he shall automatically cease to be a member.
233
In many respects these surname societies tried to carry out the same func-
tions as the district associations. All three, through admission fees and special
donations, collected enough money to build clubhouses which were gathering
places for members during leisure hours and also offered them temporary lodg-
ing. They bought other property and buildings which were rented to members,
bringing income to the society. They tried to help their sick, needy, indigent, and
aged members. When an aged, impoverished member wanted to return to China,
his society would issue a document certifying his intention and asking members
to contribute individually for this purpose. The societies contributed toward the
burial of indigent members; funerals of prominent members would be attended
by representatives of the society. There were annual banquets when officers were
installed. An altar in the headquarters honored the “first ancestor” and the patron
deity of the surname group, and annual ceremonies were sometimes combined
with a feast. Members performed religious and ancestral rites during the peri-
ods of the “feasts for the dead,” particularly Ching Ming. During the Feast of
Lanterns, about two weeks after Chinese New Year, lanterns hung before the altar
announced the birth of male children during the previous year and a feast cel-
ebrated the occasion. Members sometimes performed private rituals before the
altar, such as a father’s presentation of a recently born child to the ancestors.
The three early surname societies were formed during a period when ar-
bitrating disputes among members was still an important function of migrant
organizations. In each surname society officers were likely to come from different
districts for which there were also district associations, and the surname society
could arbitrate disputes between members of the same surname but from different
districts. In the late 1920s and early 1930s officers in each of the three groups
came from all seven doos of Chung Shan for which there were also district asso-
ciations in Honolulu. Although the surname societies arbitrated disputes between
members who came from different doos of Chung Shan, the rosters of officers
available for arbitration were such that disputes between Puntis from Chung Shan
and See Yup, or between Puntis and Hakkas, were not likely to be handled. Two
officers of the Lum Sai Ho Tong in the period mentioned did come from Sun
Wui (a See Yup district), but none appeared to be of Hakka identity. All the offi-
cers of the Wong Kong Har Tong were Puntis from one or another doo of Chung
Shan. In the 1930s an informant named Wong said that while some Hakkas might
have become members of the Wong Kong Har Tong, they would not have partici-
pated actively or had much opportunity to become officers. Most officers of the
Lung Kong Kung Shaw were also from Chung Shan, though a few were from Toi
Shan—a See Yup district—and two (both with the surname Lau) were Hakkas.
234
The Guilds
Unlike the district associations, village clubs, and surname societies, the hongs
(“guilds”) formed in Hawaii by Chinese craftsmen, traders, and workers had other
bases than old-world identities. True enough, a few migrants had been members
of guilds in such cities as Macao, Canton, and Hong Kong, and in urban cen-
ters of Chung Shan and See Yup like Shekki, Sun Wui, and Toi Shan, and they
took the lead in organizing similar guilds in Honolulu.27 It is unlikely, however,
that many of the migrants who joined in Honolulu had been guild members in
China. In Honolulu, the guilds developed to meet the needs of Chinese who were
competing for jobs and trade in circumstances where they were sometimes at a
disadvantage with members of other ethnic groups. From 1890 to 1930 eleven
guilds were organized, all but three of them by 1904 (year of founding is in some
cases approximate):
1890 Wah Hing Tong (laundrymen)
1901 Quon On Kwock (cooks and waiters in hotels and restaurants)
1903 Hoy On Tong (employees on interisland boats)
1903 Seong Gar Hong (carpenters)
1903 Job Yee Tong (painters and varnishers)
1903 Wing Lock Ngue Hong (fish dealers)
1904 Bark Yee Hong (dressmakers, makers of white uniforms)
1904 Kum Yee Hong (tailors)
1922 Kutt Hing Kung Soh (actors, musicians)
1924 Luen Hing Kee Lock Bo (cooks, servants, especially in Haole homes)
1928 Ngow Yuk Hong (beef and pork dealers, butchers)
The hongs were more like European craft guilds than like nineteenth- or
twentieth-century trade unions. For one thing, employers as well as employees
were members in most of them. In some of them employers were the most in-
fluential members because they were most likely to be knowledgeable about
conditions in the community at large and could therefore be the hongs’ spokes-
men. The hongs were not collective bargaining organizations, but they were
concerned with securing favorable competitive conditions for their members.
Such guilds as the Seong Gar Hong and Job Yee Tong tried to regulate, as far
as possible, the conditions under which Chinese craftsmen competed with Cau-
casians in the same trades. Chinese depended upon their willingness to accept
lower pay in order to get work, but the hongs, by controlling the number of
Chinese entering an occupation and by regulating competition among Chinese,
attempted to maintain a balance by which the Chinese would all have work while
receiving an income as close as possible to that demanded by Caucasian competi-
tors with a higher standard of living.
Most of the hongs served as employment agencies—acting as intermediaries
235
between Chinese employers and workers and at the same time regulating the
conditions of employment. The Kum Yee Hong had explicit bylaws stating the
methods by which it imposed its controls on employers and employees. Chinese
proprietors of tailoring firms were permitted to join the guild but without voting
rights:
Any employer who wants to employ a tailor must first report to the commit-
teeman on employment. The latter will find a member for him and upon trial
if that member does not suit him, say by the end of the first week, is not sat-
isfactory to the employer, the same committeeman will try to find another
member for him. And in case the employer does not want to use any of our
members and does employ one or more who are not members of our Society,
a meeting will then be called for the purpose of taking such steps as will tend
to enforce him to employ our members.
Twenty per centum of the total amount received by each member for
wages received for working over time or extra work will go to the Treasury
of the Society; and such amount as it may be, large or small, shall be paid in
to the Treasury at the first regular meeting; those violating this Article with-
out showing any proper cause shall be fined $2 for the first offense, $4 for
the second offense and shall no longer be regarded members if it occur the
third time. Any member who knows of another member’s failure to live up to
this article, and does not report the same punctually to the committee, shall,
if found out, be fined 50¢.
Hongs were often effective, at least for some time, in maintaining Chinese
control of certain occupations. The Hoy On Tong, for several years, virtually mo-
nopolized the jobs of stewards, cooks, and waiters on interisland ships owned by
Caucasian-controlled corporations. The shipping companies learned that it was
wise to have the Chinese stewards select new Chinese employees for the ships.
Less successfully the Luen Hing Kee Lock Bo tried to protect Chinese employees
against competition for positions in household employment when other groups,
especially the Japanese, began increasing their numbers in that field. Perhaps
most successful in that respect was the Wing Lock Ngue Hong, which included
fish dealers, workers, and apprentices. Organized in 1903 after Japanese fisher-
men had largely replaced Chinese in supplying the Honolulu market, the guild
was formed by Chinese fish dealers to maintain their control of sales in the fish
markets. Members of the guild, who retained major control through the 1930s and
1940s, not only limited the entrance of Japanese into this area but also restricted
Chinese participants largely to those who, like themselves, were of Lung Doo ori-
gin.
Hongs dealt with disputes among members and also attempted to help mem-
bers who were being treated unjustly by outsiders. The bylaws of one guild stated
236
that “whenever any member meets with adverse circumstances and is oppressed,
he shall report the matter to the secretary, who shall call a meeting of the mem-
bers to find out the truth of the matter, and if it is necessary to employ counsel
to defend said matter, the expense shall be subscribed for by the members…. The
Society must see to it that justice is done to said member.” A notice in a Chinese
newspaper in 1909 reveals the indignation in a guild when members did not deal
with their grievances within the organization:
Attention: Since the establishment of this Hong, it has been our policy to set-
tle all questions arising from public business or pertaining to rules through
discussion at meetings. This procedure each member has peacefully followed
in the past. However, yesterday there appeared notices in the Chee Yow Sun
Bo and the Sun Chung Kwock Bo by Lee——, Pang——, Yee——, and
Pang——, four people saying that they are withdrawing from this Hong.
Their words bewildered us, for when did those four people notify this Hong
that they were going to withdraw, and when did they turn their duties over
to others? Since they voluntarily joined this Hong, they ought to join in a
good manner and quit in a good manner…. This Hong has never forcibly
used restraint, so why write public withdrawal notices that are inconsistent
with their actions? This matter is an injustice to this organization, and for that
reason we specifically desire to inform the public.28
Apart from their primary activities of promoting the occupational and eco-
nomic interests of their members, the hongs undertook many of the same benevo-
lent, mutual aid, and social functions as other Chinese organizations. Usually they
had headquarters where familyless members could pass the time when they were
not working. Some had rooms where members could live and the sick could be
cared for. They provided for the needy, the aged, and the burial of deceased mem-
bers. At one time or another, for example, the Quon On Kwock, besides serving
as an employment agency and arbitrator, carried out several other activities. It
rented the lower floor of its headquarters building to a member for his business;
it rented rooms on the upper stories to single men and families; it converted one
part of the building into a hospital ward for members.
Members of the Quon On Kwock could hold their weddings in the main
room, and newly wedded couples were allowed to live in the building for three
months without rent. Wedding gifts of at least two dollars, five hundred firecrack-
ers, and “a pair of hangings with antithetical sentences written thereon” were
given to each member who married. Upon the birth of his first male child af-
ter joining the society, a member received a congratulatory gift of two dollars. A
member returning to China was given the thirty dollars he had been assessed (at a
dollar a month) for this purpose, and each member of the hong was assessed fifty
cents as a gift for the departing member. If a member was refused reentry by im-
237
migration authorities after a trip to China, he was to be given a purse made up by

contributions of at least fifty cents by each member “to show that the Society did
its best for him.” A member received a gift of at least two dollars from the hong
upon reaching his fifty-first birthday and gifts on each subsequent tenth birth-
day. When a member died in Honolulu, surviving members were each required
to contribute fifty cents toward the funeral expenses and all who were able were
expected to participate in the funeral procession or pay a fine of one dollar. The
society could furnish “two carriages for the officers on the occasion of the funeral
of the deceased,” but the other members were expected to pay for hiring their own
carriages. (When most of these bylaws were written—1903 to 1905—wages of
migrants in trades were only about a dollar a day.)
Just as the district association had an altar honoring its place god, and the sur-
name tong had its first ancestor and patron deity, the hong generally had an altar
at which the legendary founder of the occupation and its patron deity were vener-
ated. Most members, however, were probably not much interested in this aspect
of the guild. An elderly migrant who had been a member of his guild for nearly
thirty years and one of its main officers for several years expressed an apparently
common attitude: “Hoy On Tong has certain days when they have worship. One
of the members has charge of that. On those certain days he takes care of the wor-
ship. Any of the members can go if they want to. I never went on those times. I
don’t even know what the days are.”29
Most of the hongs had shorter lives than the district or village associations.
Many members withdrew as they moved into other occupations, and attrition oc-
curred through return to China and by death. By 1930 four of the guilds—those
for laundrymen, cooks in private homes, dressmakers, and tailors—no longer ex-
isted. The most recent list of Chinese organizations issued by the United Chinese
Society includes only two guilds: the Seong Gar Hong and the Kutt Hing Kung
Soh. The former, made up of carpenters, had bought property in its early days and
put up buildings from which it secured rental income. By 1927 it had formed a
subsidiary realty company, probably because of problems concerning the guild’s
tax status as a benevolent society. Income from rentals and the increased value
of its property have provided incentive for continuing the guild even though the
days of migrant carpenters have long since gone.
The Evolving Community

After the early 1880s, when the United Chinese Society was one of the few
migrant organizations in Honolulu, the increasing number of groups based on
old-world attachments or new-world interests changed the character of the Chi-
nese community. In fact, they may be said to have created the community as a
complex of differentiated but interlocking groups.30 Chinatown in the early years
238
really had no unified community spirit except when faced with external hostility.
Among themselves migrants were typically factious, exploitive, and suspicious of
one another. The United Chinese Society was a step toward the evolution of com-
munity consciousness among the wah kiu in Honolulu, but it was only in times of
crisis that it enlisted the active support of any large number of Chinese residents
in its early years. The less inclusive organizations, often based on in-group senti-
ments and out-group antipathies, had more homogeneous memberships than the
United Chinese Society and therefore developed more personal ties and greater
unity among the members. At the same time, since these organizations had over-
lapping memberships and some of their officers were commonly leaders in the
United Chinese Society, they helped to integrate the Chinese population in the
emerging complex community.
The relationship between differentiation and integration is illustrated by the
ways disputes were settled within the Chinese community. Because the migrants,
even many of the early Island-born Chinese, were reluctant to enter suits in the
government courts, the United Chinese Society from its very beginning under-
took the role of arbitrator. President Alee, in his address at the opening of the
Society’s headquarters in 1886, said that one of the Society’s objectives was “to
prevent and settle disputes among Chinese if possible.”31 The Chinese minister
to Washington, in a report to the Chinese government in 1898, mentioned this as
one of the chief functions of the Society.32
Cases brought to the Society stemmed most commonly from migrants’ re-
fusal to pay debts or going into bankruptcy to avoid payment, going back on
promises in business deals, and trying to take unfair advantage of Chinese com-
petitors. Unlike village quarrels, which were usually within or between kinship
groups, most of the migrants’ disputes were between individuals and Chinese
partnerships. Many an overseas migrant dealt with other Chinese, sometimes
even with members of his own clan, in ways he would never have attempted at
home. Opportunism was less restrained in Hawaii because so many of the Chi-
nese with whom the migrant came in contact were individuals to whom he had no
traditional obligations and whose opinion meant nothing to him. The United Chi-
nese Society and other immigrant associations therefore sought to impose limits
on opportunism.
The leaders in the United Chinese Society who acted as arbiters in disputes
were not clan elders or legally trained judges, but they included the wealthiest and
most prominent immigrant businessmen in Chinatown. Though they had no legal
authority, they could use their influence among the migrants to secure agreement
to their decisions. Furthermore, while a migrant might be willing to take advan-
tage of fellow migrants who had no control over him, he also was in a position to
be exploited, so it was in his interest to accept the Society’s judgment even if it
might be against him.
After district, village, surname, and guild associations were organized they
239
took over much of the arbitration that the United Chinese Society had handled,
but not all of it. Disputants belonging to the same society generally preferred to
settle their differences through the leaders of their society, but these organiza-
tions were less successful in arbitrating controversies between their members and
members of other societies. Such cases could be taken to the United Chinese So-
ciety as the organization of broadest representation in the Chinese community.33
One former executive secretary put it this way:
The reason for the United Chinese Society is that it … is for all the Chinese.
No matter whether you pay money to become a member or not—if you have
trouble and you want to make a complaint, you come to the Society. This So-
ciety is not for just certain Chinese. If you are Chinese man, no matter where
you come from, or what dialect you speak, or what political party you belong
to, or what your surname is, you can bring complaints to the Society.34
A similar relationship between the United Chinese Society and other Chi-
natown organizations existed in benevolent activities. The less inclusive groups
which gave various forms of help to their members relieved the United Chinese
Society of much of the responsibility of caring for individual migrants. At the
same time, the United Chinese Society coordinated and in other ways aided the
benevolent work of the different organizations. Thus the United Chinese Society,
representing the Chinese community as a whole, succeeded during the depres-
sion of the 1930s in securing a 25 percent reduction in steamship fares for aged
Chinese who were being helped to return to China by various societies. The So-
ciety also persuaded the territorial government to waive payment of delinquent
poll taxes by these old men. When the Palolo Chinese Home was proposed, the
United Chinese Society cooperated with various Chinese organizations in getting
it established.
The interlocking leadership of the Society and the other organizations is an-
other indication of differentiation and integration in Chinatown. From the first,
the leaders of the Society represented the diverse origins of the migrant Chinese
population. The first president was a Chung Shan Punti; the first vice-president
was a Christian Hakka whose ancestral home was in northeastern Kwangtung;
another long-time president was a See Yup Punti from Toi Shan. The sixteen
leaders (officers, trustees, and executive secretary) in 1930 included eight Chung
Shan Puntis, three See Yup Puntis, one Punti from Shun Tak district, and four
Hakkas. They came from twelve different surname groups. All except two had
their main businesses in Chinatown. Generally, leaders of the United Chinese So-
ciety have also been leaders in other influential Chinatown organizations. When
issues concerned only one segment of the Chinese community, officers of the
United Chinese Society who were identified with that segment took the lead;
when the whole community was concerned, they worked with the other officers
240
of the United Chinese Society.
A New Moral Order

As migrant organizations proliferated, the wah kiu were transformed from dis-
placed individuals in an alien world into persons with roles, obligations, and
interests in the developing Chinese community of Honolulu. The societies based
on old-world identifications were particularly effective among the sojourner mi-
grants because they provided a transition from the clan and village world to the
new-world community. While they did not replicate the family, clan, and village
world in which the migrants had grown up, they did serve some of the same func-
tions by providing personal relationships and meeting needs in times of crisis.
Migrants who might never have considered associating with anyone outside their
own clan became members because of the social and physical security the soci-
eties offered.
At the same time, the societies brought the migrant into a moral order
something like that from which he had come—where the individual undertook
responsibilities, recognized obligations, and asserted claims because of group ex-
pectations rather than because of legal coercion. Once a member of a group, he
was drawn into helping other members. He came to pay initiation fees, contribute
to various causes, and participate in the group’s activities whether or not he was
personally inclined to do so. As a member, moreover, the migrant was likely to
become concerned about how the Chinese community at large regarded his be-
havior. He thus became part of the new moral order emerging in Chinatown.
241
CHAPTER 12
From Familism to Nationalism
IN common with many other immigrant groups from peasant backgrounds, the
Chinese migrants had little national consciousness before going overseas. Their
world was that of the family and clan embedded in the traditional village commu-
nity—outside contacts usually reached no further than the district market town.
It is understandable, then, that for some time after emigration the migrant’s con-
cern remained centered in his home village, particularly when he had left wife
and children as well as parents there.1
While anticipating his eventual return to live there permanently, the so-
journer migrant looked forward to visits home where he would be treated as a
tan heung shan hak (“guest from the Sandalwood Mountains”). On his visits he
would be expected to bring gifts and enough money to entertain his kinsmen as
well as to spend several months at leisure before returning to the Islands. A mi-
grant who could afford to do so would invest in land for his family and hire
tenants for the family farms, have a better house built for his parents, wife, and
children, and bring servants into the home. Sometimes a migrant brought back
the bones of heung li who had died in Hawaii for burial near the village.2 A fi-
nancially successful wah kin might give money for the repair or enlargement of
the ancestral hall (chi tong) and have his name and the amount of his contribu-
tion conspicuously displayed in the building. A wealthy Honolulu Chinese was
reported in a Honolulu newspaper to have provided in his will for posthumous
veneration in his home village:
A provision that a part of the income from an estate valued in excess of

$500,000 be devoted to the celebration of Chinese rituals and to the purchase
of a parcel of land in China to serve as a family inheritance, was contained
in the will of the late Young Ahin, Chinese capitalist….
… The instrument… provides also that a fund not to exceed one-sixth of
the income from the estate shall be used for “days and occasions recognized
by Chinese customs, for appropriate rituals at my grave and such shrines and
temples as was our custom to worship.” Rituals for the widow [after] her
242
death are provided for.

The parcel of land to be purchased in China is to be “held according to
Chinese law as family inheritance, the income to be spent for the well-being
of my soul,” for that of his wife, the children who have died, and “for the
prosperity of my living descendants.”3
When members of one clan in a village club made up of different clans co-
operated with heung li of other clans, these wah kiu took a step, however small,
away from individualistic family concerns. The formal organization of village
clubs in Honolulu helped the migrants do collectively what they were not likely
to do individually. One of their aims was to provide security for the villages in
the absence of adequate protection by the Chinese government. The coastal sec-
tion of China in which the migrant villages were located was periodically raided
by bandits and pirates. Government protection, if any, was usually insufficient;
in fact, police and military forces themselves frequently robbed the villagers. The
migrant districts were particularly vulnerable. Fewer able-bodied men were there
to protect them and, at the same time, they were more worth looting than other
districts because of the money and goods sent back by the wah kiu. Apart from
building stronger houses for their own families, migrants could see the advantage
of collective measures to protect a whole village; village clubs raised money to
repair or heighten village walls and to build watchtowers and small forts. Village
clubs also supported protective armed forces and night watches.
Other projects for village improvement were carried out as well. One club
reconstructed village temples and paid the temple keepers, built a modern ele-
mentary and secondary school, paid young educated men of the village to teach
in the school, funded an open-ditch sewage system, paved, named, and numbered
village streets, constructed a wharf leading to the nearby canal so that villagers
need not travel through a rival village to use its wharf, and helped finance the con-
struction of a corporately owned bus road between the village and Shekki, seven
miles away.4
The Migrant and the Home District

Rivalry between village groups was stimulated when projects like these became
the subject of comment among migrants from the same district and were publi-
cized in Chinatown newspapers. On their visits home the wah kiu were likely to
travel around their native districts more than they had ever done before migrating,
often to visit other wah kiu they had known in Hawaii who had retired to other
villages. Reports about improvements elsewhere in the district made migrants in
Hawaii even more responsive to appeals for contributions toward village projects.
The migrant was coming to identify himself with a social order that was larger
243
than his kinship group and home village. He contributed to these projects not only
out of concern for the welfare of his family and heung li, but also to raise the sta-
tus of his village (and his own) in the eyes of migrants from other parts of the
district.
Membership in a district association led a migrant to participate in matters
affecting the whole district to which his village belonged. Migrants from Lung
Doo, for example, became interested in a proposed public highway that would
supplement the canal system and replace narrow, rough ricksha paths in their
district. A campaign in Honolulu, with more than fifty Lung Doo men from var-
ious villages working on subscription teams, raised several thousand dollars in
1928 for this project. Chinatown newspapers published the contributors’ names
and the amounts they gave. One Chinese merchant subscribed HK$10,000 and
several others pledged between HK$1,000 and HK$5,000.5 A few years later Chi-
nese in Hawaii from this same district raised over $10,000 from contributions
and from its own treasury to help build a junior high school in Lung Doo. Sim-
ilarly, Chung Shan Chinese in Hawaii cooperated with Chung Shan migrants in
other overseas areas to help establish a hospital, Western-equipped and staffed by
Western-trained medical personnel, in Shekki. In 1936 Chung Shan Chinese in
Hawaii raised funds to build a Chung Shan District Library in Shekki.6
Somewhat different in character was the Chung Shan migrants’ concern
about a change in the location of the district’s administrative headquarters. The
district magistrate in 1931, a national figure, had moved the headquarters from
Shekki to his ancestral place, Tong Ka, a market town in the southeastern part
of Chung Shan. Opinion among Chung Shan migrants in Hawaii was divided:
those from villages near Tong Ka favored the change; those from villages closer
to Shekki protested strongly. Representatives of both sides held meetings on the
matter and sent cables to Chinese officials. The general weight of opinion in
Honolulu favored returning the headquarters to Shekki and there was evident
relief when the return was effected.7 Migrants were not only becoming district-
conscious but were also taking an interest in the district’s government, which
formerly they had regarded as alien to them. (By this time, of course, the Manchu
government had been replaced by the Republic of China.)
The Migrant and Kwangtung Province

With his mental horizon expanded beyond the limits of kinship and village,
the migrant was exposed to new appeals for moral and financial support. He
was frequently asked as a “fellow Cantonese” or “fellow provincial” to support
some cause, movement, or institution in Kwangtung outside his home district.
Chinese in Honolulu were usually approached by someone from China through
such organizations as the United Chinese Society or the Chinese Chamber of
244
Commerce of Honolulu. With their approval, committees would be formed to

campaign for funds:
In December 1929, Miss Wu Soo Cheu, principal of the St. Paul High School
for Girls in Hong Kong, arrived in Honolulu from China to seek contribu-
tions from the Chinese here for the school. In January of 1930 a committee
to raise funds for this purpose was formed. Mr. Chung Yee was made chair-
man and Wong Fook Mun treasurer. A sum of $2,194 U.S. money was raised.
Miss Wu left on January 31 for the United States to appeal to Chinese there.8
A flood in Canton in 1931 brought an appeal to the United Chinese Society

in Hawaii for aid. A committee organized to solicit funds raised HK$6,388 which
was sent to Canton for relief. Conflicts between Communists and non-Com-
munists in Canton in 1927 left many people destitute and homeless; Honolulu
Chinese were told of “horrible” conditions in the area, pictures of “massacres”
were displayed in Chinatown windows, and assistance was solicited for “fellow
Cantonese.” Chinese newspapers and posters on telephone poles and walls in
Chinatown announced an open meeting to be held at the joint headquarters of
the United Chinese Society and the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce;
representatives of Chinese associations were especially invited. A nan gau chai
wui (“calamity salvation organization” or relief committee) headed by Chinatown
leaders was formed at this meeting. A month later $1,297.50 had been collected;
$1,218.30 was forwarded to relief headquarters in Canton. (The rest was spent on
“stationery and publication of the names of the subscribers in the Chinese news-
papers in Honolulu.”)9
The most generously supported projects in Kwangtung not specifically in
the migrants’ home districts were educational and medical institutions in Canton
and Hong Kong. Among them, apart from the school mentioned above, were the
Hong Kong Girls’ Technical Academy, which received $2,925 from Honolulu
Chinese in 1928; Lingnam University of Canton, $3,600 in 1930; Canton City
Philanthropic Society, for a school in a Canton hospital, $3,500 in 1931; Canton
Hon Chi Medical School, over $6,000 (Canton currency) in 1935; and Canton
National Chung Shan University, $1,500 in 1936. The names of overseas Chinese
contributors and the amounts they gave were published in Chinese newspapers,
and rooms or other parts of the institutions were named in honor of groups of
donors. An inscription on a plaque might say, for example, that a particular room
was donated by and dedicated to the Tan Heung Shan Wah Kiu (“Hawaii Over-
seas Chinese”). A few Chinese migrants sent their children to these schools for
part of their education, but more important motivations were the wah kiu’s re-
spect for education he himself had seldom received, the flattering recognition
implied in the school’s appeals to him, and his anticipation of enhanced status
among his fellow wah kiu. Regardless of his motives, the migrant’s contributions
245
to causes that did not involve his own family, clan, village, or district indicate that
he was becoming a part of a much larger Chinese world than the one from which
he had emigrated.
The Rise of Nationalistic Societies

The migrants’ early experiences overseas prepared them to be drawn into nation-
alistically oriented societies and activities. On the one hand, the wah kiu, who had
so many different group identities among themselves, were treated categorically
as a single group (“Chinamen”) by people who were antagonistic to them and by
the Hawaiian government’s restrictive laws and regulations. On the other hand,
some migrant leaders believed that the discrimination suffered by Chinese immi-
grants was a consequence of the weakness of the Chinese government in dealing
with foreign powers. To improve their own status as immigrants, it was argued,
the power of the Chinese government needed to be strengthened. Personal inter-
est, therefore, was important in the rise of national consciousness among the wah
kiu.
Although migrants generally came to agree that something had to be done
to strengthen China as a nation, there was no unanimity on how this could be
achieved. Different Chinese rallied around different standards. Political discus-
sions were heated, rival political groups were set up, and conflicting views among
leaders disrupted the functioning of more than one migrant organization.10
Hing Chung Wui—The Revolutionists

The first political group in Chinatown was initiated by Sun Yat-sen when he vis-
ited Hawaii in 1896, nearly twenty years after he had first come to the Islands
as an adolescent. Dr. Sun’s older brother, Sun Mi, was an early migrant to
Hawaii. Their father was a farmer in Choy Hung village in Chung Shan district.
Sun Mi was successful in Hawaii and by 1879 had persuaded his parents to let
his thirteen-year-old younger brother, then known as Sun Tai-cheong, come to
Hawaii. Realizing the value of knowing English in Hawaii, Sun Mi arranged
for Tai-cheong to enter the Anglican school in Honolulu now known as Iolani
School. Sun Mi must have been gratified three years later when Tai-cheong won
an English prize at the school, but he was infuriated when he learned in 1885 that
his brother wanted to be baptized a Christian. Tai-cheong was summarily sent
back to Choy Hung where he angered the elders by publicly mutilating images
in the village temple. During the next decade he attended school in Hong Kong
where he was baptized along with Tong Phong, a former schoolmate from Hon-
olulu; he completed a medical degree and practiced briefly in Macao and Canton;
he took the name of Sun Yat-sen.
246
In 1894 Sun Yat-sen made a trip to Hawaii where he discussed the need
for national revolution with old friends. He became the leader of a secret anti-
Manchu movement innocuously named “The Education Society” and became a
refugee after government forces raided the movement’s headquarters in Canton
and captured and executed five of his colleagues in the movement. A year after
his first return from Hawaii his family had arranged a marriage for him with a girl
from a nearby village, and now his wife, children, and widowed mother, to avoid
reprisal, were taken to live with Sun Mi in Hawaii.
During his 1896 visit Dr. Sun spent several months in Honolulu advocating
revolutionary overthrow of Manchu rule. Few migrants were interested in his pro-
posals, but thirty or so attended a meeting at the home of a former school friend,
Ho Fon, at which they took oaths to work together in a revolutionary movement.
Although Dr. Sun spoke at public meetings arranged for him, only fifty or so of
the five thousand adult Chinese males then in Honolulu were willing to become
founders of the revolutionary group organized as the Hing Chung Wui (“Save
China Society”). Apparently these early supporters were mostly young men who,
like Sun, had been brought to Hawaii as adolescents by older relatives and re-
ceived some Chinese education in China and some English education in Hawaii.
Others were early second-generation Chinese who had some education in both
Chinese and English. Of the names identified, more were Hakka than Punti—Ho
Fon, Li Cheung, Yap See Young, Chang Chau, William Kwai Fong Yap, among
others—but some, like C. K. Ai, Luke Chan, and Tong Phong, were Punti. Most
of these men had become Christians after attending mission schools in Hawaii.
Li had attended Queen’s College in Hong Kong and had been employed by the
Hawaiian government as a court interpreter. He and Ho Fon had collaborated for
several years in publishing the first Chinese newspaper. These young men were
among the few intellectuals in a predominantly money-oriented immigrant com-
munity.
The Hing Chung Wui was the first of hundreds of revolutionary societies
formed among overseas Chinese in support of Dr. Sun’s program during the suc-
ceeding fifteen years. In a proclamation it declared:
China is weaker day by day. Those who are invested with the central power
are indifferent and unscrupulous while the masses are ignorant and incapable
of any deep thought. Unnecessary indignities and insults are suffered from
many foreign nations, while Chinese civilization and culture are underval-
ued. With a population of 400,000,000 and several million mous of rich land,
this country can be the strongest nation in the world, but due to the mis-
rule of the Manchus, it has fallen to this pitiable condition. At the present
time China is surrounded by strong neighboring countries who are envious
of her abundant metals, of her richness in products. The aggressive actions of
the foreigners have increased to such an extent that patriots cannot help but
247
make a move to rescue the population from peril. The Hing Chung Wui has
been organized solely for the purpose of saving the country, and hopes that
its sympathizers will help to accomplish its aim.
… This wui is established to promote the interest and to uphold the dig-
nity of China. The country has been accepting insults at the hands of foreign
nations, while her people could not complain of the tyrannous rule. For the
purpose of eliminating these evils, we have linked together the Chinese at
home and abroad by the Hing Chung Wui….11
Before Dr. Sun left Hawaii to plead the revolutionary cause among wah
kiu in the continental United States and in Europe, his supporters in Hawaii
raised about six thousand dollars which they turned over to him. The newspaper
published by Ho and Li was to become an active instrument for propagating rev-
olutionary ideas. Some of the more zealous members of the Hing Chung Wui
began military drill in the Rev. Frank Damon’s yard with a Hakka, William Yap,
as captain and C. K. Ai, a Punti, as lieutenant. Ai refers to this activity, which did
not continue long, as “Tiger head, snake tail”—an optimistic beginning, a dismal
ending.12 Nevertheless, members remained enthusiastic and recruited others, es-
pecially young men, into the movement.
Bow Wong Wui—The Constitutional Monarchists

In 1900 Hawaii’s Chinese community came under the influence of a rival move-
ment initiated by Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, a famous Chinese scholar, persuasive
speaker, and political reform advocate from Kwangtung province. After China’s
defeat in the Sino-Japanese war, he and K’ang Yu-wei had interested Emperor
Kuang Hsu and some of the emperor’s advisers in reform measures designed
to strengthen the government of China. Before these measures could be carried
out the empress dowager, Tz’u Hsi, had put the emperor under confinement in
the palace and deprived him and his advisers of power. K’ang and Liang had
escaped to Japan where they organized the Bow Wong Wui (“Protect Emperor
Association”) among overseas Chinese there.13 Liang came on to Hawaii where
he recruited supporters for a branch of the Bow Wong Wui in Honolulu. The
Wui’s immediate goal was to return Kuang Hsu to power so that he could put
into effect reforms that would strengthen the government without eliminating the
Ching dynasty.
Liang arrived in Hawaii at a critical moment in the Chinese community—the
time of the 1899–1900 plague and Chinatown fire. He seized upon the situation
to emphasize the existing Chinese government’s weakness in helping its overseas
subjects and to advocate organization of the Wui. According to The Friend,
“some of the oldest and most responsible Chinese in the country” formed the nu-
cleus of the Wui,14 but as a matter of fact several prominent Chinese, who were
248
conservative leaders and businessmen in Chinatown organizations, refused to

have anything to do with it. Nevertheless, Liang did recruit other successful and
somewhat less cautious businessmen who were among the leaders in the United
Chinese Society and other migrant societies to take charge of the Bow Wong Wui.
Members and other interested Chinese gathered on Sunday evenings and listened
to fervent talks on the need for political reform in China and to heated attacks on
the proposals of other groups. With some of his Honolulu followers Liang visited
Chinese communities on the other islands where branches were formed and sev-
eral thousand members enrolled. Within the first three months the Wui collected
more than thirty thousand dollars in initiation fees and contributions. Euphoric
officers claimed that 80 or 90 percent of the migrants joined the organization.
Wui leaders applied to the territorial government for a charter of incorpora-
tion with a view to building a headquarters and clubhouse. Territorial officials
refused to grant the charter but did not outlaw the Wui. A meeting place became
available when a newspaper, the Sun Chung Kwock Bo (New China News), was
started with the help of Bow Wong Wui members sent from the Orient by Liang.
The paper’s objective was not only to promote political reform in China but also
to counter the propagation of Dr. Sun’s revolutionary approach by the Lung Kee
Sun Bo (Hawaiian Chinese News). Literate migrants like Dr. K. F. Li found a new
interest in writing polemical articles for the Sun Chung Kwock Bo and attacking
the arguments presented by writers for the other paper.15
Chung Wah Tung Ming Wui—Successor to Hing Chung

Wui
When Dr. Sun returned to Honolulu in 1903, he found that several of his earlier
followers had been drawn into the Bow Wong Wui, but loyal supporters arranged
public meetings on Sunday afternoons and he spoke to enthusiastic crowds at
the Chinese Theater. Reports in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser referred to
Dr. Sun as “the famous revolutionist,” “an orator of considerable power” able
“to sway his audience at will,” his speech “frequently punctuated with applause.”
To emphasize the difference between his movement and the Bow Wong Wui, he
stressed the idea that the Manchu rulers were a decadent alien race who must be
overthrown. He said that though the Chinese had great “pride of race” it was dif-
ficult to rouse in them “a spirit of nationalism.” “Once this spirit can be awakened
in the dormant minds of the conquered Chinese race which has submitted to the
Manchu yoke for centuries, Dr. Sun believes that the Chinese nation will rise in
its might of four hundred millions of people and overturn the Manchu dynasty
forever.”16
The Hing Chung Wui was renamed the Chung Wah Tung Ming Wui (“Chi-
nese Together Revolution Society”) to express more openly its revolutionary
249
objective. Its motto was translated as “Drive away the Manchus, restore China,
establish a republic, equalize rights; and if there is regret from any one, may
the public punish him.” Many Hawaii Chinese withdrew from the Bow Wong
Wui and within a year it was claimed that the Tung Ming Wui had more than a
thousand members. The societies supporting Dr. Sun and the revolutionary cause
came to have the largest though not the wealthiest membership in the Islands.
Hawaii Chinese raised a larger sum than during Dr. Sun’s earlier trip to finance a
revolutionary army; bonds were sold which were to be redeemed after the estab-
lishment of the republic.
Hoong Moon Societies and the Revolutionary Movement

During his 1903 stay in the Islands Dr. Sun visited his family on Maui, and Chi-
nese in Kula claim that while he was there he joined the Ket Hing Fui Kon, the
predominantly Hakka Hoong Moon society at Kula.17 This would have been con-
sistent with his goal of enlisting the support of the Hoong Moon societies which
had thousands of poor, illiterate or semiliterate members who had no reason to
expect any benefits from the Manchu government. Such members had no busi-
ness interests that would incline them toward the less disruptive political reform
movement supported by the wealthier migrants.18
Dr. Sun undertook to convince Hoong Moon leaders in the Islands that they
should revive their revolutionary objective of overthrowing the Manchus—but in
order to establish a Chinese republic rather than revive the Ming dynasty. Dur-
ing the years immediately preceding the 1911 revolution in China some of these
societies did cooperate with Dr. Sun’s revolutionary organizations in Hawaii.
The Hoong Moon branches in Honolulu seem to have been the most active in
the cause. Shortly before Chinese New Year in 1911 members of one of these
branches announced that they were taking the defiant step of cutting off their
queues—as Dr. Sun had done in 1896—thus “severing … the badge of servitude
to the Manchu dynasty.” (They may have been worried a few months later when a
Hawaii-born Chinese physician living in Nanking sent word that hundreds of Chi-
nese without queues had been executed at the order of a Manchu general whose
troops had retaken that city.)
Dai Kwock Hin Jing Wui—Successor to Bow Wong Wui

With the death of Emperor Kuang Hsu the name of the Bow Wong Wui (“Protect
Emperor Association”) was no longer appropriate so it was changed to Dai
Kwock Hin Jing Wui (“Constitutional Monarchy Society”). Even though the
organization was really political, it obtained a charter of incorporation as a char-
itable society from the territorial government in 1908. A clubhouse built on a lot
250
owned by one of the members was the meeting place and headquarters. Despite
several name changes during the next twenty years this organization continued to
be referred to by Chinese in the Islands as the Bow Wong Wui.
Chinese Politics and Migrant Organizations

Just as important as the formation of overtly political societies was the penetra-
tion of political issues and controversies into the immigrant associations which
had been organized for other reasons. District associations, village clubs, surname
societies, guilds, Chinese Christian churches, even the United Chinese Society
itself, were all affected. Some of the most hotly contested elections during this
period were really concerned with the efforts of each political faction to get con-
trol.19 Supporters of unsuccessful candidates often tried to discredit the motives
of those who had been elected.
Moreover, events within the societies were interpreted politically, as shown
by a controversy within the See Dai Doo district association. Upon the deaths of
Emperor Kuang Hsu and the empress dowager in 1908 many Chinatown societies
displayed the imperial dragon flag at half mast. The See Dai Doo association,
however, did not do so. Choy Hung village, Dr. Sun’s birthplace, was in Dai Doo
and many migrants from See Doo and Dai Doo were his ardent supporters. A
member of the See Dai Doo association who belonged to the Bow Wong Wui
charged that the See Dai Doo Wui Goon and its officers had become revolution-
ists. He was suspended from the association and the officers wrote an open letter
to the chi li (“fellow district men”) published in the Chinese newspaper that spon-
sored the revolutionary cause:
This action on Wong’s part caused a meeting to be held immediately, at

which time it was decided that Wong believed the wui goon to be insignifi-
cant and powerless and had accordingly insulted the whole membership….
On the ninth day of this month he printed an article in the Sun Chung
Kwock Bo falsely and maliciously accusing the president of making trouble
without reason. His two ideas were that the president belonged to the revolu-
tionary society, and that this wui goon had already begun to split into cliques
and factions….
No doubt our broadminded and wide-visioned chi li will ignore such ac-
cusations, and will dismiss them at first thought as being unworthy of the
attention of learned people. It is only because this whole affair concerns the
name of this wui goon as well as that of the members that this article is
printed in the press for the protection of our self-interests.
That article stated that all the wui goon in town raised their flags at half-
mast. Is it not known that while many wui goon raised their flags, not a few
251
also did not raise their flags? Regarding this situation, will the government
[Chinese] lose its prestige merely because some wui goon failed to raise their
flags at half-mast?
As for Wong, he himself has failed to observe the rules of mourning, and
that ought likewise to brand him as a revolutionary follower. He claims to be
an educated Chinese, a former teacher of the Chinese-English Academy of
this town. If a country’s mourning period is as important as he claims, why
does he not observe mourning customs? Rules for mourning are that there
should be no hair-cut within one hundred days, clothes should be in white,
school and offices are to be closed during the period—why didn’t he as a
learned individual, observe these rules and in that way set an example for
our wah kiu? A few days after the message [the death of the emperor] came,
Wong had his hair cut, dressed contrary to the mourning customs, and at-
tended to his school work as usual. Without observing mourning rites a hou
[ten cents] he himself deserves the title of revolutionary follower.20
Through the first decade of this century and until the 1911 revolution in
China, most officers of the United Chinese Society were passively if not actively
promonarchy, and several were leaders in the Bow Wong Wui. Nevertheless,
nationalistic enthusiasm in Hawaii following the founding of the Provisional Re-
public of China in December 1911, with Dr. Sun as its president, led to the
election in December 1912 of officers in the United Chinese Society who sup-
ported Dr. Sun, even though General Yuan Shih-k’ai had replaced him. The
election the following year was a tumultuous affair. Determined to keep control
of the Society, Dr. Sun’s followers filled the hall on election night with their sym-
pathizers, newly registered as members. Having lost the election, promonarchy
migrants unsuccessfully contested it in court. Followers of Dr. Sun won another
Society election in 1914, but by this time Dr. Sun was losing support in Hawaii.
In 1915 migrants willing to back General Yuan gained control which they kept
until after the Northern governments were replaced by Chiang Kai-shek and the
National Republic of China in Nanking in the late 1920s.
While the struggle for control of the United Chinese Society was going on
(1912–1915), there was another conflict over leadership which was ultimately to
bring about the eclipse of the Society as the leading Chinese organization in Hon-
olulu.21 The importance of the wah kiu to the Chinese government having become
apparent, officials of the Manchu regime, during its final months, made plans for
cooperation between the government and migrants. Every large center of over-
seas Chinese was advised to organize a Seong Wui (“Merchants’ Association”)
with a constitution and bylaws supplied by the Chinese government. From then
on communication between the Chinese government and overseas Chinese would
go through the consul and the Merchants’ Association. The Merchants’ Associa-
tion would serve as a general society representing “all the Chinese” in the area.
252
The unexpected happened in Honolulu where two rival organizations were

formed in response to this proposal. United Chinese Society leaders, who had
just succeeded in getting rid of a vindictive consul, organized the Chung Wah
Chung Seong Wui (“Chinese Merchants’ Association”) in August 1911, with the
same president and vice-president as the United Chinese Society. Before the year
was out the Manchu regime was overthrown and Dr. Sun’s followers organized
a separate merchants’ organization, the Wah Kiu Seong Wui (“Overseas Chinese
Merchants’ Association”), hoping the republic would recognize it in place of the
rival organization. General Yuan’s government which took over from Dr. Sun so
quickly, granted a charter to the Chung Wah Chung Seong Wui, however; the
Wah Kiu Seong Wui, ignored by the Yuan government, dissolved.
The consul appointed by General Yuan’s government ignored the reception
on 1 January 1913 held by the United Chinese Society, at that time controlled
by officers supporting. Dr. Sun. Instead he attended the reception of the Chinese
Merchants’ Association, which had been recognized by his government. That re-
ception was also the only one attended by other diplomatic representatives and
by officials of the territorial and federal governments. This happened again at
New Year’s in 1914 and 1915. By July 1915 the United Chinese Society was
controlled by the same group of men who controlled the Chinese Merchants’ As-
sociation. Cooperation in joint activities resulted in an almost complete merger
of the two organizations, with interlocking officers and boards of directors. The
Merchants’ Association, which changed its name to the Chinese Chamber of
Commerce of Honolulu in 1926, raised money for an addition to the United Chi-
nese Society building that became headquarters for both organizations. In 1929
the Chinese consul in Honolulu, who was pro-Northern government and anti-Chi-
ang, resigned and took over much of the work of the two organizations.
Clashes with Chinese Consuls

During the time that agitation for political change in China was creating contro-
versy among the Island Chinese, the wah kiu were having trouble with consuls
sent to Hawaii by the imperial government of China. Even though migrants had
often bemoaned the indifference of the imperial government toward the problems
they faced in the Islands, some of the consuls sent from China after Hawaii was
annexed to the United States in 1898 caused even more problems.22
The first consul, Yong Wei-pin, was a young man of See Yup origin whose
wealthy father had built wharves for the British in Hong Kong. For the first few
years of the consulate Goo Kim, who had been president of the United Chi-
nese Society since 1892, was the official vice-consul, and officers of the Society
served as consular staff. Gradually they were replaced by a consular staff of men
sent from China who had risen in the Manchu government but who were sent to
253
Hawaii without much regard to how fit they were to deal with the problems of
the migrants in the Islands. Some of them who were from provinces other than
Kwangtung did not understand any of the dialects spoken by the migrants, they
had more education than the migrant leaders in Chinatown, and they made little
effort to disguise their contempt for the mostly illiterate migrants.
At the time of the 1900 fire Yong was commended in the English-language
press for his work, especially in convincing some three hundred angry homeless
Chinese to accept the authorities’ plan to move them from the Kawaiahao Church
grounds to a detention camp. The same newspapers, however, criticized him for
his protests while authorities were trying to control the Chinatown fire. (The Jap-
anese consul was commended for his forbearance on that trying day.)
It was not long after the fire that Liang Ch’i-ch’ao came to Honolulu and the
Bow Wong Wui was organized. Enthusiastic members of the Wui were dismayed
when Consul Yong successfully opposed the incorporation of the group by the
territorial government—and they were alarmed when they learned that the consul
had petitioned his home government to arrest and punish family members of a
migrant in Honolulu in whose home Liang had been living. Word came to Hon-
olulu that the man’s mother and grandmother had been imprisoned and tortured,
that his mother had committed suicide, that his grandmother had died in prison of
shock.
Wong Leong, the first president of the Bow Wong Wui, also suffered retribu-
tion even though his family was with him in Honolulu and he was an American
citizen through naturalization in Hawaii before Annexation. The consul could
not take the same kind of vindictive action against Wong’s family, but he did
have the magistrate of Wong’s home district—Chung Shan—seize the ancestral
temple of Wong’s clan and require the clan to redeem it by paying a fine. The
clan’s spokesman then demanded reimbursement from Wong, amounting to about
$1,250, threatening to remove his name from the clan’s genealogical records if
he refused. Many migrants who had joined the Bow Wong Wui or contributed
to it repudiated their connections for fear of reprisals. The consul assured non-
reprisal to those migrants who filed a certificate with the consulate (at $5.25 each)
attesting that they were not members of any society opposed to the Chinese gov-
ernment. Hundreds of Chinese were reported to have filed these certificates.
Sometime after the Boxer Rebellion in mid-1900 Consul Yong proposed that
about $9,500 left over from $25,000 locally contributed to the United Chinese
Society at the time of the Chinatown fire be sent to Peking for repairs to the em-
press dowager’s Summer Palace. Migrants thought this was a move by the consul
to get a special award to himself from Peking. According to C. K. Ai, who be-
came president of the United Chinese Society before this issue was resolved, the
consul claimed that as the servant of the emperor of China he had control of 80
percent of the money and therefore a right to use it for such a purpose. Ai reported
that the older merchants, at the meeting of the Society Yong had called to make
254
his proposal, “dared not oppose” the consul. The Society’s treasurer, Yim Quon,
who had not joined the Bow Wong Wui, supported the consul. President Ai, at
that time a Bow Wong Wui member and its first treasurer, employed Caucasian
lawyers to file an injunction that prevented the consul from getting control of the
money which had been deposited in the Bishop Bank. Ai’s supporters induced
Secretary Hay of the U.S. Department of State to request the territorial governor
to investigate charges brought by Chinese-Americans in Hawaii against the con-
sul.23 In the name of the United Chinese Society, President Ai also wrote to the
American minister in Peking seeking his assistance in presenting a petition from
the Society to the imperial government asking that Consul Yong be recalled. Yong
left the Islands late in 1902.
Tension in the community rose again in 1904 when Yong’s successor sent
names of Dr. Sun’s supporters in Hawaii, along with names and addresses of
their relatives in Kwangtung, to the viceroy in Canton. But the most disturbing
controversy involving a consul occurred shortly before the revolution against the
Manchus broke out in China in early 1911. The consul in this case was Liang
Kuo-ying, a wealthy young official reported to have a “palace” in Canton but
whose native place was Tong Ka in Chung Shan. Chinatown leaders dutifully
joined federal and territorial officials in attending the reception Consul Liang held
soon after he arrived in January 1910, but resentment of the consul’s actions be-
gan when he announced that his office would take a census of Chinese in Hawaii
and that each person enumerated would be charged $1.25. He refused to reply to
questions about his authorization for the census and the charge. When asked what
the money was to be used for, he replied that twenty cents would go to the sec-
retary of the census, five cents to the consulate office, and one dollar to China
for official uses. Hawaii Chinese called this an unauthorized tax, and there was
a movement to refuse cooperation with the census. The consul was accused of
graft because it was thought he would keep the dollar a head instead of send-
ing it to China. The consul then said that the census would be limited to children
between five and twenty years of age and the dollar would be used locally for
educational purposes. The issue of the census and the fee had not been resolved
before the Chee Yow Sun Bo published the news that Consul Liang had sent the
names of eight Chinese—Dr. Sun and seven Honolulu men—to his home govern-
ment as “dangerous revolutionary characters.” Fears for the relatives in China of
the seven migrants spread through Chinatown.
In April 1910 Dr. Sun had come to Honolulu under an assumed name and
had spent several weeks conferring with his followers. By this time there was a
reported price of several hundred thousand dollars on his head. Most of his ac-
tivities in Honolulu were kept secret, but he did give an interview in the office
of the Chee Yow Sun Bo, in which he predicted that Chinese soldiers in the im-
perial army would soon revolt and overthrow the Manchus. The interview was
reported at length in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Dr. Sun also gave one
255
revolutionary talk to a large, responsive audience at the Chinese Theater. A copy

of the consul’s report, which had been published in a Canton newspaper, reached
the editors of the Chee Yow Sun Bo early in December. To local Chinese the report
made it clear that the consulate had been spying on them at a time when the rev-
olutionary spirit was spreading in Honolulu and elsewhere in Hawaii—branches
of the Tung Ming Wui were active on the islands of Maui and Hawaii as well as
on Oahu.
A committee of the United Chinese Society called on the consul to request
that he send word to Peking retracting his charges against the seven Honolulu
men. He refused to do so unless the seven would swear allegiance to the emperor
and the government in China; he threatened that more Honolulu Chinese would
be reported to Peking and their relatives in China hunted down if the Society per-
sisted in opposing him. When the committee reported this at a meeting of the
Society, it was decided to petition the Chinese minister in Washington and the
government in Peking for the consul’s removal. Rumors spread that the consul
had sent about a hundred names of Honolulu merchants to Peking, and signatures
were collected at a mass meeting on a petition that the consul be withdrawn. De-
spite strong feeling in the Chinese community that the consul should leave, some
of the more conservative merchants continued to support him, even to the point
of getting him to have Hee Fat, a popular Chinese who had spoken at the mass
meeting, arrested and sued for libel.
Antagonism against the consul surged when the Chee Yow Sun Bo reprinted
the full text of Consul Liang’s report to the viceroy of Kwangtung. The consul
had added more names to his list and charged that between 80 and 90 percent
of Honolulu Chinese were revolutionists—of these, he claimed, about 10 percent
were members of the Bow Wong Wui (Hin Jing Wui) and about 10 percent were
in the “Sam Hops” (Hoong Moon societies). The rest, presumably, were support-
ers of Dr. Sun. Consul Liang is also reported to have decided that no Chinese with
American citizenship would be allowed to visit China unless he himself certified
that they were not revolutionists. A delegation from the United Chinese Society
demanded an explanation of his alleged reporting of local Chinese as revolution-
aries. He refused on the grounds that the Society, as an unofficial body, had no
right to question his official acts.
Former adherents of the consul among the local merchants withdrew their
support. A mass meeting called by the United Chinese Society was reported by
the Advertiser, which said that “five thousand Chinese roared at Aala Park last
night…. Speaker after speaker drew applause.” The shouts of the throng were
translated as “Aie! Aie! Send him back! Send him to hell!” When a petition “to
get rid of him” was presented, “a forest of hands shot up … and each throat yelled
… Aie!”
The consul had already lost face in the Chinese community when his libel
suit against Hee Fat failed and the Caucasian judge admonished him for using
256
methods “foreign” to American views. Speakers at the mass meeting derided him
for placing himself under the jurisdiction of the American courts by filing the
suit.
The Chinese minister in Washington sent a commissioner to Honolulu. He
conferred with the consul, met at his hotel with “United Chinese Society leaders
and other Chinese merchants” wearing “their full costumes of flowing silk, not
everyday garb,” and later talked with local Chinese at a meeting at the Society’s
headquarters. Word circulated that Chinese officials in Washington had known
nothing about the census and the $1.25 charge until they received complaints
from Honolulu. Chinese New Year celebrations were more jubilant than usual
when news came that the Chinese ministry in Washington had asked the consul
to resign.
Revolutionary Enthusiasm and Disillusionment

The staff of Chee Yow Sun Bo was the first group in Honolulu to display con-
fidence in the success of the revolution by flying the revolutionary flag—white
sun on a blue field—after fighting broke out between imperial forces and rev-
olutionary troops in Hupeh on 10 October 1911. As victory after victory of the
revolutionary forces was reported, and a few days before the emperor formally
abdicated, the United Chinese Society decided to adopt the new flag, which was
raised on 20 November at its headquarters in a public ceremony.24 That evening a
lantern parade was followed by a mass meeting directed by the staff of the Chee
Yow Sun Bo and other enthusiastic leaders of the Tung Ming Wui. It was reported
that members of the Bow Wong Wui thought the parade was premature and re-
fused to take part in it. Nevertheless “thousands gathered,” students from several
Chinese-language schools carried lanterns and banners through Chinatown, and
“queues were conspicuous by their absence…. Chinese musicians, up to now al-
ways in Chinese clothes, wore haole clothes like everyone else.”
A surprising new feature of Chinatown’s political activities appeared a few
days later when “flaming red posters in Chinatown” and Chinese and English
newspapers announced that the United Chinese Society was inviting Chinese
women to meet at the Society hall and organize a local Chinese branch of the
Red Cross. Both men and women attended the meeting but instead of organiz-
ing a Red Cross branch they initiated a new type of fund drive. Two committees
of Chinese men—executive and finance—were formed. Twenty-four “prominent
Chinese ladies” in groups of six, carrying “a red cross banner as the symbol of
their errand,” would call on Chinese merchants to solicit funds. The money would
be sent to China to aid wounded soldiers of both the Ching and revolutionary
forces. Chinese and non-Chinese women would meet daily “to prepare bandages
under the direction of American trained nurses who have volunteered their ser-
257
vices.”
A few weeks later the bandage-making ended when news arrived that Dr.
Sun had been made president of the Provisional Republic of China. There was
another noisy celebration with firecrackers, horns, boys parading through Chi-
natown with flags, banners, and portraits of Dr. Sun. Also paraded through the
streets was an effigy of the editor of the promonarchical paper, Sun Chung Kwock
Bo, being hanged. A committee of Chinese-Americans cabled Washington asking
for congressional recognition of the Provisional Republic. The Advertiser carried
a long article on Dr. Sun’s wife who had lived for more than ten years in Hawaii,
mostly at Kula on Maui. There was speculation about what this village woman
from Chung Shan would be like as First Lady of the former empire. (Three and a
half years later the Advertiser and Chinese newspapers were to carry the news to
a bewildered Chinese community of Dr. Sun’s marriage to his private secretary,
Miss Soong Ching-ling.)
President Sun ordered that his revolutionary parties, no longer outlawed in
China, change their name to Kuomintang (“National People’s Party”). The Tung
Ming Wui branches in the Islands complied and became branches of the Ameri-
can division of the Kuomintang with headquarters in San Francisco. The Hin Jing
Wui (“Constitutional Monarchy Society”) was temporarily eclipsed.
Chinese in Hawaii soon realized that “overthrowing the Manchus” was one
thing, establishing a peaceful and stable government quite another. The betrayal
of the revolution by General Yuan Shihk’ai brought the resignation of President
Sun, after he had been in office less than seven weeks, and the election of Yuan
as president. Subsequently Yuan attempted to have himself made emperor under
a constitutional monarchy. In Hawaii he was supported by the promonarchy mer-
chants who had belonged to the Hin Jing Wui. On instructions from North China
this group changed its name to Kuo Min Hsien Cheng Tang (“National People’s
Constitutional Party”) and for several years enjoyed the prestige of being aligned
with the strongest government force in China.
Dr. Sun’s organizations were again outlawed and driven into secrecy in
China, and again he appealed to his followers overseas to support another rev-
olutionary cause—this time to wrest control of the Chinese government from
“overbearing warlords and greedy politicians.” Honolulu followers changed their
name once more, this time to Chung Wah Kuo Ming Tang (“Chinese National
Revolutionary Party”). Several hundred Chinese in the Islands allied themselves
with this movement and supported it by buying bonds to raise funds for over-
throwing the “usurpers.”25
Continued civil strife in China kept the migrants interested in Chinese na-
tional affairs, but they were even more divided over the reconstruction of China
than they had been before the Manchus were overthrown. Every new turn of
events brought advocates and critics; rival newspaper editors kept up the stream
of charges and countercharges. Some migrants who had supported the revolution
258
deplored the civil war and refused to respond to Dr. Sun’s pleas for funds to carry
out a new revolution. They felt the main task had been accomplished when the
Manchus were driven from power, and they were disposed to support any strong
Chinese government. As civil strife in China wore on, migrants began to doubt
whether the money collected in the seemingly perpetual campaigns was getting
sufficient results to compensate for the personal sacrifice called for. In 1930 one
old migrant who had spent thirty-four years in an isolated plantation community
on Maui bitterly bemoaned the political confusion in his homeland:
In China now time all time fight, fight. I no like see fight in China. I no like
Kuomintang because all time want to fight. In Hawaii, Kuomintang all time
have Chinese give money. Some head man put plenty money he pocket. Rest
money, send China, buy guns, fight, kill own China brother. If have war with
Japan, allite, I give plenty money fight Japanese, but give money fight China
brother—I no can. Ah, bad t’ing. China too much fight…. Kuomintang man
in Hawaii, all time must give money, all time pay, pay, head man take plenty.
You know Ah Fook at Kahului? Before time, he Kuomintang man, but he
pay and get out—he say all time too much pay.
Nevertheless, the main old-world identification of most of the Hawaii Chi-

nese was with Kwangtung where Dr. Sun and his forces attempted from about
1915 on to control the provincial government independently of the Northern gov-
ernment. This was the part of China where the relatives of most of the migrants
were living, where migrants wanted to visit, retire, die. Tacit if not active sup-
port of Dr. Sun was safe because the Northern government was unable to control
South China, and the consuls sent to Honolulu were not in a position to threaten
noncooperative migrants with persecution of their families in Kwangtung.
Many Chinese in Hawaii regarded Dr. Sun’s death in 1925 as a great setback
to the Nationalist cause, just when the success of his forces in the Canton area
seemed to promise a reunited China. News of the death of a great national leader
whom so many Chinese in Hawaii had known personally brought about more
unity of sentiment in Honolulu’s Chinatown than had been felt for years. The
memorial services in Honolulu testified to the pride Honolulu Chinese took in
honoring a man for whose greatness they could themselves feel partly responsi-
ble.
Before Dr. Sun’s death his revolutionary party had once more become a pub-
lic organization and had been renamed the Chung Kuo Kuomintang (“Chinese
National People’s Party”). Hawaii Kuomintang groups had sent representatives
to the first “national” meeting of the Kuomintang held in Canton in 1924. At this
meeting the Hawaii Kuomintang organization was given the status of a province
with its own headquarters, no longer subordinate to the San Francisco headquar-
ters, and on a par with Kuomintang provincial divisions in China. The Hawaii
259
provincial organization, with branches on the islands of Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii,
set up headquarters in Honolulu. After Chiang Kai-shek rose to power follow-
ing the Northern expedition in 1927, however, the Kuomintang in China split
between pro-Chiang members backing the Nanking government and anti-Chi-
ang members who had largely been supporters of Dr. Sun. By 1928 this split
was reflected in the Hawaii Kuomintang membership and the appearance of a
pro-Chiang newspaper: Chung Wah Kung Bo (United Chinese News). That year
pro-Chiang Kuomintang leaders in Hawaii, in an action ironically reminiscent of
Consul Liang’s actions in 1910, sent to Nanking a list of Hawaii Kuomintang
members “believed to be counterrevolutionists.”26 The following year a rival or-
ganization of the Oahu branch of the Kuomintang secured recognition from the
Nanking government.
Honolulu Chinese were shocked in 1931 when Wong Buck Hung, on a trip
with his wife and children to his village in Lung Doo, was arrested as his ship
arrived in Shanghai. Wong, a prominent merchant, banker, and leader in several
migrant societies, was active in the anti-Chiang wing of the Kuomintang. It was
widely believed in the Chinese community that his arrest had been instigated by
the pro-Chiang group in Honolulu, but leaders of that group denied the charge.
The Lung Doo Society, the United Chinese Society, and the Chinese Chamber of
Commerce all held meetings to plan a strategy for getting Wong released. One
Lung Doo Society leader expressed the fears circulating among the Honolulu
Chinese:
We know he is in jail, and you can’t tell what the Chinese government will
do. We think maybe the government will kill him. If you are arrested by the
American government you know you will not be killed, but if you are ar-
rested by the Chinese government, you don’t know what will happen. You
might have your head taken off, and your relatives won’t hear about it un-
til after it is all done…. We decide to send a cable to Ng Ung-sun, who is
high up in the Nanking government. We think maybe he will be able to save
Wong. He used to be editor of the Liberty News about twenty years ago.27
Cables were sent from Honolulu. Wong was released, apparently without expla-
nation.
Conflict between pro-Chiang and anti-Chiang wings of the Hawaii Kuom-
intang continued while the South China provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi
maintained their own governments independent of the Nanking regime. Mean-
while the local Hin Jing Dong (Hsien Cheng Tang) continued to oppose the
Kuomintang, especially through its newspaper, Sun Chung Kwock Bo. After
the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek became dominant in North and Central
China, the Kuo Min Hsien Cheng Tang changed its name again, this time to
Chung Kuo Hsien Cheng Tang (“Chinese Constitutional Party”), but from 1930
260
on the group’s political activities waned and eventually all but disappeared, al-
though the Sun Chung Kwock Bo is still published. The once-large membership
dwindled to a small group of conservative migrants, some quite wealthy, who
prided themselves on the occasional recognition they had received from the
Manchu government or postrevolution Northern governments. One elderly Chi-
nese, from time to time reminding listeners that he was the grandson of a
“mandarin,” was reelected president year after year. The group turned from cur-
rent politics to Confucianism and study of the classics. Professing Confucianism
as its origin and human welfare as its end, the group in the 1930s announced its
six basic principles:
1. To build up the morality of the people by a return to practice of Confu-

cianism
2. To establish the people’s rights on the basis of morality and justice
3. To strengthen the country by basing it upon a strong constitution
4. To protect and safeguard the people’s rights by constitutional rights
5. To make the nation an instrument for world peace
6. To promote human welfare by universal peace28
Shortly after the Provisional Republic of China was proclaimed, the Yee
Hing Chung Wui, a Honolulu Hoong Moon society known today as the Chee
Kung Tong, started the Hon Mun Bo (“Han People News”) to promote a third
position on political change in China, although Hoong Moon leaders in Hawaii
had sided with the Kuomintang in opposing Yuan Shih-k’ai’s attempt to become
emperor in 1915.29 Hoong Moon leaders in China tried unsuccessfully in 1922
to develop a political party opposed to the Kuomintang under the name of
Chee Kung Tang (“Towards the Public Good Party”). None of the Honolulu
branches adopted this name, although the Hon Mun Bo’s editorial opposition to
the Kuomintang went on until the paper discontinued publication in 1929. A few
moderately wealthy Hoong Moon members, having once committed themselves
to this position, refused to back down for fear of losing face in the Honolulu
Chinese community. Some Hoong Moon members were active in other polit-
ical organizations, mostly the Kuomintang, while hundreds of members with no
strong political attitudes continued to use the Hoong Moon clubhouses for non-
political activities.
The Chinatown Press

Expanding nationalistic feelings among the Hawaii wah kiu were largely respon-
sible for the growth of Chinatown newspapers. By background and training most
migrants were no more newspaper readers than they were political party mem-
261
bers. At home gossip had provided the important news of their immediate world;
news of the larger world had come mainly by word of mouth on market days.
Even if they had been interested in papers or literate enough to read them, they
would have had little access to them in the nineteenth century.
Predecessors of the Chinatown newspapers were the posters pasted on the
walls at the busiest corners of Chinatown. A red piece of paper, covered with
boldly written black characters, might announce a festival, temple ceremony, or
association meeting; a pink poster might give notice of a business transaction
of interest to debtors and creditors of a Chinatown firm; a handwritten yellow
poster might inform Chinatown of plans for the funeral of a prominent resident
recently deceased. The rules of some Chinese societies decreed that important
business transacted at special meetings would be void unless such meetings were
announced by posters “in the usual places” in Chinatown.
The newspaper now generally considered the first in Chinatown appeared in
1881.30 Titled the Tan Shan Sun Bo (Hawaiian Chinese News), it was started as
a commercial and literary venture by young Chinese migrants who had received
some schooling in the Chinese language and classics. Two of them were Hakka
Christians, one educated in Hong Kong, the other in a church school in Hon-
olulu. They had no printing press for the difficult Chinese characters; it appears
that they turned out a handwritten four-page paper by means of a duplicator. Two
years after it started Ho Fon became manager of the paper, which was then issued
twice a week with the bilingual name of Lung Kee Sun Bo (“The New Prosperous
Business News”) and Hawaiian Chinese News. The early numbers were filled
mostly with Chinese classical literature and compositions written in the conven-
tional and difficult “rhyme prose.”
Dr. Sun gave the first strong push to newspapers in Chinatown during his
1894 visit. Among the young men with whom he discussed the need for revolu-
tionary changes in China were the publishers of the Lung Kee Sun Bo. From then
on the paper carried articles expressing Dr. Sun’s political views, and when he
returned to Hawaii in 1896 he made the paper’s office his headquarters. Books
by Chinese authors advocating revolution became sources for subsequent articles,
and Dr. Sun himself wrote articles for the paper. The difficulty of increasing the
paper’s circulation without a printing press led the Hing Chung Wui, Dr. Sun’s
organization in Honolulu, to solicit funds to buy a hand-printing press from Hong
Kong in 1900.
Members of the Hawaii branch of the Bow Wong Wui financed the purchase
of a similar printing press from Hong Kong at the request of Liang Ch’i-ch’ao,
and the first numbers of the Sun Chung Kwock Bo (New China News) appeared
before the end of 1900. Liang wrote some of the leading articles in these early
issues; after he left the Islands others were based upon his publications and those
of K’ang Yu-wei.
From then on a battle of words was kept up between editors and contributors
262
to papers representing opposing political views. As political groups formed,

named and renamed themselves, split, reorganized, and sometimes dissolved, so
newspapers aligned with them were started, their editorial policies were formu-
lated and reformulated, and they were continued or discontinued as their support
continued or declined. Table 14 lists the Chinese newspapers in Honolulu and in-
dicates their sponsorship as well as their duration.
Table 14
Chinese Newspapers Published in Honolulu
Chinese English Name Year Year Supporters

Name Started Discontinued
Tan Hawaiian Chi- 1881 1907 Dr. Sun’s followers, Hing Chung
Shan nese News Wui, after 1894
Sun
Boa
Wah “Chinese 1893 1907 Christian Chinese (literary, nonpolit-
Ha Bo Times” ical)
Lai Kee “Beautiful 1895 1900 Literary, nonpolitical
Bo News”
Sun New China 1900 1980 Promonarchy, constitutionalist party
Chung News (Bow Wong Wui, later Hin Jing
Kwock Dong)
Bo
Kai “Enlightenment 1905 1905 Hoong Moon societies
Ming News”
Bo
Mun “Livelihood 1908 1909 Conservative element of Hing Chung
Sang News” Wui
Yat Bo
Chee Liberty News 1908 1938 Radical element of Tung Ming Wui;
Yow later, Kuomintang
Sun Bo
Kai “Instruction 1909 1910 Liberal element of Hing Chung Wui
Chee News”
Sun Bo
Wah “Progressive 1909 1923 Successor of Mun Sang Yat Bo; after
Hing China News” 1911, Chinese Merchants’ Associa-
Bo tion; pro-Yuan Shih-k’ai; pro-
263
Northern governments; intermediate

between Kuomintang and Hin Jing
Dong papers
Hon “Han People 1911 1929 Hoong Moon societies
Mun Bo News”
Tan Hawaii Chi- 1927 1937 Hawaii-born Chinese active in terri-
Wah nese News torial politics; mostly Republicans
Sun Bo but paper run as “independent”
Chung United Chinese 1928 ___b Pro-Chiang Kuomintang
Wah News
Kung
Bo
Hawaii Chi- 1937 1959 Hawaii-born Chinese
c
nese Journal
Note: Chinese titles are translated into English if the newspaper had no English title. Thrum’s
Hawaiian Annual for 1898 (p. 196) and the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (28 February 1902) both
mention a paper called the Chinese Chronicle (Yuen Chu Ho, editor) but no further information
about if was found. Passing reference is made to a paper published in Hilo, Sun Wan Yat Bo, in Chi-
nese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 79.
a Later Lung Kee Sun Bo.
b Still published.
c After 1957, Hawaii Chinese Weekly.
Nine of these papers were supported by groups promoting one or another

program for political change in China. The Tan Shan Sun Bo started as a literary
paper like the Wah Ha Bo, but during its most flourishing period it was a political
organ. Most members of the corporation publishing the Hawaii Chinese News
were Hawaii-born Chinese, with some China-trained young men on the staff to
prepare the Chinese half of the weekly edition. This paper appealed for sub-
scribers among the younger, Hawaii-born element of the Chinese population.
It gave more attention to local news, both general and Chinese, than to politi-
cal events in China; about one-fourth of the four-page English section carried
news about local Chinese society and another fourth about local sports. By the
mid-1930s, when the two large Honolulu dailies were carrying more society news
about Chinese residents than they had done earlier, the Hawaii Chinese News
was losing circulation and had to discontinue publication because it could not get
enough advertising. Two other Chinese newspapers published only in English,
the Hawaii Chinese Journal and the Hawaii Chinese Weekly, had the same fate.
Most of the newspapers published by the wah kiu did not depend upon
income from subscriptions and advertising. As organs of political groups they
264
continued as long as their sponsors were willing to give them financial support.
Party members contributed to these papers in addition to paying for subscriptions,
and they were expected also to demonstrate their loyalty to the party’s cause by
buying advertising space in the paper. Sometimes the same advertisement by a
Chinese firm would appear for months. Notices by Chinese organizations, such
as lists of officers, might be repeated issue after issue because, having once been
painstakingly prepared by hand-picking the Chinese characters from countless
boxes of type, they were already made up and could fill space between new ar-
ticles. In such ways a larger and more impressive paper could be issued than
would have been possible with the usual small staff. There was little money
for cabled news from China; Honolulu Chinese papers depended for news on
mail, including newspapers published in China, on translations from the Hon-
olulu English-language papers, and on fertile imagination.
Like many immigrant newspapers, those published in Chinatown before the
pai hua (“colloquial language”) movement of the 1920s were not written to com-
municate with the general migrant population. The editor and his staff were hired
to plead a particular cause and most editors tried to do this as eloquently as possi-
ble, demonstrating their erudition. Hence most newspapers were written in a style
that few Chinese in Hawaii could read readily or understand. Since these news-
papers were in the same category of group symbols as flags, badges, and bands,
the papers’ supporters had little objection. Though the difficult style is almost
untranslatable into English, the following excerpt illustrates the partisanship and
nationalistic attitudes of the writers:
The Liberty News was born this day one year ago. The days and months pass
by as quickly as the spinning machine and as rapidly as flowing water. With
a sigh, I reflect that in our native country mountains and rivers remain as of
old; people are well with no sickness; but the Han people just let their time
pass away. They know not that they lost their national state long ago; their
bodies have become those of slaves; and they are worse off than horses or
cattle.
Happily, in recent days there has appeared a person who is thinking
deeply [Sun Yat-sen], who knows and feels the toothless shame of calling an
alien person [the Manchu Emperor] “father.” Accordingly he has raised the
racial question and advocated the rise of our [Han] race. Wash away and pu-
rify ourselves of that shame. Annihilate the other race. Together we will sing
the Song of Revenge. That is the policy of this newspaper. Our meaning is
one and identical.
We think of our native country—endlessly worrying about it like the Gi
insane one of old. We know not when our dreams will come true; when, with
hot blood spraying over Manchu heads, we can fight till the end. Already we
see the dying influence of the Manchu regime and we know it won’t be long.
265
Henceforth we will struggle till death if necessary; we’ll brightly restore

the Han “family” to its original position. Heaven’s hand will turn to help us.
Remake the prestige of our nation. Until that day, this newspaper’s name will
be “Liberty.”31
The Chinese-Language Schools

Rivalry between the Bow Wong Wui and the Tung Ming Wui also entered into
the founding and functioning of the two largest Chinese-language schools in Hon-
olulu, which, not accidentally, opened only four days apart on 4 February and 8
February 1911.
During Dr. Sun’s visit to Hawaii in 1910 he had urged his followers in the
Tung Ming Wui to start a language school for Hawaii-born Chinese children be-
cause education in the Western-oriented, English-medium schools was weaning
them away from their cultural heritage. He pointed out that hundreds of Hawaii-
born Chinese were growing up without a Chinese education and argued that they
must be given the opportunity to learn the Chinese language and to know Chi-
nese culture. He is reported to have said to the editor of the Chee Yow Sun Bo:
“Although we have the newspapers to be our propaganda agents, we must also
cultivate the future generation to uphold our revolutionary ideals. We ought to es-
tablish a Chinese school in Honolulu, for it will be of help to us.”32
Following this suggestion, several of Dr. Sun’s supporters each pledged a
hundred dollars for the establishment of such a school. Several United Chinese
Society leaders favored this project and a meeting was held at the Society to enlist
the help of prominent Chinese in the community. The president, who like many
other members by this time had his family in Hawaii, was enthusiastic about the
idea and not only contributed heavily himself but also worked hard to get sup-
port from other Chinese. A building in a district near the center of Chinatown
was bought for five thousand dollars. Two Chinese teachers were engaged and the
school opened shortly after Chinese New Year with more than a hundred pupils.
Students went to the Chinese school in the late afternoons after attending Ameri-
can schools as usual.
The school’s name—Wah Mun School (“Chinese People’s School”)—was
suggested by Dr. Sun.33 Its close connection with the revolutionary movement is
indicated by the fact that the man who became principal in the fall of 1911 was
the editor of the Chee Yow Sun Bo. As the school expanded, other members of
the newspaper’s staff were added as teachers. After Dr. Sun’s death the school
was renamed in his honor Tan Shan Chung Shan School (“Hawaii Chung Shan
School”) and, still later, Sun Yat-sen School.
After the revolution, supporters of this school were generally regarded as
Kuomintang sympathizers. Students sang the Kuomintang party song on ceremo-
266
nial occasions. Instruction was patterned along lines suggested by Kuomintang

leaders in China, and textbooks prepared by Kuomintang writers were imported
from Shanghai. The San Min Chu I, Dr. Sun’s book setting forth the “Three
Principles” of government, was basic in the school’s curriculum. With the pro-
motion of Mandarin as the national language in the effort for national unity, the
school tried for a while to teach in Kuo Yu. In a Cantonese immigrant com-
munity, however, this was almost useless, and since the school had difficulty
in getting teachers who could teach in Kuo Yu the effort was dropped. Never-
theless the school was registered with the Nanking government and for several
years received a subsidy from that government’s Commission on Overseas Af-
fairs. Students were encouraged to take part in parades, fund-raising campaigns,
and benefit performances for nationalist Chinese causes.
The Bow Wong Wui had become interested in starting a Chinese-language
school about the same time as Dr. Sun’s group.34 Some of its members were in
the Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo, a group of young intellectuals interested in classical
Chinese education and also involved in publishing the Sun Chung Kwock Bo. The
Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo turned over its clubhouse for use as a school building,
and the Mun Lun School (“People’s Ethical Training School”), with two teachers
from a Chinese-language school sponsored by the Bow Wong Wui in Yokohama,
officially opened on 4 February 1911, four days before the Wah Mun School.
Mun Lun School became the largest and best-equipped Chinese school in Hawaii.
Its program was oriented toward traditional Chinese cultural and classical educa-
tion rather than toward the combination of revolutionary and Western ideas in the
Wah Mun School’s curriculum. Prerepublic textbooks were brought from China
and others were written by the school’s teachers to fit local needs of the “overseas
student.” For a time the history of the Chinese revolution of 1911 and subsequent
events was taught without reference to Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek. For sev-
eral years the school used the five-bar flag of the Northern governments instead
of the National Republic’s flag, and the Mun Lun song referred to the “five races
of the Republic.”
The school, registered with General Yuan Shih-k’ai’s Chinese government
in 1914, displayed prominently a motto in Chinese characters translated as “a
bright light overseas” written and presented to the school by Yuan’s minister
of education. The school received some financial aid from subsequent Northern
governments and boasted of scrolls presented by President Li Yuan-hung in 1917
and by President Hsu Shih-cheng in 1922. During this period the school was also
favored by consuls sent to the Islands by these Northern governments. The pro-
Kuomintang Wah Mun School, of course, scorned these connections and was not
officially registered with the Chinese government until the Kuomintang was re-
turned to power in 1926. Wah Mun School, renamed Hawaii Chung Shan School
in 1927, enjoyed greater prestige with the Chinese government through the 1930s
and 1940s. As most wah kiu came to recognize the Kuomintang regime as the
267
legitimate government in China, the directors and teachers of Mun Lun School
tended to emphasize that their policy was cultural rather than political. Their aim,
they said, was to train Chinese youth in China’s cultural heritage, not to promote
a particular political cause. Nevertheless, the school continued to be managed by
members of the Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo and the Bow Wong Wui’s successor, the
Constitutional Party, and affairs of the Mun Lun School were communicated to
the migrants through the Sun Chung Kwock Bo rather than either of the Kuomin-
tang newspapers.
Relief Projects
The migrants’ awakened sense of identification with China led not only to their
participation in Chinese party politics but also to concern about famine and other
disasters in parts of China outside their home districts or province. As early as
1878 a few wah kiu in Hawaii contributed two thousand dollars—then a large
sum—to help famine-stricken inhabitants of North China. In this early period,
however, migrants engrossed in trying to make their own fortunes were little
concerned about the misfortunes of Chinese living in a part of China that was al-
most as foreign to them as India or Europe. Identification with Chinese outside
of Kwangtung as tung bau—fellow countrymen—evolved slowly. Sojourner Chi-
nese were usually led to respond to appeals coming from other parts of China by
migrants who had lived in Hawaii longer than they had and who were directly or
indirectly connected with the Chinese government.
The famine relief fund of 1878 had been raised at the initiative of Chun Fong,
who was appointed the first Chinese commercial agent in Honolulu shortly after
he had forwarded the relief money to imperial government officials. Leaders of
the United Chinese Society after its formation in the early 1880s were responsible
for most of the appeals to the local Chinese for help to unfortunate countrymen
and for contributions to causes in the home country. A typical appeal was made
in 1892 when the United Chinese Society received word of a severe drought in
central China causing hundreds of thousands of Chinese to starve. Officers led a
campaign which raised five thousand dollars for a relief fund. The imperial gov-
ernment recognized this “act of charity” by awarding the United Chinese Society
a large wooden plaque carved with the characters Wai Kup Chung Chow (“Your
Charity Reaches to China”). This plaque, along with others awarded on similar
occasions, was conspicuously displayed in the Society building.
Officers sometimes received personal awards from the imperial government:
Hat of the Sixth Order, Hat of the Ninth Order, and so on. Personal awards to
leaders of fund drives for aid to China during national calamities became a mat-
ter of contention after the turn of the century when political divisions within the
Chinese community began to affect elections of officers in the United Chinese
268
Society. When one political group held control, those with other political affili-
ations were inclined to be indifferent to appeals made by the Society. An article
in the Chee Yow Sun Bo in 1909 reflected cynicism among opponents of the im-
perial government about the Society’s relief activities at a time when its officers
were cooperating with the Chinese imperial consul:
Yesterday on the street, I saw a United Chinese Society long red notice, say-
ing: “Four District flood; officers already sent to various islands to solicit
contributions from wah kiu for relief.” Just think, the United Chinese Society
has recently become a private organization, with no connection with the wah
kiu of the Islands….
The United Chinese Society originally was a public organization of
our wah kiu; the land was bought and the building constructed, from the
blood-sweating money of our wah kiu, not from money given by the Ching
Government. For this reason, the United Chinese Society really ought never
to become an aristocratic Society. Now, no matter what happens, the Chinese
Imperial Consul meets with the Society officials at the headquarters; no mat-
ter on what official business, he sends a letter to inform the Society as if it is
the “united society” for all the wah kiu in the various parts of the Islands.
Our wah kiu, scattered abroad, receive no protection from the Chinese
Government. Now the government, no matter what happens, never fails to
ask our Chinese here to contribute money. Everyone of our wah kiu knows
the love of our tung bau; and we wah kiu should open our pockets to give aid
to our tung bau in distress. However, we wah kiu can send the relief money
back to the interior ourselves. Why is it necessary for the relief money to go
through the hands of a consul? While the Ching Government loudly advo-
cates the adoption of a constitution, says it truly loves its people, it uses up
$6,000,000 to bury Kwang Hsu, the dead king. If the Ching Government re-
ally loved the people, the money it used in the burial of one dead king would
be more than adequate for relief aid in the Four District flood. Our country
men are taxed bloodily for government protection; now, in the time of flood,
it ought to be able to perform its protective duty, without coming to our Chi-
nese in Hawaii to ask us to open our pockets to give aid.
It would be well for our wah kiu to seek an effectively lasting solution,
to improve our country politically so that the people can receive government
protection, and not need to spend money endlessly on relief like a kind-
hearted woman….35
During the most intense rivalry between political groups for control of the
United Chinese Society (1912–1915) no large campaigns for relief projects in
China were carried out, but after 1915 the Society and the Merchants’ As-
sociation (later the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce) cooperated to
269
raise funds for such projects. As tensions between traditionalists and modernists,
“constitutionalists” and “revolutionists,” gradually relaxed, these societies and a
few others continued to provide leadership for movements to ameliorate suffering
in China. Although the number of migrant men decreased greatly until they made
up only about one-fourth of the Chinese adult male population in 1940, substan-
tial funds were raised even during the worst years of the depression of the 1930s.
Table 15 shows some of the projects carried out during the six years 1930–1935
by wah kiu in Hawaii, with Hawaii-born Chinese as well as migrants contribut-
ing.36
Patriotic Activities
Migrants’ participation in activities that were more patriotic than charitable
demonstrated their growing nationalism most clearly. Even during the 1890s,
when few of the early migrants were concerned about national affairs in China,
the defeat of China in 1895 in the Sino-Japanese war stirred up bitter feelings
among the wah kiu—chagrin at the weakness of the Ching government and re-
sentment against the Japanese. These feelings were intensified in the Islands
by the Hawaiian government’s policy of assisting Japanese immigration in the
decade prior to 1895 and restricting immigration from China. Some tenseness be-
tween Chinese and Japanese migrants in Hawaii during the war must have been
evident because notices in the English-language press asked the two groups to
“keep quiet” over the affair.37
Local conflict between the two groups did break out in 1896 on one of the
sugar plantations. In a bloody fight between Japanese and Chinese laborers, three
Chinese were killed, others injured. The immediate cause apparently was a per-
sonal quarrel between a Japanese and a Chinese laborer, but the developing tung
bau identification among the Chinese migrants, as well as the feelings stirred up
by the Sino-Japanese war, probably exacerbated the situation.38
Table 15
China Relief Projects Carried Out by Hawaii Chinese: 1930–1935
Year Amount Cause Location in China Sponsor

Contributed
(in Mex$)
1930 $ 11,000 Flood- Honan, Konsu, Chinese Chamber of Commerce and
famine Shensi United Chinese Society
1930 146,056 Flood- North China (espe- United Chinese Society and Island-
famine cially Shensi) wide community
270
1931 72,224 Flood Sixteen provinces Chinese Chamber of Commerce

1933 10,000 Famine (North East Relief Chinese Chamber of Commerce and
Organization) United Chinese Society
1933 2,580 Flood Yellow River re- Chinese Chamber of Commerce and
gion United Chinese Society
1935 1,500 Flood Yellow River re- Kuomintang Headquarters
gion
1935 12,000 Flood Yellow River re- Chinese Chamber of Commerce and
gion United Chinese Society
1935 3,932 Flood Yellow River re- Tan Sing Dramatic Club (benefit
gion show)
1935 240 Flood Yellow River re- Chinese First Church of Christ
gion
1935 224 Flood Yellow River re- Chung Shan School student body
gion
The Boxer Rebellion in 1900 aroused another emotional storm among the
Hawaii Chinese. The Chinese government’s inability to control the rebellion and
prevent retaliatory measures by foreign powers signified to many wah kiu the
need for governmental change, though others disagreed. The Chinese commu-
nity was divided over a request from Peking, forwarded by the Chinese minister
in Washington, asking for contributions toward the reconstruction of imperial
buildings that had been destroyed by foreigners. The request came in 1901 while
Chinese businessmen were trying to recoup their own losses in the 1900 China-
town fire. This was the time when Consul Liang proposed sending to Peking the
money remaining from the funds collected to aid victims of the fire. Although
United Chinese Society leaders blocked this action, other Chinese businessmen
who did not wish to oppose the consul collected 4,870 ounces of silver which
were sent to Peking.39
With feeling against the imperial government growing strong among the wah
kiu in Hawaii, Chinese patriotism was expressed more often by financial sup-
port of the revolutionary movement than by actions supporting the Ching regime.
After the revolution, appeals to migrants for contributions to patriotic causes con-
tinued. Examples taken from a list reported by Kuomintang societies in Hawaii
between 1912 and 1928 show the types of appeals to which Chinese in the Islands
responded:40
1912 Purchase of bonds issued by Dr. Sun’s “Canton Army Government”
1912 Contribution to Honolulu headquarters
271
1913 Campaign for local organization funds

1914 Funds for Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Tokyo
1915 Funds for Lin Sen in America
1915 Funds forwarded to Kuomintang’s American headquarters in San Fran-
cisco
1916 Funds for memorial to “Seventy-Two Heroes”
1916 Purchase of bonds of Chinese Revolutionary Party
1916 Funds for Chinese aviation schools in America
1917 Funds for Chinese army supplies
1919 Campaign for National Heroes Monuments at Wong Fa Kong in Canton
1920 “Save Canton” campaign
1922 Funds to Canton for airplanes and other army supplies
1922 Funds to Shanghai for “national welfare”
1923 Funds to Jup Sun School, in Canton, erected in honor of national hero
1924 Funds for cotton-padded coats for Chinese army
1924 Funds for erection of tomb for General Dang Sang-pa
1924 Funds for local Kuomintang building
1925 Funds for May 30 Affair, Shanghai, Canton
1926 Funds for Northern Expeditionary Army
1928 Contributions to Kong Yet Kow Kwock Wui, anti-Japanese organiza-
tion
Participation of wah kiu in the new regime in China was not confined to fi-
nancial contributions. Some migrants returned to China to take an active part in
the government; others encouraged their sons to secure official appointments in
the Chinese government and helped them financially to do so.41 One wealthy mi-
grant who had given refuge to political exiles from China sent his son, whom he
had named after Sun Yat-sen, to the mainland United States for training as an avi-
ator so he could serve in China. Several fathers showed their new political loyalty
by giving their sons nationalistic instead of traditional names.
The more patriotic of Honolulu’s Chinese community reacted strongly to
international events concerning China.42 The “Twenty-One Demands” of the
Japanese upon China in 1915, the plan to give to Japan the German rights in
Shantung after World War I, the reported massacres of Chinese by British and
Japanese in 1925—these and other events had repercussions in Honolulu. The
first of these prompted a group known as the Young People’s Oratorical Associa-
tion to lead an anti-Japanese campaign; the second led to the formation of an
Overseas Chinese Patriotic Organization with the purpose of arousing concern
about another “national disgrace” being perpetrated against China and agitating
for better treatment of China by international powers; after the third of these
events another association, the People’s Foreign Relations Club, was started to
express indignation against the “atrocities.” A group calling itself the National
Diplomacy Supporting Association was formed in 1928 at the time of Japanese
272
military actions in Shantung.

When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, Chinese in Hawaii were not
much concerned at first because Manchuria, beyond the Great Wall, was out-
side the boundaries of China proper and was controlled, moreover, by a warlord
of whom Chinese in Hawaii were contemptuous. Nevertheless, the resistance of
General Ma’s army against the Japanese won the admiration of Hawaii Chinese,
who sent money to him directly, as well as money and clothing to the Shanghai
Northeast Relief Organization.
When undeclared war broke out in the Shanghai region in 1932, it was in-
evitable that Chinese in Hawaii should be concerned. Shanghai was in China
proper. Cantonese troops—the 19th Route Army under its Hakka leader, General
Tsai—showed the strongest resistance to foreign invaders that Chinese forces had
ever made. Furthermore, the worst fighting and greatest destruction by the Japa-
nese was in the district of Shanghai inhabited particularly by Cantonese, some
of them close relatives of Chinese in Hawaii, and several Hawaii Chinese busi-
nessmen had investments in Shanghai firms. Within a few months Chinese in the
Islands raised and sent to China some HK$350,000.
Old political divisions among the Hawaii Chinese were subordinated to
patriotic concern. Former constitutionalists and Kuomintang members worked
together to aid Chinese resistance. During the early period of the 1931–1932
Sino-Japanese conflict a Wah Kiu Kau Kwock Wui (“Overseas Chinese Save
the Country Organization”) had been formed by the most active members of the
pro-Chiang Kuomintang group, with headquarters in the Kuomintang clubhouse,
but the Chinese community as a whole contributed toward the HK$24,000 raised
by this group. When the conflict in Shanghai broke out, a mass meeting led by
the anti-Chiang faction of the Kuomintang was held at the United Chinese Soci-
ety building, and after this two other “Save China” organizations were formed,
with officers who were also leaders in the United Chinese Society, the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce, and the Kuomintang. During the peak of the 1931–1932
fighting between Chinese and Japanese armies, other Chinese organizations, al-
ready established, raised money for the Chinese forces by campaigns among
their own members. Among them were several district associations, two of the
guilds, the Mun Lun, Chung Shan, and Hoo Choo schools, and the Chinese-Eng-
lish Debating Society. Young Chinese in Honolulu formed a “Chinese Students
Save China Dramatic Club” which staged benefit plays—nationalistic, of course,
rather than classical Chinese drama. “Save China” organizations that were set up
on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Kauai, and Molokai raised substantial amounts to
assist Chinese forces.
Feelings against Japan were strong throughout the Hawaii Chinese com-
munity, among ordinary working men as well as among leaders of nationalistic
groups. A letter sent in May 1932 by a waiter in the Lau Yee Chai restaurant to a
friend who was a cook in Hong Kong expressed these feelings:
273
The dwarf Jap invade our territory. When I heard about it my hair stick up.
I really feel regretful to see my country devastated by internal strife and for-
eign invasions and the miserable condition of the people. My only hope is
to have all us to work together and struggle and boycott Japanese goods and
make the dwarf Jap kill themselves.43
When the fighting in Shanghai ended, however, and routine news from China
replaced dramatic reports of conflict, patriotic fervor among the Hawaii Chinese
died down. The “Save China’’ organizations wound up their business and pub-
lished their final reports in the Chinese newspapers. Ardent Chinese nationalists
continued to plead for assistance to China’s economic and military development,
but aside from a few gestures, such as a contribution toward buying airplanes as a
birthday gift to General Chiang Kai-shek, there was little participation in patriotic
causes until the Japanese invaded China in 1937.
As Japanese forces moved down into South China, another set of relief
groups was organized by the Hawaii Chinese.44 The Western-educated Chinese
consul, King-Chau Mui, who was of See Yup origin, had established good re-
lations with Chinese organizations since coming to the Islands in 1930 and got
the cooperation of the leaders in the program he suggested. Doo Wai Sing, the
president of the United Chinese Society in 1937, chaired the Chinese Relief As-
sociation, which sent some $350,000 to China in the first two years of its appeals;
he also chaired the China Women’s Relief Organization. S. H. Tan, the executive
secretary of the United Chinese Society and Chinese Chamber of Commerce, was
executive secretary of both relief organizations. Chinese Liberty Bond commit-
tees on each island encouraged migrants to invest their money in Chinese military
activities.
By the mid-1930s Hawaii-born Chinese outnumbered the migrants, but they
joined in on these war-relief enterprises. A Hawaii-born Chinese physician who
was active in migrant organizations headed a China Emergency Medical Relief
Committee, and he also chaired a committee of the Chinese University Club, an
organization of Hawaii-born Chinese which collected and shipped large quan-
tities of clothing to China. Funds were raised among Hawaii Chinese by other
organizations such as the Aid to Chinese Wounded Soldiers and Refugees Com-
mittee, the Aid to South China Refugees Association, and the Overseas Chinese
Chungshan Relief Association. Efforts to assist war-torn China continued through
World War II and after, until the People’s Republic under Chairman Mao ex-
tended its control over all of China, including the migrants’ home districts.
Recognition for Nationalistic Activities

Patriotic idealism seems to have been not the only motive for the devotion of
274
so much time, money, and effort to nationalistic causes. Undoubtedly the stirring
appeals by various political leaders for a greater new China were effective in de-
veloping new attitudes among the fortune-seeking wah kiu, but the migrants also
came to realize that China’s international status affected their own personal inter-
ests.
For many decades the humiliating treatment of Chinese migrants in foreign
countries and the imposition by foreign powers of extraterritorial rights for their
own nationals in China were perennial topics of editorials in Chinese newspa-
pers. Both these situations, it was argued, resulted from China’s weakness. In one
moment of optimism Chinese in Hawaii joined with those on the mainland in a
movement to prevent renewal of the labor treaty between China and the United
States under which the Chinese exclusion acts operated and which were to expire
in 1905. An organization formed for the purpose, Mun Sing Tong, raised some
ten thousand dollars for action; the objective was to exert pressure on the United
States government by mobilizing a boycott in China of American-made goods.45
The ineffectiveness of this movement and the continuation of Chinese exclusion
were disheartening. Experiences like this convinced most Chinese in Hawaii that
discrimination could be eliminated only by persistent efforts to change public
opinion in foreign countries and by strengthening the power of the Chinese gov-
ernment in international relations.
Meanwhile, migrants also came to realize that generous contributions and
untiring work as organizers and leaders in patriotic activities were bringing to-
kens of recognition from the Chinese government in power: appointments to
imperial orders, certificates, tablets, plaques. And, moreover, publicity through
newspapers and by word of mouth about these awards enhanced the status of
the migrants receiving them as “outstanding Chinese” within the Hawaii Chinese
community—a sought-after form of recognition once migrants were no longer
solely preoccupied with amassing a fortune they could take back to their ancestral
villages.
Hawaii Chinese received more recognition from the governments that fol-
lowed the 1911 revolution than the imperial government had given them. Chinese
in the Islands had special pride in their close connection with Dr. Sun, a pride
that is still felt by many Hawaii-born Chinese. Hawaii is frequently called “the
birthplace of the Chinese revolution” partly because the first overseas revolution-
ary group, the Hing Chung Wui, was organized in Hawaii by Dr. Sun and his
followers. The help that Hawaii Chinese gave to Dr. Sun during his years of revo-
lutionary effort is often recalled. Memories and mementoes of Dr. Sun’s visits to
Hawaii have been cherished, particularly by those who had some personal con-
nection with the Tsung Li (“Leader”).
Migrants who worked steadily for the revolution and closely with Dr. Sun
were especially esteemed and their descendants continue to enjoy the honor given
their families. One such migrant was Luke Chan, born in Dr. Sun’s native village,
275
who helped Dr. Sun’s family to escape possible arrest by imperial officials and
who served for a time as Dr. Sun’s personal bodyguard. He was sent to Nanking
as Hawaii’s representative at the dedication of the Chung Shan mausoleum in
1929, and until his death in 1952 was an honored guest at local nationalistic cel-
ebrations. Another was Young Kwong Tat from Buck Toy village in Chung Shan
district, who was an ardent supporter of Dr. Sun and a leader in some of the strug-
gles for control of the United Chinese Society between supporters and opponents
of Dr. Sun. In 1922, a year after returning to China, he was rewarded by being
made chief magistrate of Chung Shan district, which was in the area controlled at
that time by Dr. Sun’s forces.
Conservative migrants who collaborated with the Northern governments
from 1912 to 1930 were recognized many times through awards to them per-
sonally and to the organizations they represented, including the United Chinese
Society, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Mun Lun Chinese School, and
the Constitutional Party.
For a few years after Chiang Kai-shek established the National government
in Nanking in the late 1920s, Chinese in overseas communities could achieve
recognition by nominal participation in the Chinese government itself. This
recognition was especially satisfying to loyal Kuomintang members in the Islands
after the Hawaii Kuomintang was given provincial status and could send elected
delegates to the party meetings, the National People’s Convention, and the Na-
tional Congress in China. In 1936, for instance, several candidates for election as
delegate to the congress were sponsored by coalitions of Chinese societies. Can-
didates gave campaign speeches thanking their sponsors and pledging, if elected,
to do their utmost to benefit the Chinese people of Hawaii. The winner in such an
election in 1929 was Lau On, a restaurant owner in Hilo, who had been active in
the Tung Ming Wui before the revolution and then a leader in the Hilo branch of
the Kuomintang. After attending the congress in Nanking he was appointed sher-
iff and magistrate of his home district from which he had migrated to Hawaii in
the 1880s.46
Awards like the following, issued after the Sino-Japanese hostilities of
1931–1932, show how individuals and societies in Hawaii were officially recog-
nized by the Chinese government:
Awards to Chinese People of Hawaii from the National Government

(1) Tan Shan Wah Kiu Kwock Nan Kau Chai Wui (Hawaii Overseas
Chinese Save China Organization)—President Wong But Ting—a gold tablet
and certificate No. 29.
(2) Tan Shan Wah Kiu Ju Kwock Kau Chai Tin (Hawaii Overseas Chi-
nese Save Country Organization)—President Doo Wai Sing—a silver tablet
and certificate No. 35.
276
(3) Chung Wah Jun Chai Wui (Chinese Save China Organiza-
tion)—President Ching Chau—a silver tablet and certificate No. 70.
(4) Tan Dou Wah Kiu Kau Chai Wui—a silver tablet and certificate No.
77.
(5) Wah Kiu Kau Kwock Wui (Overseas Chinese Save Country Organi-
zation)—President Y. K. Lee—a silver tablet and certificate No. 78.
(6) Hilo Jun Chai Wui (Hilo Save China Organization)—a panel with
inscriptions and certificate No. 107.
(7) Maui Chung Wah Jun Chai Wui (Maui Chinese Save China Organi-
zation)—a panel with inscriptions and certificate No. 191.
(8) Mr. Chun Hoon—a silver tablet and certificate No. 46.
(9) Mr. Young Sung Kee—a panel with inscriptions and certificate No.
144.
(10) Mr. Chun Hoon—a special award for his contribution to Chinese
schools.47
Although Hawaii-born Chinese sometimes regarded them as too dearly attained,

such awards were treasured by migrants of the older generation.
277
CHAPTER 13
Personal Prestige
MIGRANTS changing from sojourners into settlers gradually shifted their social
orientation from their native villages, districts, and country to the Island com-
munity of which they were becoming a part. Even activities concerning matters
in their homeland were strongly influenced by the desire for personal prestige
among other Chinese in Hawaii, especially in Honolulu. Status in Hawaii had at
least two aspects for the migrant: individual prestige among other Chinese and
the prestige of the Chinese as a group in the interethnic Island society.
Three worlds became interlinked in the migrant settlers’ social universe—the
China of his newly developed nationalism; the Chinese community in Hawaii;
and the Island society at large. Which of these social areas was most important to
the migrant would be impossible to discern. A migrant who gave a large donation
for famine relief in China might have been responding to three concerns simul-
taneously: compassion for the plight of the tung bau with whom he had come to
feel a nationalistic identity; desire to gain face with his fellow wah kiu in Hawaii;
and interest in demonstrating to the non-Chinese in Hawaii that Chinese were
philanthropic and humanitarian as well as commercially oriented. Only arbitrarily
can the migrant be considered as having acted with reference to his nationalistic
concerns at one time, his status in the local Chinese community at another, and
his identity with his ethnic group in the Island society at another. All three con-
cerns were interrelated in the complex society into which the migrant settler was
becoming inducted.
Status through Migrant Organizations

The migrant who stayed in the Islands for several years without joining at least
one association was an anomaly. The general participation in migrant organiza-
tions is all the more striking since few of the Chinese adults who emigrated before
1900 had belonged to formal associations in the old world. With the kinship
group dominating almost every phase of life, there was little need or opportunity
278
Personal Prestige
to join formal associations.

And yet the two facts appear to be closely related. The Chinese villager was
accustomed to thinking of himself not as an independent individual but as a mem-
ber of his clan. Belonging to a weak clan was tragic; belonging to a powerful one
was fortunate. In the new world formal associations took over the role of the clan
in the migrant’s life, slowly but virtually completely. In the village a man’s status
had depended more upon that of his family and clan and his role within them than
upon how outsiders regarded him personally. In Hawaii the time came when the
status of a migrant in the Chinese community depended largely upon the number
and types of societies he belonged to and his standing in them. Biographies of mi-
grants in the Hawaii Chinese “who’s who” publications detailed the organizations
to which they belonged and the offices they held in them. The biography of one
migrant who had been brought from Chung Shan as an infant and reared in Hon-
olulu listed nearly forty organizations to which he belonged and in many of which
he had been an officer.1 Obituary notices of migrants who had become prominent
in Honolulu carried similar information about organizational affiliations.
The status that the early migrant organizations conferred upon their members
was important in the formation of similar associations later on, after most of the
migrants remaining in Hawaii had become settlers. Thus, for example, the pres-
tige in the Chinese community of district associations such as the Lung Doo
Chung Sin Tong and the See Dai Doo Wui Goon motivated migrants from other
doos of Chung Shan district to organize their own district associations—one as
late as 1930, toward the end of the period when the earlier ones had been of real
value in helping the migrant make the transition from old-world community to
new. It would seem that establishing such an association in this late phase of the
migration process was essentially an effort to add to the prestige of its founders.
The status conferred by a Chinese organization seems to have been an im-
portant consideration among the Hakkas in Honolulu who organized the Nyin Fo
Fui Kon in 1921. Sponsors of this new organization were concerned that the Pun-
tis, more numerous than Hakkas in the Islands, looked down upon the Hakkas.
They wanted a society under their own control, one that the Chinese community
would recognize as representing the Hakka people, an organization to which indi-
vidual Hakkas could turn for help, but even more so one that would bolster their
self-respect. Although it was sixteen years before the Nyin Fo Fui Kon got its
headquarters, participants in the dedication ceremony in 1937 included the Chi-
nese consul general, a Punti from Toi Shan district, as well as representatives of
a dozen or so organizations headed by Puntis. The daughter of an officer of this
organization commented, shortly after the dedication:
The opening was held on George Washington’s birthday. It seems each Chi-
nese group wants to have a headquarters to show how important they are.
Many delegates were sent from other Chinese societies. Each of them made a
279
Personal Prestige
speech, also Consul Mui. The consul made the best speech. My mother said
the speeches by most of the others were terrible. All each man could do was
to stand up there and talk about all the things he had done—I, I, I, all af-
ternoon. Another funny thing was that although it is a Hakka society, none
of the speeches made by the Hakka speakers were in Hakka—all in Punti.
I suppose this was because the delegates from the other societies could not
understand Hakka.2
Status through Leadership

When Chinese societies began to multiply in the Islands, the migrants were
mostly young men between twenty and thirty-five, with a few older Chinese who
had preceded the major migration. Chinese merchants with longer residence in
Hawaii were generally the organizers and officers of the societies. For several
reasons merchants continued to provide most of the leadership in migrant orga-
nizations from the 1880s into the 1930s. Most important was the fact that the
officers were generally successful businessmen, affluent if not wealthy, and as
such they were respected by the younger money-oriented migrants. Wealth was
a great advantage for officers in other ways. Most of the societies depended
upon nominal admission fees, assessments, and campaigns for funds, but most
ordinary members paid only admission fees and limited assessments while the
wealthier migrants usually paid big assessments and took the lead in fundraising
campaigns. Having contributed more than most members, they were likely to as-
sert more right to determine policy and claim more voice in choosing officers.
Wealthy migrants could give face to an organization by large contributions to
Chinatown fund drives, by lavish entertainment, and by importing ceremonial
robes to wear on public occasions. With well-established businesses, often with
several enterprises on different islands, they could employ subordinates to handle
details of management and devote much of their time to the affairs of their soci-
eties.
Chinese merchants in the Islands were also likely to be much more secure,
legally, than the ordinary laborers who made up the bulk of the migrant popu-
lation. Merchants, generally exempt from most of the immigration restrictions
imposed on laborers, were likely to take up long-term residence in Hawaii, bring
in their wives and children, and establish a family identity in the Island com-
munity. With extended residence and many business activities they often became
well known to local government officials and to Caucasian firms with which they
had dealings. In connection with their commercial enterprises they became expe-
rienced in employing Caucasian attorneys before Hawaii-born Chinese went into
law; these attorneys were occasionally called on to help the officers of the Chi-
nese societies in dealing with the government and other non-Chinese sections of
280
Personal Prestige
the Island community. The merchants’ experience, then, prepared them to serve
as intermediaries between the less sophisticated sojourner migrants and other eth-
nic groups in Hawaii.
The dominant role of the merchants as leaders in Chinatown was a marked
contrast to the situation in their home districts. Traditionally the merchant class
was not a highly respected part of the Chinese social structure, being quite
subordinate to the literati. Few migrants belonged to China’s educated elite, how-
ever, and those who did had usually been brought to Hawaii to edit newspapers
subsidized by merchants or to teach in language schools heavily financed by mer-
chants. If these educated wah kiu were active at all in migrant organizations, they
usually held the position of Chinese secretary, translating documents and han-
dling correspondence and records in Chinese.
On their part, the merchants saw many personal benefits in organizing and
officiating in migrant associations. Not only were they able to exercise control
over ordinary migrant laborers to their own financial advantage but, even more
important in the present connection, they could advance their own social status
through their roles in the associations. From the first, most early leaders in these
societies enjoyed high prestige in the Chinese community. As the societies mul-
tiplied, they came to form a hierarchy of status based largely on size and wealth.
This stature in turn reflected on the prestige of their leaders. At the top of the
hierarchy for several decades was the United Chinese Society, semiofficially rec-
ognized by both the Hawaiian and the imperial Chinese governments. The status
of the leaders of this society thus extended beyond the Chinese community;
for over twenty years they acted as representatives of the imperial government,
which recognized, by personal awards, their position and work among the wah
kiu. They were also among the Chinese most respected by Hawaiian officials and
Caucasians who dealt with Chinese in business or civic affairs. They were re-
ferred to in the English press as leaders in the Chinese community. They stood,
therefore, at the top of the scale by which prestige was measured in the three areas
of primary concern to status-conscious migrants: the national society of China,
the Chinese community in Hawaii, and the Island society at large. From time to
time a migrant who was not a leader in the United Chinese Society or the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce might have had higher prestige in one of these areas but
not in all three, at least during the period from the early 1880s to the 1930s.
As the migrant associations multiplied, relationships among them operated
to enhance the personal status of their leaders. After 1900, for instance, when the
position of president of the United Chinese Society became elective, one of the
first men elected to this office had for several years been president of the See
Yup Wei Quan, one of the most powerful district associations. Subsequently the
United Chinese Society presidency was filled by men who had previously been
presidents of two other strong district associations, the Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong
and the See Dai Doo Wui Goon.
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Personal Prestige
Socially ambitious migrants deliberately sought office in less influential so-

cieties with a view to using these positions as stepping stones to more prestigious
positions. Migrant societies which had outlived their purpose were often pro-
longed by members who wanted to be elected to offices and have their names
appear in Chinese and English-language newspapers and on posters in China-
town. By the 1930s inactive members or former officers of more than one society
were saying “The society is only for the officers.” Attempts to revive moribund
societies suggest that some individuals were interested in gaining face for them-
selves through publicity. A group trying in 1931 to revive the Lum Sai Ho Tong,
a surname society formed in 1889, published statements which illustrate such an
effort:
About 100 years ago people of our clan with a pioneer spirit, progressive
mind, crossed the sea and came to this place from Kwangtung. We, the pos-
terity, should revere the pioneer spirit of our clan people, which can rival that
of Columbus and Magellan. If we don’t have an organization to bring our
clan people together, friendship will be diminished and we’ll treat each other
as strangers. It is, therefore, evident that our clan needs an organization in
order to bring all of our people together….
We must have past history as a model for the present…. The establish-
ment of the Lum Sai Ho Tong was initiated by Say Yip and Lop Soi and
some others. They saw that the people of our clan in Hawaii were increas-
ing in number, and that all were engaged busily at work. Although they are
“brothers” of the same clan, they cannot get rid of conflicts between them-
selves. For this reason, Say Yip gave his property for a place to build a clan
clubhouse…. Since the establishment it has now been several decades. As
time goes by, all the deeds they have done are buried. All the records have
been lost…. Therefore, when the directors met on the twentieth year of the
Republic [1931], July 15th, they passed a resolution to have registration. The
directors elected humble me as the Chairman…. Within a short period of
two months, the work was completed…. Posterity looks to the present, just
as the present looks to the past. I sincerely hope that posterity in the future
will uphold the same principle to build up an everlasting memory. This is my
humble, sincere hope.3
Similarly, the promonarchical Chinese Constitutional Party was kept in exis-

tence for years after the end of the Ching dynasty by a small group of well-known
conservatives serving as its officers. They continued to finance their newspaper,
Sun Chung Kwock Bo (New China News), even though by the 1930s the members
had generally come to accept the Republic of China, had contributed financially
to the Nanking government’s opposition to Japanese invasion of China, and had
come to have only contempt for the Manchu Pu Yi who abdicated as emperor in
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1911 but became a “puppet ruler” for the Japanese in Manchukuo in the 1930s.4
Many migrant associations contributed to the status-seeking efforts of some
members, and recognized the status already achieved by others, by having large
boards of directors who were mainly honorary. The bylaws of the Lung Doo
Chung Sin Tong, mentioned earlier, authorized the eight officers to appoint forty-
eight members to the board of directors; the duties of the board were not clearly
stated and only twelve were needed for a quorum. The Chinese Chamber of Com-
merce bylaws called for the election of fifty directors in addition to the officers;
only fifteen constituted a quorum at a board meeting. The United Chinese Society
had a board of fifteen trustees and an advisory council first of fifteen members,
later of forty-five. Members of the advisory council could give advice at execu-
tive meetings but had no vote. By appointing or electing directors the societies
could give prestige to members whose cooperation and financial support they
wanted; they could honor members who had served for many years as active lead-
ers; they could add lustre to their own organization by having eminent members
of the community on their boards. They could also give directorships to promis-
ing, active young men who might later be elected to offices in which they would
serve not only as leaders in the societies’ own affairs but as their representatives
in the Chinese community.
Sometimes Chinese who wanted social recognition in the Chinese commu-
nity but thought they had little chance of getting it through established Chinese
societies set out to organize new associations in which, as sponsors, they would
have leading roles. Such considerations fostered new district associations, sur-
name societies, village clubs, patriotic organizations, physical culture clubs, or-
atorical, debating, music, dramatic, and literary societies. They could count on
receiving publicity in the Chinese press, perhaps also in the English-language
newspapers, as well as attention on the Chinatown grapevine-telegraph. Elections
of officers, annual banquets attended by officers of other associations, clubhouse
dedications, participation in Chinatown relief campaigns—all provided possibili-
ties for personal publicity for the associations’ founders and leaders.
The various associations in Chinatown eventually formed a network within
which leadership in one organization brought recognition from all. Leaders were
generally asked to represent their organizations at public gatherings sponsored by
a particular society whose leaders in turn would appear as honored guests at func-
tions sponsored by the other societies. Guests of honor at the annual dinner of a
district association, for example, would often be leaders of other district associ-
ations, the United Chinese Society, and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, all
of whom would be asked to speak. The formal opening of a new clubhouse was
a typical occasion when a society would invite representatives of other societies
to be guests of honor. Many societies held open house at Chinese New Year not
only for their own members but also for officers of other associations. The United
Chinese Society and Chinese Chamber of Commerce, acting jointly after 1929,
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Personal Prestige
held New Year receptions attended by civic leaders in the general Island commu-
nity as well as by officers of other Chinese societies.
It was at events sponsored by the Chinese community as a whole that the
social status of leaders of various organizations was made most evident. When a
public reception was held for a distinguished Chinese visitor at the United Chi-
nese Society headquarters, association officers had a prominent part in the affair.
After 1912, when mass meetings were held each 10 October—Double Ten Day
(“Chinese Independence Day”)—to celebrate the establishment of the republic,
leaders of societies that were nationalistic in sympathy were on the platform,
wearing badges and making speeches. Graduation exercises at Chinese schools
became occasions for praising public-spirited members of the Chinese commu-
nity. Prominent Chinese led the most solemn community ceremonies each year:
the rites for the spirits of the departed at the Spring Festival (Ching Ming). All
such occasions have been part of a complex of social behavior related to status
in the Chinese community and indicative of the use of leadership in immigrant
societies as a way of gaining prestige by individual migrants.
Status through Philanthropy

Increasing individualism and ambition for personal status among the migrants,
the inevitable results of their release from restricting kinship ties, are clearly seen
in what some members of the Chinese community called “buying face”—gaining
recognition and prestige by donations to Chinese community projects. In this con-
nection one must keep in mind that most migrants came to Hawaii primarily to
make money and the majority of those who migrated before 1900 were illiterate
and unschooled. Few, even of those who accumulated the largest fortunes, could
read or write more than a simple form of written Chinese. They could most easily
bid for status with money. Hence most migrants participated in Chinese national-
istic causes mainly by giving financial support to other Chinese who provided the
leadership. Some of the drives in support of nationalistic causes were the most
highly publicized, strongly advocated, and aggressively promoted enterprises
undertaken by the wah kiu in Hawaii. Heavy contributions, as a consequence,
gained “big face” in the local Chinese community in addition to recognition from
the government in China.
Two local projects illustrate how buying face was facilitated by fund-raising
techniques: a campaign in 1929 to collect money for adding classrooms to Mun
Lun School, and another in 1933 to buy the Makiki residence of the late Y. Ahin
for use as the Chinese consulate.
Because of Mun Lun’s eminence as one of the first two Chinese-language
schools, and as the largest, and also because its supporters were in favor with
the governments controlling China from 1912 to 1929, directorships on its board
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carried almost as much prestige as offices in the United Chinese Society and Chi-
nese Chamber of Commerce. The campaign procedure shows how effectively the
committee used the desire for face to get large contributions. Executive officers
were chosen to head several committees, and more than seventy-five Chinese
were appointed to campaign positions. Before the main drive started, four leading
supporters of the project headed the list of contributors, two subscribing $1,000
each, another $800, and the fourth $500. The rules governing contributions show
how carefully the committee graduated the recognition to be given to donors in
terms of the size of their donations:
(1) The names of all those who contribute less than ten dollars will ap-
pear in the newspapers.
(2) The names of all those who contribute more than ten dollars and up
to one hundred dollars will be displayed permanently in the guest room.
(3) Those who contribute between one hundred and five hundred dollars
will have their pictures framed and hung in the guest room.
(4) Those who contribute between five hundred and seven hundred fifty
dollars will have their pictures framed and hung in the guest room and class-
rooms will also be named after them.
(5) Those who contribute more than seven hundred fifty dollars will
have the larger classrooms named after them besides having their pictures
hung in the guest room.5
The success of the campaign and subsequent events were recorded in the
school’s twenty-fifth anniversary publication:
As a token of appreciation to all those who donated some money, the school
hired a troupe of actors to put on a Chinese play at the Oahu Theatre [in
the old Chinese quarter]…. Before the play started, there was singing by
the students. Speeches were made by Yee Chun, president of the school;
Chun Quon, president of the campaign; and Chang Yum-Sin, principal of
the school, who thanked and commended the spirit of the Chinese people.
Afterwards the names and pictures of those who contributed more than one
hundred dollars were flashed on the screen….
On September 29, noon, the opening exercises of the school were held.
At this time works of the students pertaining to composition, letter-writing,
penmanship, and art were exhibited…. To add to the gaiety, the Royal
Hawaiian Band was on hand to play…. On the four walls of the reception
room hung the pictures of the members of the Ching Nin Moo Hock Kee
Lock Boo and also the pictures and names of the contributors, as mentioned
in the rules above….
The amount of money from contributions was $16,320.50; the net in-
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come from the benefit shows was $6,084.90; a total of $22,405.40.
This publication also noted that twelve of the school’s classrooms had been
named after the following donors: Chun Quon, Dai Yen Chang, Yee Chun, Chun
Kam Chow, Wong Goon Sun, Yee Mun Wai, Chun Kwai Hin, Leong Bew,
Chun Hoon, Wong Wai Wing, Hee Yau Kun, and Chong Pak Shun. Five of
the classrooms were named after firms making substantial donations: C. Q. Yee
Hop Company, City Mill Company, King Street Fish Market, Castle and Cooke
Company, and Alexander and Baldwin Company. One room was designated the
Alumni Room, another the Ching Nin Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo Room.6
Similar methods of giving face to donors were used in the campaign to raise
money for the permanent Chinese consulate, as shown in the fund-raising com-
mittee’s constitution:
I. Name of the Committee: The name of this committee will be the “Com-
mittee to Raise Funds for the Purchasing of the Consulate Quarters.”
II. Publication of Campaign Results: After the campaign, the names of
those who contribute money, as well as how the money was used, will
be published in a special commemorative book.
III. Special Awards to Contributors:
A. Anyone who contributes more than five hundred dollars will have a
whole page in this book, containing his photograph and a history of
himself.
B. Anyone contributing more than two hundred fifty dollars will have
half a page in this book, containing his photograph and a brief history
of himself.
C. Anyone contributing more than one hundred dollars will have a
fourth of a page in this book, containing his photograph and his occu-
pation.
D. All those contributing more than fifty dollars will have their pho-
tographs published in this book….
IV. Commemoration Plaque: The committee will try to place a commemora-
tion plaque within the consulate’s quarters, on which the names of all
those who contribute more than fifty dollars will have their names in-
scribed for memory.7
This campaign was kept within the Chinese community; no Caucasian firm
or other outside sources were solicited for funds. Individual Chinese, business
firms, and organizations of Hawaii-born Chinese as well as migrants cooperated.
The committee’s goal of $15,000 was exceeded by more than $2,500. A com-
memorative book published a list of the 1,417 contributors with the amounts they
gave, photographs of those who donated fifty dollars or more, pictures and bi-
ographies of the larger contributors, and brief histories of associations and firms
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Personal Prestige
giving fifty dollars or more. The commemorative volume also mentioned those
who sent gifts or congratulatory messages for the opening ceremonies of the
building.
Such activities reveal not only the concern migrants came to feel about their
status within the Chinese community, but also the values that were becoming
dominant in their new social world. To an extent that never existed in the old
world, status in the Chinese community became identified with individual wealth
and with liberality in contributing to community enterprises. But wealth alone
did not assure the migrant of esteem within the Chinese community. The way he
accumulated his wealth was considered, although not always as it would have
been in a typical American community. It was common knowledge among Is-
land Chinese, for instance, that several of the wealthiest Chinese men of the
older generation had made part of their fortunes in activities the Hawaiian gov-
ernment defined as illegal and some Caucasians regarded as immoral, but this
knowledge did not particularly damage their reputation or that of their descen-
dants among the Chinese. Some were known to have made thousands of dollars
helping Chinese enter the Islands fraudulently. Others were reputed to have made
their fortunes in the opium trade. A founding officer of the United Chinese So-
ciety was arrested and tried in 1896 for helping “hundreds of Chinamen” enter
the Islands with false papers. Another prominent merchant was arrested in 1896
on a charge of trying to bribe an inspector at shipside to allow some migrants to
remain in the Islands illegally; several years later he was president of the United
Chinese Society.8
But the Chinese merchant or entrepreneur who owed his wealth to deliberate
exploitation of his fellow migrants was held in contempt by the Chinese com-
munity. And a wealthy migrant who was indifferent toward Chinese community
projects or refused to contribute liberally to nationalistic causes was looked down
upon as miserly or selfish. One such migrant was described in the 1930s by a
Hawaii-born Chinese as a misfit:
A “misfit” member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce is ——. The mere

mention of his name to other Chinese will reveal that he is regarded as “dif-
ferent.” … He is a well-known business man and could almost be called a
Chinese millionaire. He has become a member of the chamber just to have
his store listed as a member, but he does not participate in its activities. To
him, his business is more important than organizations. In spite of his riches
he is seen walking on the street in his everyday cheap Chinese working
clothes. He runs his own business. In fact he works as though he were very
poor. It is very true that he does not adapt himself to organization. He does
not even mingle with his own people. He does not have any spare time. His
business is running all the time. Deliveries are made in the night as well as
on late Saturdays…. During the famine drive, he was approached by one of
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Personal Prestige
the chamber team captains. He readily told the man that he was giving fifty
dollars. The solicitor tried to give a good speech in order to persuade him to
give more. But —— frankly said that he had decided how much to give the
night before…. After giving the check he went on with his business and just
ignored whether the solicitor remained or not.
On the other hand, spending money solely to gain face was not a sure way to
get it. This was demonstrated when an enterprising group of young Chinese men
undertook in 1928, as a commercial venture, the publication of a book called Tan
Shan Wah Kiu (“Overseas Chinese of Hawaii”). Descriptive and historical articles
were written in Chinese on the Hawaiian Islands, Island history, economic activ-
ities of Chinese in the Islands, and Chinese associations and institutions. Seven
short articles in English, three of them written by Caucasian professional men,
were also included. No advertising was solicited or included in the publication,
but the promoters capitalized on the desire of Chinese migrants for recognition
by including an unselective “who’s who” of Chinese in Hawaii. Any Chinese
who paid twenty-five dollars for a page could have his picture printed together
with a brief biography written in both Chinese and English or in Chinese alone.
The final publication was largely made up of the 207 pages devoted to the 198
Chinese men included in the who’s who section. Most of the prominent Chinese
migrants in the Islands were among the 198, but many of the others were not re-
garded in the Chinese community as worthy of such recognition. The inclusion of
these “nobodies” and social climbers was the subject of caustic comment; several
of the men who had bought pages were ridiculed. Many Chinese who had been
impressed by the ostensible purposes outlined by the promoters saw the volume
as the commercial venture it was—and were so disillusioned that when a second
volume on the Chinese in Hawaii was undertaken in 1935 few Chinese leaders
paid to be included. The who’s who in the second volume was regarded by Island
Chinese as even less representative of eminent members of the community than
the first.
Status through Family

It was not simply coincidental that most of the migrants who became leaders in
the Chinese community were men who sooner or later established families in
Hawaii. Those who brought their wives and children from China, or married in
Hawaii and had Hawaii-born children, were generally the more successful mi-
grants, and with their families in the Islands they were the ones most likely to
settle there rather than return to China. At the same time, the presence of their
families gave them opportunities for social recognition not open to familyless mi-
grant men no matter how well off they might be financially.
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Personal Prestige
The family home became one of the most obvious symbols of affluence in
Honolulu, and the location, style, and furnishing of houses took on considerable
social significance. Sojourner migrants had been little concerned about housing
once their basic needs for shelter and cooking facilities had been met. Intent
on making money as quickly as possible, they generally accepted the inconve-
niences of crowded, makeshift living quarters. Even the early families lived for
the most part in sparsely furnished, crowded rooms on or near the family busi-
ness premises. However, even before they finally gave up the idea of returning to
China, many migrants responded to pressures from wives, children, relatives, and
friends in Hawaii to buy homes in residential neighborhoods outside the business
area of Chinatown. Chinese families in Honolulu began moving out of Chinatown
much earlier than those in San Francisco or New York.9
A 1900 census report on home ownership showed that only 393, about 12
percent, of 3,247 Chinese heads of families owned the houses they lived in. Most
of these houses and those bought by Chinese during the first quarter of this cen-
tury were relatively inexpensive and modest in size and appearance, but as the
idea of permanent residence in Hawaii replaced the sojourner outlook, rivalry for
prestige within the Chinese community as well as concern about status in the
wider Hawaiian society led to the building of larger and more impressive resi-
dences.
In the first English-language publication on successful Chinese migrants, in
1913, Chinese authors noted the beautiful and spacious homes several of these
migrants owned outside Chinatown. Many large houses were built in anticipa-
tion that married sons and their children would live in them with their parents,
after the style of well-to-do families in China. A middle-class residential devel-
opment of the late 1920s and 1930s in which many second-generation Chinese
bought homes together with their immigrant parents became popularly known
as “Chinese Hollywood.” Some years later a development of much more expen-
sive homes was sometimes jocularly called “Mandarin Heights” because some
of the wealthiest Chinese built houses there, though they made up less than half
of the residents. House interiors as well as exteriors were used for competitive
display—the lighting and plumbing were modern and Western, but the furnish-
ings were often of the sort that wealthy families in China would have had, and
in fact furniture was commonly imported from China. A Chinese consul who
had traveled widely among overseas Chinese colonies, especially in the western
hemisphere, said in 1931 that the Chinese in Hawaii had nicer homes than any
other group of overseas Chinese he had visited.10
Housewarmings became elaborate affairs. By the late 1920s it was common
for dozens, even hundreds, of guests—mostly Chinese but usually including Cau-
casians, Hawaiians, Japanese, and members of other groups—to be invited. These
occasions revealed that owning a home, whatever other purposes it served, was a
way of gaining face.
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Personal Prestige
Children, especially sons, gave their migrant fathers further opportunity to

gain face in the Chinese community. Apart from the traditional ceremonies at-
tending births and the celebration of birthdays, well-to-do migrants could give
their children educational advantages far beyond anything dreamed of by most
of the earlier migrants. Sending sons back to the ancestral village for elementary
education in schools that the migrants themselves often supported, or later to a
college or university in China, was highly praiseworthy in the eyes of other mi-
grants, especially the older ones. After Annexation, however, it became more
usual to send sons to American colleges and universities, especially for business
or professional training. “My son the doctor” was just as much a matter of pride
to Chinese parents in Hawaii as to parents in other immigrant groups on the U.S.
mainland. Honolulu newspapers carried articles on sons or daughters going to or
returning from China or the U.S. mainland, there were parties to celebrate their
return with diplomas or degrees, and the careers of Hawaii-born Chinese were
followed with great interest. Migrants took pride in sons who came into the fam-
ily business or branched out into new commercial fields, as they did in sons who
entered professional, educational, governmental, or religious occupations.
Marriages of Hawaii-born children in migrant families were matters of great
concern to the parents of prospective brides and grooms. Within the well-under-
stood status structure emerging in the Chinese community, the selection of mates
could enhance or, less noticeably, lower a family’s status. Parents tried to arrange
the best possible marriages for their sons and daughters, considering carefully
not only the character of the bride or the prospects of the groom, but whether
or not the marriage would bring about a favorable alliance between their fami-
lies. In the early days, parents of Hawaii-born girls were in the fortunate position
of having their daughters in demand by well-to-do older migrants who preferred
not to send to China for a bride. A wealthy rice planter on Kauai, for example,
could find Chinese parents in Honolulu willing and eager to arrange his mar-
riage to their daughter twenty or twenty-five years younger. In turn, the parents
would be seen by people in the Chinese community as connected with a highly
successful migrant. When marriage arrangement gave way to the Western cus-
tom of romantic choice, parents tried to limit their children’s associates to a circle
within which a suitable choice would be made. Weddings became tremendously
expensive affairs, even among less well-to-do families. Parents really unable to
afford elaborate wedding banquets and receptions commonly passed on the debts
incurred to the young couple, in the meantime enjoying the satisfaction of having
impressed members of their own generation and gaining some face in the Chinese
community.
Adult sons were often a help to leaders of migrant societies who wanted
to maintain their status and that of their families in the community. Elderly mi-
grant leaders often recruited their sons and those of fellow leaders to take over
responsibilities in the societies. For their part, young progressive businessmen
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Personal Prestige
and professional men, such as lawyers, public accountants, and doctors, found it
advantageous to their careers to devote time to these organizations. In a way, this
process tended to crystallize status patterns established by the migrants and con-
tinue them in the Chinese community in succeeding generations.
As migrants reached their later years, celebrations of such birthdays as the
sixty-first and seventy-first became occasions for demonstrations of respect from
friends and acquaintances. Their children usually arranged banquets, often for
several hundred guests, at which their achievements were recounted by personal
friends and public figures who spoke in testimony to the qualities that had made
them successful and esteemed. A Honolulu newspaper in 1928 carried an account
of a somewhat exceptional example of anniversary celebrations held in China as
well as in Hawaii. The host in Honolulu was a “son of two fathers,” having been
adopted by his uncle. Although his real name was Yuen Kwock, he was known
locally as Fong Inn after the name of the store he had established in 1903, and his
son took Inn as a surname. Yuen served as officer in several migrant societies in
Hawaii, including the presidency of the United Chinese Society. The newspaper
described the occasion:
Yuen Jan Yock, 91, and Yuen Kee Yock, 89, aged brothers of Lam Bin Hee
[Chung Shan] … were honored by prominent sons and grandsons in different
parts of the world in a series of anniversary banquets, the last of the number
being by Fong Inn and his son, Henry Inn, well-known local businessmen,
at the Sun Yun Wo on Sunday of last week. More than 70 friends were the
guests at the celebration held in this city.
The honorees are the fathers of Fong Inn following an old Chinese cus-
tom. Fong Inn, who is the youngest son of Yuen Kee Yock, father of three
sons, was adopted by his uncle, Jan Yock….
Fong Inn returned to China with his family, including his wife, a daugh-
ter, Miss Kam Soo Inn, Mrs. Henry Inn, and four children of the latter in
January of this year, to attend the grand double anniversary celebration in
Lam Bin Hee. While they were in Shanghai, a banquet was held for relatives
and friends residing in the metropolis of the east. More than 15 members of
the family joined those from Honolulu to attend another celebration in Can-
ton and, later, the final feast at Lam Bin Hee.
More than 2000 attended the Lam Bin Hee affair, people coming from a
radius of 12 miles of the village. Many prominent officials of the Nationalist
government sent gifts and attended the event.
The Lam Bin Hee birthday celebration was one of the largest of its kind
in the Nom-long district…. With more than 50 male descendants, Jan Yock
and Kee Yock Yuen are great-great-grandfathers.11
In the Chinese tradition it was on occasions like this that elderly Chinese
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Personal Prestige
women, who seldom had been seen at public affairs and who had had inconspic-
uous though important roles in their husbands’ lives, were also publicly honored.
Many articles in local newspapers have described banquets arranged by grateful
sons and daughters on the occasion of their mothers’ sixty-first, seventy-first, or
eighty-first birthdays.
Even death, which in the village would have concerned the kinship group
primarily, came to have status implications as it became a combined family and
public matter among the migrants. It has been said of the Chinese that “the most
important thing in life is to be buried well.”12 In village China, being buried well
was mainly a matter of using fung shui in the selection of a propitious burial
place, which would assure comfort to the spirit in the hereafter, and making provi-
sion for ancestor worship by descendants. In Hawaii, funeral services and burials
became elaborate and expensive, reflecting not only the status of the deceased but
also that of his family in the eyes of the community. Funerals had to be attended
by priests, orchestras, friends and acquaintances, business associates, and repre-
sentatives of the various Chinese societies to which the migrant had belonged.
For several decades funeral services for prominent migrants were reported in de-
tail in the Honolulu English-language newspapers as well as in the Chinese press.
The status of the deceased was indicated by the status of the men who agreed to
be honorary pallbearers. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 21 March 1931, announcing
the forthcoming funeral services for the late Young Ahin, wealthy migrant and
leader in several Chinese organizations during his last years, gave the names and
affiliations of the pallbearers and other details about the services:
The pallbearers are C. K. Ai, vice-president of the Chinese American Bank;

Doo Waising, president of the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce;
Fong Hing, president of the United Chinese Society; Wong Lum, vice-pres-
ident of the Chinese chamber; Dr. Kalfred Dip Lum, president of the United
Chinese News; S. H. Tan, former Chinese consul; Ching Chow, manager of
Wing Hong Yuen Co.; and Lau Yun Chee, retired merchant.
There will be three bands, one furnished by the family, another to be
provided by the Bucktoy Villagers’ club, of which Young Ahin was the
president, and the third by the Wing Chong Lung and Kwong Chong Lung
companies, in which the deceased was copartner.
About 100 automobiles will be in the procession. Those who will march
all the way will be the members of the Bucktoy Villagers’ club, members of
the Kuomintang, and students of the Chungshan Chinese school.13
The cemetery chosen for the burial and the location of the burial plot also
reflected upon the status of the deceased. At least until 1950, prominent Chinese
families, especially those who were tradition-oriented non-Christians, regarded
the Manoa Chinese Cemetery as the most prestigious. Prices of plots within this
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Personal Prestige
cemetery varied widely: the higher-priced plots were nearest the burial place of
the tai gung (“Great Ancestor”).
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CHAPTER 14
Group Status
THROUGH most of the migrant period there was a certain ambiguity in the status
of the Chinese as a group in the social order developing in Hawaii. Merchants,
craftsmen, and servants in the urban areas, sugar and rice planters, farmers and
laborers in the rural areas were sometimes welcomed and respected by other
groups, sometimes rejected, and sometimes simultaneously welcomed and re-
jected by different sections of the Island population. During much of the same
period, as nationals of a country which for a long time rejected and ignored or
grudgingly acknowledged them, they lacked the protection of a government such
as that enjoyed by nationals of other countries coming to the Islands during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a consequence, the status of the Chi-
nese community in Hawaii had to be established by its own members. Through
most of the migrant period their efforts in this direction had two interrelated
objectives: to combat discrimination against them as a group and to raise their
prestige as a group in the view of other groups in the Islands.
The need to cope with discrimination as a group did not arise during the first
half-century of their presence in the Islands when Chinese, like other foreigners,
were accepted as individuals by the indigenous Hawaiians. During this period,
when Caucasians had not yet established their strong influence over Hawaiian
rulers and the Hawaiian kingdom was not yet firmly controlled by a central
authority, Chinese had close contacts with the Hawaiian alii (“nobles”) in sev-
eral parts of the Islands. Governors of the islands of Maui and Hawaii made lands
under their control available to Chinese for sugar production and arranged for
Hawaiian laborers to work in the cane fields. Marriages with Hawaiian women
of chiefly rank demonstrated the cordial relations between these early Chinese
migrants and the Hawaiian elite. By 1845 at least one Chinese migrant had been
admitted to citizenship in the Hawaiian kingdom in accordance with regulations
applying to all foreigners, and before the monarchy ended in 1893 at least 750
Chinese had become citizens of Hawaii. One, whose wife was Hawaiian, was re-
peatedly elected in the 1880s by a predominantly Hawaiian constituency to the
position of district magistrate.1
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Group Status
It was not until Chinese came in larger numbers as indentured laborers and
servants to work for Caucasians, and Caucasians were becoming the most power-
ful foreign group, that the earlier Chinese came to feel uncertain about their status
in Hawaii. A ball given in 1856 by the still tiny group of Chinese merchants,
on the occasion of the marriage of King Kamehameha IV, appears to have been
an attempt to assert their place on the upper levels of the pluralistic Island soci-
ety. The American diplomatic corps and businessmen had given a ball which was
followed by one given by the Germans. Following suit, the Chinese merchants
invited the king and queen and a large number of guests to their festivity, which
the Honolulu English-language newspapers described at length:
The idea which prompted the Chinese merchants to give some marked testi-
monial of their loyalty to the Sovereign of their adopted country, was a happy
one, and showed that they were ambitious to equal at least their fellow cit-
izens in “honoring the King.” The “festival” consisted of a ball which took
place on … November 13 at the court house. An unusually large number of
invitations had been issued, in conformity with the wishes of the Chinese
merchants, that none should be omitted, and it is probable that over one thou-
sand persons visited the hall during the evening.
… Visitors met and greeted the Chinese merchants, all dressed in the dif-
ferent styles of Mandarins. But when their Majesties arrived the long line of
Mandarins bowed their heads very low, till they passed, which is the Chinese
custom in the royal presence.
On entering the hall, guests accosted the Mandarins Anglais, Weong
Chong Hoffmann, Chong Fong Field, Ming Ching Reiners, and Weong Kong
Waterman, dressed in Chinese costume, fans included, who were charged
with the duties of Directors general—a ball being practically above the com-
prehension of a Chinaman….
Among the distinguished guests present we noticed, beside their
Majesties, H.R.H. the Premier, Princess Victoria Kaahumanu; H.R.H. Prince
L. Kamehameha, their Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Relations and
of the Interior, John Ii, Esq., M.P.C.; the Commissioners of France and of the
United States, all the resident Consuls; Captain Harvey and the officers of
H.B.M.’s ship Havannah, Captain Gizolme and officers of H.I.M.’s ship Em-
buscade; and many others of the elite of Honolulu.
The ball was opened at 20 minutes to 9, Her Majesty having honored Mr.
Yung Sheong by selecting him for her partner in the first cotillion; the King
dancing with Mrs. Gregg…. Other couples were … Mr. Afong and Mrs. W.
C. Parke; Mr. Ahee and Mrs. Coady; and Mr. Gee Woo and Mrs. Aldrich….
The collation (man in) was perhaps the richest and most expensive part
of the festival. It consisted of three tables across the Hall of Representatives,
with seats for 150 ladies. The taste displayed in getting up this feast is a little
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ahead of anything we have ever witnessed here or elsewhere…. Two of the

items we may mention … were six whole sheep roasted, and 150 chickens.
The beautiful pastry was got up by the Chinese themselves, as were the dec-
orations, which were in the most flowery style of the Flowery Kingdom….
The cost of the ball, as we are informed, amounted to not far from
$3,700. The opportunity to display their attachment and loyalty towards the
Sovereign of the country in which they reside, and bear so high a name for
regularity in their business habits and general observance of the laws, was
seized on by the Chinese merchants in a way that will be long remembered
by all those who had an opportunity to observe it…. The ball … was the most
splendid affair of its kind that has ever occurred in Honolulu.2
All the elements of the Chinese concern about their status are implicit in
the phrasing of the Caucasian reporters’ accounts of this ball: its demonstration
that the “Chinese merchants … were ambitious to equal at least their fellow
citizens in ‘honoring the King’”; the “Mandarins Anglais … charged with the du-
ties of Directors general—a ball being practically above the comprehension of a
Chinaman”; the elaborate “collation … a little ahead of anything we have ever
witnessed here or elsewhere”; and “the opportunity to display their attachment
and loyalty towards the Sovereign of the country in which they reside … seized
on by the Chinese merchants.” The implication is obvious. Though they bore “so
high a name for regularity in their business habits and general observance of the
laws,” the Chinese merchants found it necessary to give an affair even more lav-
ish than those given by other foreign groups.
Migrants as Representatives of China

Though the Chinese merchants continued for some time to be spoken of as a
“quiet, honest, and peaceable class” and as “faithful and devoted subjects,”3 the
intemperate anti-Chinese agitation of the late 1870s and the 1880s changed the
picture. The term “coolies” which at first was merely a descriptive word for un-
skilled laborers came to be used among other groups as a derogatory term and to
symbolize a new set of attitudes toward the Chinese. It was in this new atmos-
phere that leaders of the migrant group tried to assert the dignity of the Chinese
as nationals of a foreign country and to seek for themselves as representatives
of China the formal recognition and public courtesies accorded to representa-
tives of other nations in official Hawaiian circles. In 1884, shortly after being
recognized as commercial agents of the Chinese government, C. Alee and Goo
Kim informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that the anniversary of the emperor
of China would be celebrated by a display of the Chinese flag and a reception
to which officials of the government were invited. Even though this was during
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the peak of anti-Chinese agitation when the government was restricting Chinese
immigration, the minister replied that government officials would be pleased to
attend the reception. Annually, until the first Chinese consul arrived in 1898, the
Chinese commercial agents, assisted by other migrant leaders, held similar recep-
tions at the United Chinese Society headquarters; each year the receptions were
attended by officials of the Hawaiian government and diplomatic representatives
of other nations.4
After Annexation these receptions in honor of the emperor gave way to re-
ceptions on the first day of the Chinese New Year with officers of the United
Chinese Society cooperating with the Chinese consul at the Society’s headquar-
ters. Beginning in February 1912 the Chinese Merchants’ Association replaced
the United Chinese Society in assisting the consul in the annual reception. After
the Merchants’ Association was renamed the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in
1926 and moved into joint headquarters with the United Chinese Society in 1929,
the official receptions were given by the consul and the officers of the two or-
ganizations. Throughout this period the migrant leaders had a semiofficial role
at these receptions. Whoever was the Chinese consul at the time was of course
the official representative of China; but the migrant leaders, long-time Island res-
idents, were generally recognized as the link between the Hawaii Chinese and
other sections of the Hawaiian population.5
Events in China sometimes impinged upon the migrants’ concern for their
reputation as an ethnic group in Hawaii. The Boxer Rebellion in 1900 was such
an event. It broke out at a particularly crucial time when the American territor-
ial government was being set up in Hawaii and there was still uncertainty about
the legal status of Chinese under the new government. “Chinese citizens” held a
mass meeting in Honolulu “in regard to the recent deplorable situation in China”
and drew up resolutions denouncing the “Boxers” as “murderers and outlaws”
and expressing “profound sympathy for the loss of life which has been inflicted
upon the citizens of the United States in China by the ‘Boxers’.” A copy of these
resolutions was sent to the Chinese minister in Washington to be presented to the
American secretary of state, and another copy was presented by a committee of
Chinese leaders to the governor of Hawaii.6
In contrast to the Boxer Rebellion, which Chinese in Hawaii felt reflected
unfavorably upon them as a group, the establishment of the Republic of China
was seen as an event that would raise the status of the wah kiu since it promised to
be an effective, modern government that would make China a stronger power in
the international world. The gala reception held on 12 January 1912 by the United
Chinese Society, reported at length in the Advertiser, was attended by “nearly
2,000 Chinese and foreigners.” Changes coming about with the new order were
symbolized by the Western clothes worn by migrant leaders instead of formal
Chinese dress (“not a queue was seen”), and for the first time the wives of migrant
leaders joined them in the reception line. That same year migrants were active
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in drawing up petitions, signed by Hawaii Chinese who were American citizens,

urging the United States to recognize the Republic of China.
When the republic did receive American recognition, the Chinese consul
held a reception “for the American people” which was attended by the governor
of Hawaii, the heads of American military forces in the Islands, and other Amer-
ican officials.7 A few months later Hawaii Chinese published a forty-eight-page
pamphlet, The Chinese in Hawaii, “to commemorate the recognition of China as
a Republic by the United States.” It was written in English and obviously for
non-Chinese readers; on the cover were American, Hawaiian, and Chinese flags.
Along with pictures and biographies of successful Chinese businessmen in the
Islands, there were articles on different ways Hawaii Chinese had taken part in
Hawaiian and American life: the taxes they paid, financial contributions to dis-
aster relief in San Francisco in 1906, the education of Hawaii-born Chinese in
Chinese-supported private schools, the participation of Hawaii-born Chinese in
the National Guard, tours of Hawaii Chinese baseball teams around the United
States, and other activities. The continuing grievance against the American ex-
clusion laws was expressed in an article on the indignity and economic hardship
those laws imposed on the Chinese.
In-Group Control
During the 1880s and 1890s, when anti-Chinese agitation increased the social
distance between the Chinese and other groups in the Islands, migrants found
ways to circumvent oppressive regulations—and this in turn led to charges that
the Chinese conspired with one another in illegal activities of all sorts. Honolulu
newspapers regularly carried notices of arrests of migrants for breaking one law
or another, and there were occasional accounts of charges against established
migrant businessmen. However, the very isolation created by mutual distrust
between the authorities and the Chinese provided a measure of protection for
migrants engaged in illegal practices. Even if such practices were not condoned
by most migrants, it was difficult under the circumstances for Chinese to testify
against one another.
The situation changed after anti-Chinese agitation died down. With migrants
rising on the economic scale and settlement attitudes spreading, many practices
that had been tolerated among the wah kiu were censured because they reflected
unfavorably upon the whole Chinese community. Chinese societies made it clear
that they would not protect members who committed crimes. An article in the
United Chinese Society bylaws published in 1901 stated that “it shall be the duty
of the Managing Committee to assist the Government in the investigation of any
criminal charge against any Chinese [and] to assist Chinese of needy circum-
stances who may be wrongfully accused of crime or misdemeanors.” Obviously,
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Group Status
inner cohesion was not considered so important that the Chinese community
would allow itself to lose face in order to save one of its own members. Even as
late as the 1970s this concern for the good name of the Chinese community in
Hawaii led United Chinese Society leaders to call in some newly immigrant Chi-
nese youths and warn them that the Hawaii Chinese would not tolerate the sort
of gang warfare that was starting up in San Francisco. Hawaii Chinese would not
hesitate to cooperate with the police in dealing with the culprits.
In the earlier migrant period several community leaders were vigilant in pre-
venting or at least controlling activities that had brought Chinese into disrepute
elsewhere. Goo Kim, while he was president of the United Chinese Society in the
1890s, took action to prevent Chinese in the Islands from becoming involved in
traffic in prostitution. There had been charges that American efforts to suppress
the business among Chinese in the continental United States were being impeded
by Chinese in Hawaii. Women who had been bought in China and then denied
entrance to the United States were sent back to China—but, it was claimed, they
were being taken off the boats in Honolulu and returned to the West Coast by
Chinese confederates of the traffickers in the United States. Goo, a Christian who
worked Sundays in a Chinatown mission, is said to have been alerted by Chris-
tian missions in California when girls were being returned to China and to have
personally undertaken to see that they were not taken off the boats in Honolulu.
Opium smoking among the migrants was a particularly vexing problem to
Chinese community leaders who, recognizing Chinese tolerance of the practice,
were also concerned about the public disgrace it caused. For several decades
opium smokers contributed the largest numbers of Chinese migrants arrested for
violations of the law.8 In 1907 the Chinese consul initiated a campaign against
opium, and a young migrant businessman, Chun Kam Chow, with Leong Chew,
a Hawaii-born relative, interested a number of migrants in organizing the Chun
Moo Min Sun Gai Yin Wui, or Anti-Opium League. Chun, who had come to
Hawaii in 1886 as a boy of twelve to join his father, a Honolulu merchant, op-
erated a dry goods store in Chinatown. According to a son-in-law, Chun “was
so ashamed at seeing his fellow Chinese arrested for smoking opium and being
marched to the police station with their pigtails tied one to the other that he joined
others to start an Anti-Opium League and was its first president….”9 Prominent
Chinese and Caucasians interested in the movement took part in the league’s
opening ceremonies held on the second floor of a Chinatown grocery store. Ac-
cording to a Chinese account:
The original purpose of the association was self-respect. In August a second

meeting was called at the headquarters of the Kum Yee Hong [Tailors’
Guild]…. At this meeting the scope of the work of the association was in-
creased. Money was contributed by the members. Medicine was brought
from Shanghai to help the opium smokers in suppressing and ridding their
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habits. Public meetings were held where speeches against the use of opium
were made. Visitation committees were appointed to carry out the objec-
tives.10
Articles published in the Chee Yow Sun Bo three years later showed the con-
tinuing interests and activities of the league:
This wui is founded for the purpose of helping our tung bau break away from
the “black-world.” In the attempt to stop the use of opium, however, some
individuals are handicapped because they are forced by necessity to toil dur-
ing the day with the result that they do not have enough strength left after the
day’s work.
In such cases our wui feels deeply sympathetic, and we have especially
provided a good method to help our friends in attaining their aims. Enter the
hospital and rest while you stop using the drug. Our wui will help pay all the
hospital expenses incurred in connection with the treatment. To all who have
the ambition to quit using opium, please come and talk things over with ei-
ther the president of this wui or with Mr. Leong Chew.11
We wish to express the appreciation of this organization to the owner of the

Royal Theatre for letting us hold our public speaking contest there on Janu-
ary 5. We also appreciate the presence of friends from various vocations in
taking part in voicing the evils of opium and, in doing so, convincing our
tung bau.
We are happy to learn that our friends showed up in such numbers that
no single seat was unoccupied. From this it can be readily seen that our
Chinese people are uniting in a common patriotic cause against opium smok-
ing.12
The main activities of the league appear to have been directed toward users
rather than against the importers and dealers. One member, Dr. K. F. Li, is said
to have gotten into trouble with the Chinese community by reporting the names
of opium smugglers to the authorities.13 The prevailing view seemed to be that
apprehending those in the opium business was the responsibility of the authori-
ties, not the Chinese community. As a matter of fact, there was a general apathy
among nonusers toward getting opium smokers to break the habit. In a few years
the Anti-Opium League went out of existence. Ultimately, with the passing of the
generation of unattached migrants, opium smoking virtually disappeared.
Gambling, while certainly not peculiar to the Chinese, was another basis
for criticism of the migrants. Almost from the beginning of their migration to
Hawaii, Chinese had the reputation of being more addicted to gambling than
other groups in the Islands. Caucasian Christian ministers and newspaper edi-
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tors periodically raised their voices against the prevalence of gambling, especially
among the plantation workers but also in Honolulu’s Chinatown. Some Chinese
residents complained about it from time to time, but no antigambling league was
organized in the Chinese community.14 Eventually, of course, the distinctively
Chinese forms of gambling declined along with opium smoking as the migrant
generation died off.
A matter of much graver concern to Chinese migrant businessmen was the
appearance of any threat to their reputation among Caucasians for honesty and
reliability. Having it said that their “word was as good as their bond” was a great
advantage in dealing with Caucasian firms, and any publicity about Chinese busi-
nessmen failing to meet their obligations created a scandal in Chinatown. Some
of the Chinatown firms that lost everything in the fires of 1886 and 1900 had
already been in debt and went into bankruptcy, but others that had built up a repu-
tation for integrity were extended credit by Caucasian firms solely on the promise
of payment. Stories about migrants like Chu Gem and C. K. Ai who succeeded
with determined effort in repaying every dollar they owed Caucasian firms re-
dounded to the credit of Chinese business.15
Chinese business leaders’ regard for their group reputation in the Caucasian
financial community was demonstrated again when a prominent Chinese busi-
nessman died in 1911, leaving behind debts he had incurred by questionable
methods. The Chinese were particularly embarrassed because the man had been
president of the United Chinese Society and during 1910 the English-language
press had publicized his role as a leader in the movement to get an unpopular
Chinese consul recalled by the Ching government. He died on 30 December,
just about the time of year when by Chinese tradition debts were paid off. Two
weeks after he had been given an elaborate funeral, a Honolulu English-language
newspaper published a long article on stories circulating about the dead man’s
“high and frenzied finance” and the “forgery, misrepresentation, and abuse of old
friendships” involved in “the disappearance of some twenty thousand dollars.” It
was hinted that the man whose word had been “as good as his bond” and whose
“credit in the local banks was practically unlimited” had committed suicide. En-
dorsements on some of the notes at Caucasian-owned banks were reported to
have been forged or obtained fraudulently. Chu Gem, who had succeeded him
as president of the United Chinese Society, had been one of the endorsers. The
newspaper article ended with the statement that the banks would not lose any
money on their notes because Chu Gem and other Chinese would raise the money
to meet the obligations.16
Cultural Compromises and Cultural Change

The Chinese migrants’ increasing consciousness of their status as a group in the
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Hawaiian multiethnic society led them to abandon or modify some of the cultural
practices they had brought with them to the Islands. They became sensitive to
charges such as those expressed by the president of the Board of Immigration in
1890:
A Chinaman is unprogressive. He remains a Chinaman as long as he lives

and wherever he lives; he retains his Chinese dress; his habits; his method;
his religion…. He … will not adapt himself to the country where he goes….
There are exceptions which but prove the rule.17
Chinese sojourners in their early years in the Sandalwood Mountains indeed

had no intention of replacing their own customs with those they saw among other
groups in the Islands. For a while language and social distance insulated the mi-
grants from awareness of the way members of other groups judged them, but
they came in time to realize they were being ridiculed and even condemned for
practices that to them were natural and customary. True enough, many wah kiu
remained indifferent to these “foreign” attitudes even after they became aware of
them. Any inconvenience or even indignity they suffered could be accepted as a
part of their temporary life overseas which would be left behind when they re-
turned to China. Nevertheless, the time came, earlier for some and later for others,
when indifference gave way to self-consciousness. Then changes were gradually
made to reduce their visibility as cultural curiosities, to modify or eliminate prac-
tices regarded by other groups as immoral or inhumane, and to adopt Hawaiian
or Western customs.
The most obvious changes were in personal appearance. Wearing the queue
caused more ridicule of Chinese migrants than any other practice brought from
China. Before the Manchus were overthrown, migrants who intended to return to
China did not dare cut off their queues—to do so would have signified revolution-
ary sympathies. Chinese schoolboys suffered unmerciful teasing by other boys
until their parents agreed to let them cut off their queues; mission schoolteachers
offered gifts to Chinese boys to encourage them to overcome parental objection
and to encourage fathers also to abandon the queue. The first migrants to have
Western haircuts were those who had decided to remain in Hawaii rather than
return to China and therefore did not fear reprisals by the imperial government.
Dr. Sun’s followers and members of the Hoong Moon societies were among the
pioneers in cutting off their queues, which symbolized Chinese subjection to the
Manchus, but conservative migrants resisted the change until after the revolution.
Other characteristics of Chinese grooming, such as the cultivation of long finger-
nails by men not engaged in manual labor, disappeared more gradually and with
less notice.
Changes in clothing were another visible sign of cultural accommodation to
Western ideas. Migrants who gave up manual work or house-to-house peddling
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Group Status
to become shopkeepers and skilled workers in the towns discarded the peasant’s
broad-brimmed, straw umbrella hats and coarse working clothes which fitted the
coolie stereotype. A corresponding change took place among prosperous mer-
chants who, in the 1880s and 1890s, had worn silk caps and mandarin-style
gowns and shoes on formal occasions and for family photographs. When Chinese
became tailors and shoemakers for Caucasians and the Hawaiian upper classes,
the Chinese themselves began to wear Western clothes at public affairs and in
family photographs as well as for business.18 Passport pictures in the Archives
of Hawaii show the transition from Chinese to Western clothing. At first all the
Chinese men are in black Chinese blouses; then an occasional Western shirt and
coat appears; and finally Chinese clothes have been entirely replaced by Western.
By the 1920s, aside from unsuccessful older migrants who found Chinese cloth-
ing cheaper than Western, Chinese men no longer wore Chinese clothes in public.
One exception was the visiting scholar who, as if to differentiate himself from the
migrants and to impress local Chinese and Caucasians, appeared in public in the
silk gown of the Chinese intelligentsia. Into the 1930s Chinese community lead-
ers wore formal Western attire—silk top hat, full-dress suit, white gloves—for
such ceremonial occasions as funerals and Ching Ming services.
Changes in clothing, hairstyles, and other matters of personal appearance
were slower among the Chinese migrant women than among the men, probably
because they were more isolated from contacts outside the home and Chinese
community. A Hawaii-born Chinese reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser, in an
article published in 1932, wrote about the wife of a partner in one of the largest
Chinatown firms:
She has made her home here 40 years, coming at the age of 12…. She is
a short woman and typical of the Chinese lady who is wife of the wealthy,
well-guarded from the conflicting environment of a mixed society. She
dresses as a woman in China and does not speak nor understand English,
Hawaiian, or the pidgin English of Hawaii. Her friendships and associations
have only been among the Chinese. She has not acquired any of the manner-
isms peculiar to people of Hawaii, all of whom are of a different racial and
social standing.19
As late as 1936 it was not uncommon to see less affluent Chinese women
such as those noted in December of that year near Liliha and School streets: “two
elderly Chinese women, surely in their sixties, both dressed in pyjamas; unbound
feet, Chinese hairdress; jade earrings; each with a paper shopping bag filled with
Christmas packages.”
One difference between Chinese and Western customs that was less visible
than grooming or clothing but sometimes more confusing involved the migrants’
names. Most of those who came in the early years of migration had seldom used
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their surnames (really clan names) in villages where everyone knew everyone
else, and in the nineteenth century most of their personal contacts outside the
migrant group were with Hawaiians who had not yet completely adopted the
Western practice of family surnames. It was therefore common for migrants to be
known only by a Hawaiianized version of their given names: for example, “Kan”
became “Akana.” This name, in turn, was frequently adopted by the migrants’
children as their surname, especially when they went to school where Caucasian
schoolteachers expected them to have surnames as well as given names. In the
larger urban areas, particularly in Honolulu, migrants made more public use of
their clan and generation names but continued the Chinese practice of placing
them before the personal name rather than after: for example, Goo Kim Fui
rather than Kim Fui Goo. Only a few of the migrant generation, like Dr. K. F.
Li (Khai Fai Li), adopted the Western order which became accepted practice
among Hawaii-born Chinese. The English spelling of Chinese names was some-
times confusing since the Chinese character for a name could be phonetically
transcribed in several ways, such as Lum, Lam, Lim, Lin, or Len. A few migrants
adopted the spelling closest to those of Western surnames, so that Lau, for exam-
ple, would become Lowe.
Some practices that were conventional in Chinese tradition were regarded
by many Westerners in Hawaii, particularly those in missionary circles, as not
only strange but immoral or barbarous. Among these practices were concubinage,
the mui tsai (“slave girl”) system, and footbinding. As a matter of fact, none of
these practices was widespread among the migrants and, except for footbinding,
non-Chinese were seldom aware of them. Missionaries who had been in China
were very much concerned, however, about migrants bringing these practices to
Hawaii and called them to the attention of Hawaiian authorities and other groups
in the Islands.
Polygamy and concubinage, while practiced to a limited extent by Chinese in
Hawaii as well as in China, brought very little censure to the migrants during the
nineteenth century, except for the occasional condemnation by missionaries. Li-
aisons between Hawaiian women and Chinese who had left their wives in China
encountered little social or legal opposition. Other foreigners were rather lax
in observing the sexual mores of their own cultures, and the unstable, mobile,
predominantly male Caucasian group tolerated practices that would have been
condemned in their home communities. As late as the 1870s the Caucasian mem-
bers of the Hawaiian Supreme Court recognized the legality of a polygamous
marriage where the second wife was a Hawaiian married to a Chinese who had a
Chinese wife in China.20 The fact that Chinese migrants, even those who eventu-
ally returned to China by themselves, generally provided well for their Hawaiian
families contributed to the generally tolerant attitude. Even if a migrant had two
Chinese wives in Hawaii, it was unlikely that anyone outside the Chinese com-
munity would know about it. Antibigamy laws were not strictly enforced until
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after Annexation. In 1910 a Honolulu English-language newspaper reported the

case of a prominent Honolulu Chinese merchant who was arrested and convicted
of bigamy by federal authorities.21 While visiting See Yup and Chung Shan dis-
tricts in 1932, the writer learned of wealthy returned wah kiu from Hawaii who
were living in Hong Kong, Macao, or in their villages with a wife and one or
more concubines, but by that time concubinage was rare in Hawaii and widely
condemned in the Chinese community.
The mui tsai system was even more strongly condemned than concubinage
by non-Chinese who learned about it. Mui tsai were young girls whose poverty-
stricken parents, upon being paid a certain sum, bound them to work without
wages in the households of their masters. Mui tsai were particularly in demand
in families where wives and daughters had bound feet. Char says that in the early
days “Chinese immigrants of better circumstances brought mui tsai with them to
Hawaii. Some came posing as daughters or domestics of immigrants and were
later consigned to their new employers as mui tsai either by prearrangement or by
sale after their arrival.”22 Chinese custom demanded that a marriage be arranged
for a mui tsai in her middle teens. The husband was required to pay a dowry of
an amount usually larger than that originally paid for the girl.
After Christian missionaries became active among the Chinese in the Islands,
in the 1880s, this practice was severely criticized by Caucasians, and occasionally
an article in English-language newspapers brought a specific case to public at-
tention. In 1895 a Chinese girl who was reported to have been “twice sold into
slavery in Hawaii” and “treated cruelly” found refuge in a seminary for Hawaiian
girls.23 In 1900 a Honolulu newspaper reported a meeting of the Women’s Board
of Missions at Central Union Church at which a speaker condemned the “slav-
ery” existing in Hawaii. A few months later a major Chinese organization was
reported to have rescued a “cruelly used Chinese slave girl from her alleged own-
ers” and to have filed charges against them.24 In the 1920s a group of Chinese
in Hawaii, mostly Christians, started a movement against the practice under the
leadership of a Chinese Christian minister who had been born and raised in a See
Yup district and who had been a minister in Chung Shan district.25 By that time
firm application of American immigration laws had made it difficult to bring mui
tsai into the Islands and no new cases were being reported, but those in the move-
ment hoped that the practice could be eliminated in Kwangtung and eventually
all of China.
The missionary paper, The Friend, claimed in 1892 to know about “an occa-
sional case of infanticide among the Chinese” in Hawaii, and in 1912 a Chinese
migrant couple was charged with having murdered an infant daughter. Though
some extremely poor families in the migrants’ home districts did practice female
infanticide, no other reference to it in Hawaii appeared.26 However, many second-
generation Chinese have reported that their parents thought that daughters were
of little worth, certainly as compared to sons. In the 1930s the writer was told of
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a few cases of parents who gave young daughters to other Chinese families. Not
all these parents were poor; some simply placed a low value on daughters. Chi-
nese Christians were among the first to change this attitude, no doubt, but general
change among the migrants was probably less a result of taking over Western at-
titudes than of coming to realize the practical contributions daughters in Hawaii
could make to the family.
Footbinding was a matter on which migrants capitulated to the revulsion ex-
pressed by other groups and to legal action against it. Footbinding was by no
means universal in the migrants’ home districts in China. Hakkas did not prac-
tice it. Poor Punti parents who had no hope of arranging marriages with men in
wealthy families did not bind their daughters’ feet since girls who could not do
farm work might not be able to get husbands. Most of the earliest Punti migrants
did come from poor families, but footbinding increased in the wah kiu villages as
they became more prosperous and families aspired to marrying their daughters to
men from affluent families in neighboring villages or to wealthy wah kiu.
By the 1880s and 1890s Punti migrants to Hawaii and Hawaii-born Punti
men who had been taken to China for marriage began bringing brides with bound
feet to the Islands. When these women began to appear in public occasionally,
footbinding became a subject of critical comment among non-Chinese. Some of
these women began to bind their daughters’ feet in anticipation of arranging their
marriages when the family returned to China—or, in the Islands, to men who
could make a large marriage settlement. This practice outraged the missionary
group, whose feelings were shared in this matter by other non-Chinese. The prac-
tice became a public issue in 1895 when it was learned that a Chinese girl had
died as a result of footbinding. The missionary journal, usually defensive of the
Chinese, sharply attacked them on this practice:
The question is forcing itself upon public attention, whether Chinese mothers
in this country are any longer to be permitted to torture their young daughters
by binding their feet. Their motive is to fit their children for good social posi-
tion. They do it out of mistaken kindness, but it is notwithstanding a dreadful
cruelty. It is a process of prolonged agony, and it makes its victims unhappy
cripples for life.
On April 12th a child in Fowler’s yard died of lock-jaw after some
weeks of torture. For several days her cries had been frightful. If Chinese
enjoy the privileges of residence here, may they not be required to conform
to our conceptions of the demands of humanity, and to abstain from obvious
cruelties? … It would seem that this evil ought to be suppressed. If the Chi-
nese cannot comply with civilized sentiments in this matter, let them betake
themselves elsewhere.27
Later that year footbinding was made a statutory offense, and shortly after-
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ward a Chinese father was charged with violating the law and fined twenty-five
dollars.28 Although Chinese succeeded in getting this law declared unconstitu-
tional on technical grounds, footbinding was discontinued in Hawaii before it was
outlawed in China. Hakkas joined Caucasian Christians in condemning it, and
as Punti migrants came to regard Hawaii as their permanent family home they
realized that footbinding was not only of no advantage but an actual handicap
to improving their social status. A second-generation Chinese student told how
these considerations changed her own parents’ attitudes:
My mother’s feet were bound since she was a young girl. It was a custom of
the Chinese people at that time. I am most thankful that my parents did not
bind any of my older sisters’ feet. Many of the Chinese who came to Hawaii
kept up this custom and bound their daughters’ feet. My mother opposed this
custom of footbinding because of her own pain and sufferings. Very often she
would remind us when we misbehaved, “You should be lucky that father and
I did not return to China. Then we will have to bind your feet like mine.” We
would usually laugh, although very grateful at heart, and retort, “Why didn’t
you bind ours then? Mrs. ——’s daughter is born in Hawaii and her feet are
bound.” “No,” she would answer, “although I have broken one of the widely
practiced rules of China, I would much rather see you standing on your nat-
ural feet. This is the Sandalwood Islands and not where your grandparents
live!”
As with many other immigrant groups, including those from Europe, com-
pulsory school attendance laws brought migrants into occasional conflict with
authorities in the Islands, but the combination of traditional Chinese respect for
education and desire for improving their status soon resolved this problem. Com-
pulsory school attendance, initiated in the 1890s and more strongly enforced after
Annexation, was resisted by some migrant parents who wanted their children, es-
pecially their sons, to help the family make money with which to return to China.
Government officials persuaded United Chinese Society leaders to hear the Cau-
casian missionary working among the Chinese explain why parents should obey
the law. Years later, when it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, the Society made
a point of the fact that the government had turned to it “to explain matters to the
Chinese people and to encourage the carrying out of the law.”29 Whatever the So-
ciety’s influence was, the percentage of Chinese school-age boys who did attend
school rose steadily until it was the highest of all ethnic groups in the Islands, in-
cluding the Caucasians. Somewhat later this was also true of Chinese girls.
Chinese migrant parents, like parents in almost every immigrant group in
America, faced the demands of children who wanted to adopt modern ways,
outside the home if not inside. Even though Hawaii-born Chinese of the early
generations were regarded as models of obedience and respect for their elders and
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Group Status
seldom rebelled openly against their parents’ Chinese ways, they brought home
the pressures they felt at school and at work to conform to patterns prevailing
in the Westernized community. Children, especially the young adults, often ap-
pealed to their parents’ desire for status in Hawaii to persuade them to modify or
abandon Chinese customs.
Excerpts from two accounts of marriages written by students in the 1930s in-
dicate the acceptance of traditional Chinese practices by Hawaii-born girls of an
earlier period:
I have five married sisters and two brothers who are married. Two of these
marriages, of my oldest and third sisters, were through matchmaking. My
oldest sister did not meet her husband until the day of her wedding. My third
sister met her husband only after they were matched and agreed upon by the
parents of my sister and her husband. There is at home today a set of pictures
of my sisters which they used in match-making. These pictures show them
dressed in their old-styled and best Chinese gowns with wide flowery laces
around their sleeves and front. They did not smile but appeared reserved and
sweet.
My mother’s bridal costume still retains memories of her old-fashioned

marriage. Its gorgeousness aroused my imagination. To quote from my
mother—“I wore a red mandarin coat and skirt. The matchmaker accom-
panied me over to your father’s cousin’s home where the wedding was to be
held. The vehicle was decorated with two lanterns and a red sash. My head
was covered with a large red handkerchief. After the short ceremony, I had to
serve tea to everyone present. Then I changed my entire costume and the rest
of the evening was spent informally—the interest being centered around me.
They put me through all kinds of embarrassing stunts to entertain the folks.”
An account of a marriage in 1937 involving two prominent Chinese families

was reported in detail in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin during a decade when society
sections of Honolulu’s two main English-language papers were beginning to
publicize society events of non-Caucasians along with those of Caucasians; the
account documents acceptance by migrant parents of marriage practices more in
accord with Western ways:
Miss Esther Au, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Au Tin Kwai, became the bride
of Richard Q. Y. Wong, son of Mr. and Mrs. Wong Nin, at eight Wednesday
evening at the Waialae Golf Club. About 3,000 friends of the young couple
were present. The bride was given in marriage by her father. The Rev.
Stephen Mark officiated. Mrs. H. L. Chung sang Because I Love You Truly,
accompanied on the piano by Miss Juanita Lum-King.
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Miss Au wore a gown of white lace with a train. The gown had an Eliz-
abethan collar and the neck-line was cut low in front…. The bride wore a
fingertip veil and carried anthuriums and orchids.
Miss Beatrice Lum, who was the maid of honor, carried talisman roses
and wore baby roses in her hair. Her gown was of steel-colored lace made
with a full skirt….
The bridesmaids, Miss Mary Au and Miss Rosie Wong, wore pink lace.
Their dresses also had full skirts…. Dressed in dainty white organdy were
the little flower girls, Carol Wong and Irene Chinn…. Harold Wong was the
best man, Albert Lai and Ah Tung Wong, ushers.
The ceremony was held in front of a latticework decorated with ti leaves
and calla lilies. The side screens were of ti leaves and gardenias. On the cen-
ter table were white larkspurs and white tapers. Tender melodies were played
throughout the ceremony.
A reception and dancing were held later.
To welcome the bride at her new home, special firecrackers were im-
ported from China. They fired off words of good fortune….
Many prenuptial parties have been given for the bride during the past
few weeks…. Her parents were hosts at a going away dinner party…. Invita-
tions were sent to 300 friends and relatives of the bride’s family.
The bridegroom’s parents will be hosts at a dinner for 400 persons Sun-
day afternoon to honor the young Mr. and Mrs. Wong.30
An Ethnic Group in the Island Community

Participation as a distinctive ethnic group in community-wide activities defined
the Chinese collective identity and status more clearly than did the less percep-
tible cultural compromises and changes made by individual migrants and their
children. The Chinese migrant community gradually became part of the common
life of the Hawaiian social world through the participation of their organizations
in multiethnic social enterprises. Activities in which the Chinese took part as a
distinct ethnic group were of three general types. The first comprised projects un-
dertaken because of events elsewhere in the world—such as World War I—which
aroused the concern of the people of the Islands. The second type, which had
great influence in drawing the Chinese into the multiethnic society, had to do with
cooperative efforts to deal with Island welfare problems. The third type included
community-wide events to which the Chinese contributed as a distinctive cultural
group.
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Group Status
The Island Community and the World

Following the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, people in Hawaii un-
dertook to collect funds for relief of the victims. Chinese in the Islands were also
active in raising funds for this cause though their concern naturally was mainly
for the plight of the Chinese in San Francisco. The United Chinese Society helped
raise over $1,100, and funds sent directly to relatives by Chinese migrants in
Hawaii added considerably to this amount. In 1913, when a disastrous flood oc-
curred in Ohio, the United Chinese Society was one of the groups mentioned in
Honolulu newspapers as helping to raise money for Middle West relief organiza-
tions. That same year Chinese contributed to relief for the Titanic survivors.31
World War I brought migrants to a sharper awareness of the ties that were
binding them ever more closely to the common life of the peoples of Hawaii and
to the United States, even though Hawaii was still a territory and most of them
were not American citizens. The philosophy of democracy and antimonarchism
which Dr. Sun’s supporters had preached, as well as the commitment of the set-
tler migrants and their Hawaii-born children to America, made them partisans of
the Allied countries. Two companies of the National Guard had been made up
entirely of Hawaii-born Chinese, even before World War I started, and they were
well trained when America entered the war. Over a thousand Chinese in Hawaii
enlisted in the military services—most of them Island-born but some young mi-
grants also. Hundreds of migrant parents with sons in the armed forces inevitably
became more identified with America, and other groups in the community be-
came more aware of the Chinese as part of what had already become “American
Hawaii.” Chinese newspapers in Honolulu reported events of the war; many mi-
grants and local-born Chinese were employed by the army and navy; teams of
Chinese helped out in Liberty Bond drives. A few Chinese died in the service.
Two who were killed in battle in Europe are still commemorated by the name of
an American Legion branch—Kau-Tom Post No. 11—formed by Chinese veter-
ans in Hawaii.32
The destructive earthquake in Japan in 1923 was the occasion for another re-
lief campaign in the Islands in which the United Chinese Society helped to raise
funds. In 1925 Chinese teams in a national fund drive for the Young Women’s
Christian Association collected $21,000. Five years later a Chinese committee
working with a Caucasian committee in Honolulu raised $4,300 for the National
Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association in China.33 In that same
year the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce enlisted the support of the
entire Island community in response to appeals from the China Famine Interna-
tional Relief Commission because of an unusually severe famine in North China.
A committee of two migrants and two Hawaii-born Chinese called upon the gov-
ernor of the territory. According to a Chinese account:
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Group Status
His Excellency, the Governor, was only too glad to give us his kokua [help]
and immediately issued a proclamation, setting aside May 23rd, as “China
Relief Day” and urging the people in the territory to do all they could to help
the suffering millions in the sister Republic.
With the wonderful support and cooperation from all the local news-
papers and also those from other islands and with the hearty assistance
of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, Japanese Chamber of Commerce,
Japanese Merchant’s Association, Department of Public Instruction, Catholic
Churches, Federation of Churches, Hawaii Civic Club, all other Civic and
Social institutions, and all the enthusiastic workers for the drive, the cam-
paign was a great success. In less than two weeks, a total of $42,825.48 or
$146,107.31 Mex. was collected and forwarded directly to the China Famine
International Relief Commission in Peiping.34
Island Community Welfare

As early as the 1850s Chinese migrants became involved in a project designed
to benefit all groups in Hawaii by raising money for the Honolulu Hospital. A
subscription list dated 12 May 1859 shows that S. P. Samsing & Co. donated a
hundred dollars, a handsome contribution at that time, and several other Chinese
names were on the list. In the same period another prominent Chinese firm,
Hungtai, was a “main pillar” of support of the Oahu Charity School.35 Doubtless
there were many such instances that were not publicized. In a later period several
Chinese were among those listed by the Pacific Commercial Advertiser as sub-
scribers to a fund for developing a park in Honolulu as a memorial to President
McKinley.36 In December 1910 the Advertiser publicized a Malihini Christmas
Tree project in downtown Honolulu to which Chinese and Japanese organizations
were asked to contribute. The Advertiser announced that Chinese, “led by the
venerable Chinese merchant, Chu Gem,” did contribute although a Chinese court
interpreter, in turning over the money, made it clear that this did not mean that
“Chinese recognize the religious significance of Christmas.”37
In social welfare matters the relationship between the Chinese and the com-
munity at large eventually underwent important changes. Migrant leaders, anx-
ious that their group be regarded favorably by others, had for years taken pride in
pointing out that Chinese took care of their own needy. The Chinese petition sent
to Washington in 1916 stated:
The Chinese of Hawaii have always been a law-abiding race, no matter under
what government the Islands have been. Tong wars have never been nor
do they exist in Hawaii. Our Tongs or societies are purely benevolent and
eleemosynary institutions, for without ever seeking aid beyond our own race
we take care of our sick, needy, and aged, never burdening or having re-
311
Group Status
course to the charities of other races.38
It was only after World War I that numbers of the less fortunate migrants
were reaching the age when they became permanently unemployed and depen-
dent. By this time many of the successful migrants had returned to China and
those who had settled in Hawaii were becoming less responsive to appeals for aid
from migrants from their villages or districts—and even less to appeals from oth-
ers with whom they had no traditional or regional ties. The number of dependents
was increasing at a time when the organizations based on old-world sentiments
were losing their solidarity, and few of these organizations had the financial re-
sources to take care of those in need.39
When it became apparent that many indigent migrants were not receiving
help from village, district, or clan societies, “all-Chinese” organizations such as
the United Chinese Society and the Chinese Merchant’s Association became ac-
tive in dispensing charity. Indigents of any surname, dialect, district, or village
were nonetheless tung bau for whom it was felt the Chinese community should
assume responsibility. In 1910 a committee chaired by the Chinese consul and in-
cluding such prominent men as C. K. Ai, Chu Gem, and the Reverend Y. T. Kong,
a Christian minister, had been organized to consider ways of caring for penniless
migrants who resisted return to China. The committee undertook to collect money
from Chinese, and some of its members used their own money to help the needi-
est men. In 1918 the committee was enlarged and a Chinese Women’s Committee
was formed to work with it.
In spite of these efforts, a growing number of elderly Chinese men in dire
want came to the attention of the Honolulu Social Service Bureau. After con-
sultations between Chinese leaders and representatives of churches and social
agencies, it was decided to establish a home for these men. In 1920 property in
Palolo Valley (in Honolulu) was purchased after negotiations involving the Char-
ities and Social Welfare Committee of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, the
Chinese Merchants’ Association, the Associated Charities, and the Hawaii Sugar
Planters’ Association. The initial purchase money was made up from $5,000
turned over from the defunct Wai Wah Hospital and a similar amount from the
Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association. Contributions from the Chinese community
added $1,500.
The first eight men moved into the Palolo Chinese Home in November 1920.
As the number of elderly dependent single men increased and Chinese societies
found themselves unable to pay the expenses of those in the Home as well as
those still being cared for in the society clubhouses, the Social Service Bureau
gave financial help as well as some casework service. Cecilia Chuck Hoy, the
Hawaii-born daughter of a member of the Chinese Committee, was a caseworker
for the Social Service Bureau who did some of the admissions work for the
Home. In 1926, when about eighty men were living there, the Bureau paid $3,149
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Group Status
of the Home’s $5,500 expenses; Chinese organizations and individuals paid the
remainder. That year Dr. K. F. Li, the leading physician of the migrant genera-
tion and active in the Home’s operation, announced that some way must be found
to relieve the Chinese societies of paying for the men’s care. It was agreed that
the Social Service Bureau would assume responsibility for both the financial sup-
port of the Home and its administration, with the cooperation of the bilingual
second-generation Chinese manager and an interethnic board of directors includ-
ing some eminent migrant and second-generation Chinese. The Social Service
Bureau would also give assistance to other needy migrants outside the Home. In
return, the Chinese community was to become more active in the campaigns of
the United Welfare Fund which supported the Bureau.40
Although the Social Service Bureau took over the main financial support
and management of the Palolo Home, members of the Chinese community con-
tinued to help with special projects. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, they
funded several additions to the Home. Members of the migrant generation usually
raised money by direct appeals to well-to-do Chinese and by sending delegations
to Haole firms and wealthy Haole philanthropists. The younger generation of
Chinese, acting through the Hawaii Chinese Civic Association, used different
methods in a 1936 drive for funds to add another building at the Palolo Home:
The committee taking charge … decided … to sell benefit tickets, with the
grand prize being a Ford V-8, as the means of raising funds…. Besides the
car, additional prizes will consist of a refrigerator, a radio and an electrical
washing machine. The committee also chose Consul General Mui to head
the honorary committee which will consist of [follows the names of eminent
Chinese of the migrant generation].41
Several Chinese organizations sold tickets to a benefit circus performance

and operated concessions at the circus. There was also a benefit dance at a local
golf club. These entertainments were widely advertised in the English-language
newspapers, which also gave generous space to the progress of the drive. After
these activities had raised about five thousand dollars a delegation was sent to
selected Haole firms and Haoles who matched the sum with an additional five
thousand.
Meanwhile, in carrying out their part of the arrangement by which the Social
Service Bureau took over the operation of the Home, Chinese cooperated in the
annual United Welfare Fund drives. For several years, beginning in 1927, the
United Chinese Society and the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce jointly
organized Chinese teams of migrant and Hawaii-born Chinese to solicit the Chi-
nese community for donations and pledges. In 1936 nine teams of men and a
women’s team were appointed by the captain of the Chinese Division of the
campaign. The one hundred sixty-eight names on these teams appeared to con-
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Group Status
stitute the core of a Chinese who’s who on Oahu that year. Over the ten-year
period 1927–1936, Chinese teams secured annual contributions averaging about
six thousand dollars, which did not include the money subscribed through non-
Chinese firms and government departments by their Chinese employees.42
By the late 1940s the ethnic emphasis in the general welfare drive was re-
duced to ethnic teams for an “advance gifts” committee. In 1949 the Honolulu
Community Chest asked the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to take charge of
the Chinese Division of the Advance Gifts Committee. Two Chinese bankers on
the Community Chest’s board of directors served as liaison with the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce and the United Chinese Society. Thirty-three “prominent
Chinese businessmen” were appointed to the committee; sixteen of these attended
a luncheon at Wo Fat at which four Haoles involved in the fund drive described
the needs of the Red Feather agencies and asked for generous contributions from
Chinese before the opening day of the drive. By that day the Chinese Division
had reached only about half of its $10,000 goal, but the full amount was collected
before the drive ended.43 In the 1940s the board of directors of the Community
Chest and some of its committees were still consciously interethnic—as were the
boards of many of the Red Feather agencies such as the Young Men’s Christian
Association, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the International Insti-
tute, the Hawaii Cancer Association, and the Honolulu Social Service Bureau.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce which had participated jointly with
the United Chinese Society in the welfare fund drives was the successor of the
Chinese Merchants’ Association. The change in its name suggests the accommo-
dations being made by Chinese to the interethnic life of Hawaii. While one of
the Chinese Chamber’s stated objectives was “to promote Chinese commerce in
Hawaii,” another was “to inspire in its members a sense of civic responsibility
and an active interest in all community affairs.” Increasingly, promotion of Chi-
nese commercial interests involved helping Chinese businessmen compete in an
economy that was becoming less and less ethnically oriented. Relations between
the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce
were friendly and generally cooperative. The Honolulu Chamber for a long time
remained predominantly Caucasian even though, beginning in the 1920s, a few
Chinese migrant and Hawaii-born businessmen were admitted to membership.44
These Chinese members provided liaison between the two chambers, keeping
the Chinese Chamber in touch with developments in the Honolulu Chamber and
helping to coordinate the work of the two organizations on various community
projects. The Chinese Chamber’s attitude was expressed in the president’s annual
report for 1930:
In closing, I wish again to remind you of the importance of our Chamber as

a part of the local community. We are no longer isolated from the activities
of other organizations and we must do our part in order to retain that high
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Group Status
esteem and Aloha we now have. Our success or failure as an organization

depends on each and every one of you. Give it your hearty support and coop-
eration in all its work and endeavor, and it will be successful. Be indifferent,
and it spells defeat.45
Island Community Events

The time came when migrant Chinese leaders were asked to arrange for Chinese
participation in community-wide public events planned by leaders in Caucasian
or Caucasian and Hawaiian circles. Still later Chinese leaders were included in
interethnic committees planning such events. The earliest instance was the China
Engine Company’s appearance in the annual firemen’s parade in Honolulu be-
ginning back in 1879. In 1881 when King Kalakaua was welcomed back from
his world tour the Chinese put a pagoda over an arch at King and Fort Streets in
downtown Honolulu.46 After Annexation the Chinese were represented in public
celebrations of American national holidays. On George Washington’s birthday in
1910 Chinese organizations, along with Japanese, took part in a parade sponsored
by the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, then a Caucasian group. A Chinese
newspaper reported:
The Haole paper yesterday commented that the Orientals of Honolulu are
very enthusiastic over the celebration of Washington’s birthday. Yesterday
about 200 Chinese were discussing and making plans to deck out a Flower
carriage [float] to represent China in the holiday parade. It is rumored that
the Imperial consul has decided to sponsor a carriage also. His secretary met
civic leaders to discuss plans yesterday.
Japanese merchants are also attentive on the matter, and it is said that
they will try to sponsor a better program than that of the Chinese.47
On the 22nd day was the birthday of the first president of the United States.
Consul Leong asked our tong members to participate in the ceremony with
the lion dance and the flower car. Thanks to the stores, shops, and various
organizations and wui goon for welcoming our lion dance with firecrackers.
Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong.48
Two years later, when Chinese were asked to assist in Fourth of July cere-
monies, ten Chinese women agreed to help decorate the pavilion on the palace
grounds.49 Probably the largest celebration held in Honolulu up to that time
came in 1934 when President Roosevelt visited Hawaii. More than a dozen floats
prepared by the United Chinese Society, the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Com-
merce, other Chinese organizations, and Chinese firms were in an elaborate night
parade climaxing the celebrations.50
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Group Status
There was a period in Hawaii when most sports were played by teams from
different high schools or by amateurs organized by neighborhood or ethnic iden-
tity. Some Chinese teams were sponsored by Chinese firms, just as other ethnic
and mixed teams were sponsored by firms and community associations. Mi-
grants, especially those with children, became interested in the athletic events in
which Hawaii-born Chinese were playing. The All-Chinese Baseball Team was
so successful in 1912 and 1913 that sponsors sent it on mainland tours. An ACA
(All Chinese Athletes) association organized other events such as the track meet
held on Chinese New Year’s Day in 1910 in which teams from McKinley High
School, Oahu College, St. Louis College, and Central Grammar School as well as
the victorious ACA competed.51
In such sports, of course, Hawaii-born Chinese were representing their ethnic
group in a way that had nothing to do with their ancestral cultural heritage. The
athletic events were not “cross-cultural” with each ethnic group contributing ele-
ments of its traditional culture. Baseball and track were American. The Chinese
youths who participated in them generally had quite different interests from those
of members of the Chinese Physical Culture Association who were practicing
Chinese calisthenics and other forms of exercise. In fact, most Chinese youths
tended to disparage “old-world ways”; they were more interested in the things
they considered modern, the things that were popular in the Hawaii-American
community. In a paradoxical way, however, the desire of the migrants’ children
to merge into the multiethnic social order of Hawaii brought about a new appre-
ciation of Chinese traditional culture.
As Hawaii began to take pride in its ethnic diversity, China’s ancient artistic,
literary, and philosophical achievements became sources of prestige for the Island
Chinese. Even though most migrants had come from poor families with limited
knowledge of China’s “high culture,” Island Chinese encouraged Chinese schol-
ars to come to Hawaii and began taking more interest in Chinese art, literature,
and philosophy. The founding of the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1927 by a
member of a kamaaina (“Island-born,” “established”) Caucasian family played
a considerable part in this development. The goal of the academy’s founder was
to encourage children and adults of all ethnic groups in Hawaii to appreciate the
culture of their ancestors. Although the early donors were mainly Caucasians,
local Chinese also contributed to the academy’s Asian art collection. When the
academy’s educational department started programs to develop appreciation of
the cultural practices of local ethnic groups, Hawaii Chinese gave performances
and demonstrations at the academy during Chinese New Year. By the 1930s,
when these programs started, some of the activities formerly associated with
this and other festivals, especially in Chinatown, had almost disappeared. The
dragon dance was no longer performed and the lion dance was seen only rarely.
In 1937 the academy persuaded the Chinese Physical Culture Association, whose
members were mostly young men educated in China and former students of
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Chinese-language schools in Honolulu, to stage a lion dance at the academy for

a largely non-Chinese audience. Other programs showed some of the features of
the Dragon Boat Festival and similar celebrations.
The growth of the tourist industry in Hawaii after World War II gave an im-
petus to a rather different kind of Chinese cultural revival.52 When the Hawaii
Tourist Bureau (now the Hawaii Visitors Bureau) recognized the potential tourist
appeal of the distinctive cultures of Asian ethnic groups in the Islands, adver-
tisements in mainland publications began to include pictures of Oriental festivals
and temples along with the obligatory beaches, hula dancers, and Hawaiian mu-
sicians. In the late 1940s, when the Bureau decided to promote Aloha Week each
fall as a series of events to attract and entertain tourists, Chinese were asked to
participate along with other ethnic groups in special “cultural” events. In 1948
one of these events was an International Lantern Parade in which the Chinese
were represented by a lion dance, three floats, and some students carrying Chi-
nese lanterns. The following year the United Chinese Society and the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce, having been approached again by Caucasian representa-
tives of the tourist industry, planned a more elaborate schedule of Chinese events:
participation again in the Aloha Week lantern parade with floats, the lion dance,
and marchers carrying lanterns as in the previous year, to be followed by a Chi-
nese play in English by the Hawaii Chinese Civic Association on the Ala Moana
Park stage; an all-day community-wide picnic in a Honolulu public park; a Nar-
cissus Festival during the Chinese New Year season.
The Chinese part in the Aloha Week parade was praised in the press, as
was the play which drew an estimated audience of fifteen thousand. Some seven
thousand people went to the picnic, where there was both Western and Chinese
entertainment. Chinese businessmen donated prizes for the young people’s blind-
fold races and pie-eating contests; a lion dance and exhibitions of Chinese boxing
and fencing were presented for onlookers. The big event, however, was the first
public selection of a Chinese Beauty Queen. The winner, chosen from fifty-seven
contestants, was given a two-week trip to West Coast cities where she would be
entertained in the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles and attend the
Rose Bowl football game.
The Narcissus Festival events, which also included a beauty queen contest,
emphasized features of Chinese culture that would interest tourists and local
non-Chinese. The festival took its name from the South Chinese tradition of culti-
vating narcissus plants which bloom at the time of the lunar new year. For the first
time in nearly forty years a 110-foot Chinese dragon, brought from Hong Kong,
danced in Chinatown’s streets along with lion and unicorn dances. More lanterns
were imported for a parade through Chinatown by Chinese children and there
was a fireworks display in Aala Park adjacent to Chinatown. The United Chinese
Society-Chinese Chamber of Commerce hall had exhibits of narcissus, Chinese
painting, calligraphy, scrolls, and screens. At the American Chinese Club the pub-
317
Group Status
lic was invited to a tea at which members, both men and women, received the
guests and gave talks about Chinese teas, decorations, gowns, and other “things
Chinese.” Two Chinese plays were performed nightly, one in English, the other
in Chinese. The beauty contest was judged in the largest downtown theater and
the following evening a Narcissus Ball at the American Chinese Club’s pavilion
honored the Narcissus Queen and her court. The festival was acclaimed a great
success in both English-language and Chinese newspapers. Chinese businessmen
found it profitable enough to continue their support, and a Narcissus Festival has
been held annually ever since.
By the end of the 1940s, of course, few of the early migrant men and women
were alive to see these events, much less take part in them, and many of the activ-
ities would probably have been as strange to them as anything they encountered
in nineteenth-century Hawaii. The ethnic distinctiveness of post-World War II
Hawaii Chinese was far different from that of the migrant community. Hawaii-
born Chinese were much more integrated, individually and collectively, into the
community at large than most of their forefathers had been, and also much more
so than most American-born Chinese of their generation in mainland U.S. cities.
Nevertheless, many families continued to observe some ancestral customs and
practices, many informal social groups as well as formal organizations were en-
tirely Chinese in membership, and the presence of the Chinese as a distinctive
group in Island community events demonstrated the persistence of Chinese group
identity.
318
Appendix:
Population of the Hawaiian Islands by Racial and Ethnic Groups: 1853–1970
Group 1853 1860 1866 1872b 1878b 1884b 1890b

Number
Hawaiian 70,036 65,647 57,125 49,044 44,088 40,014 34,436
Part-Hawaiian 983 1,337a 1,640 2,487 3,420 4.218 6,186
Caucasian 1,687 1,900b 2,400a 2,944 3,748 16,579 18,939
Portuguese 87 85a 90 424 486 9,967 12,719
Other Caucasian 1,600 1,815 2,310 2,520 3,262 6,612 6,220

Chinese 364 816 1,306 2,038 6,045 18,254 16,752
Japanese 116 12,610
Korean
Filipino 5
Puerto Rican
Negro
All Other 62 100a 488 384 684 1397 1,067
Total 73,137 69,800 62,959 56,897 57,985 80,578 89,990
Percentage of Total
Hawaiian 95.8 94.0 90.7 86.2 76.0 49.7 38.2
319
Appendix:
Part-Hawaiian 1.3 1.9 2.6 4.4 5.9 5.2 6.9

Caucasian 2.3 2.7 3.8 5.2 6.5 20.6 21.0
Portuguese 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.7 0.8 12.3 14.1
Other Caucasian 2.2 2.6 3.7 4.5 5.7 8.3 6.9
Chinese 0.5 1.2 2.0 3.6 10.4 22.6 18.6
Japanese 0.1 14.0
Korean
Filipino
Puerto Rican
Negro
All Other 0.1 0.1 0.8 0.7 1.2 1.7 1.2
Source: 1853–1960, Andrew W. Lind, Hawaii’s People (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1967), p. 28; 1970, U.S. Census.
a Estimate.
b Based on Romanzo Adams, The Peoples of Hawaii (Honolulu: Institute of Pacific Relations,
1933), pp. 8–9.
c Includes Spanish, not separately listed.
d Includes Spanish and Portuguese, not separately listed.
e Includes Spanish, Portuguese, and Puerto Ricans, not separately listed.
1896b 1900b 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970g
31,019 29,799 26,041 23,723 22,636 14,375 12,245 10,502 71,274

8,485 9,857 12,506 18,027 28,224 49,935 73,845 91,597
22,438 26,819 39,158c 49,140c 73,702c 103,791d 114,793d 202,230e 301,429
15,191 18,272 22,301 27,002 27,588

7,247 8,547 14,867 19,708 44,895
21,616 25,767 21,674 23,507 27,179 28,774 32,376 38,119 52,375
24,407 61,111 79,675 109,274 139,631 157,905 184,598 203,876 217,669
4,533 4,950 6,461 6,851 7,030 9,625
2,361 21,031 63,052 52,569 61,062 68,641 95,354
4,890 5,602 6,671 8,296 9,551
320
Appendix:
233 695 348 563 255 2,651 4,943 7,517

1,055 415 376 310 217 579 1,618 12,864f 13,316h
109,020 154,001 191,909 255,912 368,336 423,330 499,769 632,772 768,559
28.4 19.3 13.6 9.3 6.1 3.4 2.5 1.7 9.3

7.8 5.1 6.5 7.0 7.7 11.8 14.8 14.5
20.6 17.3 20.4 19.2 20.0 23.0 23.0 32.0 39.2
13.9 11.9 11.6 10.6 7.5
6.7 5.4 7.7 7.7 12.2
19.8 16.7 11.3 9.2 7.4 6.8 6.5 6.0 6.8
22.3 39.7 41.5 42.7 37.9 37.3 36.9 32.2 28.3
2.4 1.9 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.3
1.2 8.2 17.1 12.4 12.2 10.8 12.4
2.5 2.2 1.8 2.0 1.9
0.2 0.4 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.8 1.0
1.0 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.3 2.0 1.7
f Includes Koreans, Samoans, Micronesians, and American Indians, not separately listed.
g “Persons of mixed stock, including part Hawaiian, are classified either on the basis of self-identi-
fication or race of father. Many persons who would have been counted as part-Hawaiians under the
former definition were classified as Caucasian, Chinese, Filipino, or some other race in 1970”
(Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii [Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977] p.
26).
h Includes Samoans, Micronesians, and American Indians, not separately listed.
321
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
AH Archives of Hawaii
PCA Pacific Commercial Advertiser
Notes
1. John Meares, Voyages Made in 1788–1789 from China to the Northwest
Coast of America (1791; reprinted ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1971); ex-
tracts in Bruce Cartwright, Jr., ed., Hawaiian Historical Society Reprint No.
1, p. 31.
2. “Log of the Chatham,” Honolulu Mercury 2(December 1929):86; Captain
George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and
Round the World, 5 vols. (London, 1801), 5:112–113.
3. John Diell, Sandwich Island Gazette, 19 May 1838. The remaining “foreign-
ers” comprised “some 200 to 250 Americans, 75 to 100 Englishmen, and a
few French, Spanish, and Portuguese.”
4. Vancouver, Voyage of Discovery 1:378–379.
5. L. L. Torbert, “Chinese in Sugar,” The Polynesian, 31 January 1852.
6. Wai-Jane Char, “Three Chinese Stores in Early Honolulu,” Hawaiian Jour-
nal of History 8(1974):10–38.
7. Peggy Kai, “Chinese Settlers in the Village of Hilo before 1852,” Hawaiian
Journal of History 8(1974):39–75.
8. Hawaiian Annual, 1888, pp. 28, 88–89; “A Model Plantation,” PCA, 25
December 1880; Honolulu Advertiser, 2 August 1931. As with Chun Fong,
322
Notes
called Afong in Hawaii, close relations between Chinese migrants and

Hawaiians resulted in Hawaiianization of Chinese names, usually of a given
name rather than of a surname; Chung Hung was known as Ahung, Wong
Chun as Achun, Tom Wan as Awana, and so on.
9. The Polynesian, 30 October 1852.
10. Char, “Three Chinese Stores,” pp. 20, 25, 27–28, 30–31.
11. Ibid., pp. 14–16, 18–19, 25–26.
12. Ibid., pp. 12–13, 15, 23–24, 28–29; Kai, “Chinese Settlers,” pp. 53–54; The
Friend, 12 December 1905, p. 12.
13. Arthur C. Alexander, Koloa Plantation, 1835–1935: A History of the Oldest
Hawaiian Sugar Plantation (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1936), pp.
10, 22, 37; Hawaiian Annual, 1890, p. 90.
14. Report of the Hawaiian Immigration Society (Honolulu, 1874), pp. 10, 19
(AH).
15. Tin-Yuke Char and Wai-Jane Char, “The First Chinese Contract Laborers to
Hawaii, 1852,” Hawaiian journal of History 9(1975):128–134.
16. Clarence E. Glick, “The Voyage of the ‘Thetis’ and the First Chinese
Contract Laborers Brought to Hawaii,” Hawaiian Journal of History
9(1975):135–139.
17. “Arrival of Coolies,” The Polynesian, 10 January 1852.
18. Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, vol. 1, no. 3 (Hon-
olulu: Government Press, 1852), pp. 6–7 (AH).
19. Address of E. H. Allen to the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society. Quoted
in The Polynesian, 10 July 1852.
20. Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, vol. 2, no. 1 (Hon-
olulu: Government Press, 1854), p. 103 (AH).
21. 31 January 1852. The dialect spoken by Chinese from the Amoy area of
Fukien is more appropriately known as Hokkien dialect.
22. The Friend, 19 August 1856, p. 58.
23. Char and Char, “First Chinese Contract Laborers,” p. 133.
24. Report of the President of the Bureau of Immigration to the Legislative As-
sembly of 1886, Appendix, pp. 266–267 (AH) (hereafter cited as Bureau or
Board of Immigration Report, depending on the name of the agency in dif-
323
Notes
ferent periods. It was first organized in 1865 as the Board of Immigration,

changed later to Bureau and back again in 1890 to Board). Some of these ar-
rivals were undoubtedly resident Chinese returning from trips to China. New
arrivals and returning Chinese are not listed separately in the immigration re-
ports. Some discrepancies appear in the statistics inasmuch as the census for
1860 reported 816 Chinese, 452 more than in 1853. Deaths and permanent
departures would have occurred in this period and there could have been few
children born since according to reports no more than five Chinese women
came to Hawaii in the 1850s; children born to Chinese fathers and Hawaiian
mothers presumably would have been put into the category of “half-castes”
used in these early censuses.
25. The Hawaiian legislatures between 1864 and 1892 were reported to have ap-
propriated $1,181,320.87 for the work of the government in the interests of
labor immigration. See U.S. Senate, Report of the Committee on Foreign Re-
lations, 1894, p. 1947. The most common procedure was for the government
to license a few individuals and firms, including Chinese, to act as agents in
the business of importing contract laborers. These agents were required to
pay the customs fees and to subject the men to strict physical examination.
See Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, pp. 22–23 (AH).
26. This contract is quoted in full by Tin-Yuke Char, comp., The Sandalwood
Mountains (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), pp. 275–277; he
also describes (p. 319) assistance given by the Reverend William Lobscheid,
at a mission in Kwangtung province, in the recruiting of these laborers.
27. Hawaiian Annual, 1898, p. 18.
28. During most of this half century the arrivals annually exceeded the number
of Chinese leaving the Islands.
29. S. S. Hill, Travels in the Sandwich and Society Islands (London, 1856), p.
31.
30. Incidents of a Whaling Voyage, 1841 (New York:Tuttle, 1969), pp. 212–213.
31. The writer, Stephen Reynolds, had been giving dancing lessons in this “Chi-
namen’s Hall.”
32. PCA, 23 October 1869; Hawaiian Gazette, 12 July and 8 August 1876; see
also PCA, 8 October 1870; C. C. Bennett, Life on the Sandwich Islands (San
324
Notes
Francisco: Bancroft, 1893), pp. 25–26.

33. Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, pp. 77–78. At different periods this
same argument was advanced in advocating importation of South Sea Islan-
ders, East Indians, and Japanese. For favorable views of Chinese marriages
with Hawaiian women see The Friend, March 1894, p. 24, and Romanzo
Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii (New York: Macmillan, 1937), p.
89.
34. Hawaiian Monthly, May 1884, pp. 99–100; July 1884, p. 163; PCA, 22
March 1878; The Friend, January 1880, pp. 5–6; Memorial to King
Kalakaua, 29 February 1876, Department of Interior (AH); Bennett, Life on
the Sandwich Islands, p. 30.
35. Bennett, Life on the Sandwich Islands, pp. 25–26.
36. PCA, 4 March 1876.
37. Ventures of this type were not always profitable. A ship chartered by the
pioneer member of the Chung-Hoon family to bring between 200 and 300
Chinese to Hawaii was shipwrecked at the island of Molokai. C. K. Ai, him-
self a successful migrant from Chung Shan district, not far from Macao,
relates that his wealthy grandfather in China loaned $60 to each of about
seventy young men to migrate to North and South America and Australia
with the expectation of being paid back $120; none of the men is known to
have repaid any of the money. See Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy-Nine Years
in Hawaii (1879–1958) (Hong Kong: Cosmorama Pictorial Publisher, 1960),
pp. 16, 105. Throughout the text the author, whose surname was Chung, is
referred to as C. K. Ai, as he was called in Hawaii.
38. Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, p. 163 (AH).
39. The total number of males, fifteen to fifty years of age, of all origins was
35,506. Of the 15,798 females in these ages, 10,510 were Hawaiians.
40. Board of Immigration Report, 1890, pp. 88, 90; Hawaiian Monthly, May
1884, pp. 97–101; PCA, 17 May 1888, 6, 11 September 1889; Bennett, Life
on the Sandwich Islands, p. 30.
41. J. A. Cruzan, “The Chinese in Hawaii,” The Friend, 1 November 1882, p.
115.
42. Ibid.
325
Notes
43. The Friend, November 1885, pp. 3–4.

44. One of their champions, for instance, poured out invectives against the Chi-
nese and the planters in a pamphlet called The Planters Mongolian Pets, or
Human Decoy Act (Honolulu, 1884) (AH); PCA, 6 September 1889, 22 Jan-
uary 1892; The Friend, December 1892, p. 6.
45. During the next four years over 11,000 Chinese arrived, but the number of
Chinese on the sugar plantations increased only 589 to a total of 5,626.
46. Planters’ Monthly, May 1883, p. 26.
47. One hundred forty-eight Japanese came in 1868. During the height of the
anti-Chinese agitation and beginning of restriction of Chinese immigration
the Hawaiian government sent a representative to Japan (1883) to arrange for
the importation of Japanese contract laborers.
48. Third Report of the Commissioner of Labor on Hawaii, 1905, pp. 387–388.
See U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
59th Cong., 1st sess., 1906, House doc. 580.
49. According to a report of the Board of Immigration only 165 Chinese were
on plantations under contract in 1894, but an additional 2,444 had remained
on plantations as day laborers.
50. “Japan’s ‘Peaceful Invasion’,” Hawaiian Annual, 1898, pp. 131–134; “Peril
from Heathen Japanese,” The Friend, May 1899, p. 34. Between 1886 and
June 1894, some 23,071 men, 5,487 women, and 133 children had been
brought in from Japan.
51. Report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1897, p. 12 (AH).
52. This is the estimate made by Romanzo Adams, the most thorough scholar
of demographic data on nineteenth-century Hawaii. See his Interracial Mar-
riage in Hawaii, pp. 30–42.
Notes
1. “An Act for the Government of Masters and Servants” in 1850 provided the
legal machinery for enforcing labor contracts. See Penal Code of the Hawai-
ian Islands (1850), pp. 170–178 (AH).
2. Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, p. 36 (AH).
3. Elizabeth Wong, “Leaves from the Life History of a Chinese Immigrant,”
326
Notes
Social Process in Hawaii 2(1936):39.

4. From one of the papers written by students in the author’s classes,
1929–1937. Personal names and most place names in this and other unpub-
lished documents are fictitious.
5. Adapted from a record in the files of a Honolulu social welfare agency,
1937. Personal names and most place names in this and similar agency
records are fictitious.
6. Honolulu Advertiser, 14 August 1932. A mou is about one-sixth of an acre.
7. These conditions were set forth in a contract signed on 23 June 1865 be-
tween Dr. Hillebrand and Wohang Company of Hong Kong. See Interior
Department, Miscellaneous: Immigration—Chinese, 1864-June 1865 (AH).
8. From a student paper in the writer’s files.
9. Board of Immigration Report, 1892, pp. 67–78; reprinted in Char, Sandal-
wood Mountains, pp. 75–80.
10. Koloa Sugar Co., Koloa, Kauai, to the secretary of the Board of Immigra-
tion, 6 March 1897. Board of Immigration. Letters, v. 1 (AH).
11. Labor Contract, 1870. Also in the Chinese language. See Interior Depart-
ment, Miscellaneous: Immigration—Contract Forms (AH).
12. See translation of letter of 19 September 1891, Interior Department, Miscel-
laneous: Immigration—Chinese (AH).
13. “Rules for the Government of Chinese Laborers on Waihee Plantation, April
1866,” Interior Department, Miscellaneous: Immigration (AH). New Chi-
nese laborers found poi disgusting. See Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 73.
14. Board of Immigration Report, 1899, p. 21 (AH).

15. See Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 72–73.
16. Hawaiian Board of Immigration Report of the Secretary, 1879–1899, p. 8
(AH).
17. Letter from sheriff on the island of Hawaii to the marshal of the Republic of
Hawaii, 22 January 1897, ibid., p. 62.
18. Wray Taylor, “Labor in Hawaii,” U.S. Bureau of Foreign Commerce, De-
partment of State, Consular Reports No. 620, 5 January 1900 (Hawaiian
Sugar Planters’ Association Library).
327
Notes
19. Based on records of the Chinese Bureau, Department of Foreign Relations

(AH).
20. George N. Wilcox, whose experience in plantation management extended
back into the 1870s, said in an interview in 1930 that he could not remember
a Chinese woman having lived on his plantation—not even a Chinese store-
keeper’s or camp director’s wife, often the only Chinese woman in a planta-
tion community.
21. Adapted from a record in files of a Honolulu social welfare agency.
22. Bureau of Customs, Report of the Collector General of Customs, Port of
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, 1874 (AH).
23. F. W. Damon, “Tours among the Chinese,” The Friend, 7 July 1882, p. 76.
24. As late as the 1930s, long after most Chinese had left the sugar plantations,
at least three-fourths of the work was still unskilled. See Andrew W. Lind,
An Island Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), p. 253.
25. Bureau of Immigration Report, 1882, p. 12. Possibly even these three sugar
boilers were on Chinese-owned plantations.
26. Board of Immigration Report, 1899, p. 36. By the 1940s the few Chinese
employed on plantations were mostly Hawaii-born and fared much better in
the competition for preferred positions.
27. Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, pp. 175, 250. Contracts in 1870 stipu-
lated six dollars a month for men, five dollars for women. The wages for day
laborers did not include food.
28. Board of Immigration Report, 1892, p. 25.
29. Lind, Island Community, p. 256. (Filipinos were included with the Chinese
in the figure for the latter date.) The migrants’ objections to plantation work
were similar to those expressed by Hawaii-born boys in the 1920s: “Promi-
nent among the unfavorable conditions [mentioned] are low wages; early
rising; the burdensome, grimy character of the work done under the hot sun
and in the rain; lack of opportunity for promotion; racial discrimination in
the better jobs; the way … laborers are treated by plantation foremen, police,
and doctors, and in general, a type of plantation discipline which denies what
the worker regards as reasonable freedom.” The quotation is from Romanzo
Adams and Dan Kane-zo Kai, The Education of the Boys of Hawaii and their
328
Notes
Economic Outlook (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1928), p. 42.

30. In 1907 there were 3,245 Chinese workers on sugar plantations; in 1917
there were 2,129.
31. Interview, with the aid of an interpreter, at Tung Wo clubhouse, Kohala,
Hawaii, 23 December 1935.
32. Adapted from a record in the files of a Honolulu social welfare agency.
Notes
1. John W. Coulter and Chee Kwon Chun, Chinese Rice Farmers in Hawaii,
University of Hawaii Research Bulletin no. 16 (March 1937), p. 9; Ralph
S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 3 vols. (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1938–1967), 2:151.
2. The census report of 1896 stated: “As rice planters the Chinese have almost
a monopoly, numbering 718 out of 844. In this line, the Chinese have been of
great benefit to the country. Large areas of land which were unfit for ordinary
cultivation, great reed-covered swamps, which were the home of the wild
duck and the water hen, have been made productive by them and now yield
a fine rent to the owners of the land and a revenue, in taxation, to the govern-
ment.” See General Superintendent of the Census, Census of the Hawaiian
Islands, 1896, pp. 77–78.
3. Charles K. Iwai, “The Rice Industry in Hawaii” (M.A. thesis, University of
Hawaii, 1933), p. 28; A. S. T. Lund and K. Murata, Third Annual Summary of
Costs and Farm Efficiency Studies in Rice Production, Kauai County, 1934,
University of Hawaii Extension Circular no. 26 (April 1935), p. 3.
4. The Friend, 1 April 1882, p. 36. A large portion of Damon’s valuable ob-
servations on Chinese migrants in rural Hawaii in 1882 has been reprinted in
Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 200–217.
5. The Friend, November 1892, p. 86; Supreme Court, Hawaii Reports,
4(1882): 457–459 (AH).
6. Board of Immigration Report, 1890, pp. 78, 90; 1892, p. 73; 1897, p. 8;
1898, p. 13; 1899, p. 14.
7. Honolulu Advertiser, 14 August 1932.
8. Adapted from a record in files of a Honolulu welfare agency, 1937.
329
Notes
9. Ibid.
10. The Friend, 1 April 1882, p. 37.
11. Coulter and Chun, Chinese Rice Farmers, pp. 162–169.
12. Adapted from a record in files of a Honolulu social welfare agency, 1937.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Compiled from interviews and a feature article by Ah Huna Tong, Honolulu
Advertiser, 30 December 1931. Ho Yee, referred to earlier, was another rice
planter who established a family. Ho Yee married his first wife on a trip to
China in 1882, and he made two other trips to China in 1894 and 1911. Five
sons and ten daughters were born to his first and second wives. For additional
examples of Chinese rice planters and of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs in
other rural ventures, see Chinese Historic Sites and Pioneer Families of
Kauai, compiled and edited by Tin-Yuke Char and Wai-Jane Char (Honolulu:
Hawaii Chinese History Center, 1979).
16. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 4 March 1919; Iwai, “Rice Industry in Hawaii,” pp.
48–49.
17. PCA, 27 September 1873.
18. Albert Rebel, Survey of Hawaiian Industries (Honolulu: Chamber of Com-
merce, 1930), p. 19; Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 189–190, 205.
19. Compiled from interviews and biographies in Chinese in Hawaii: A Résumé
of the Social, Industrial, and Economic Progress of the Chinese in the
Hawaiian Islands, with an Historical Sketch of the Events Leading to and
the Foundation of the Chinese Republic (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Print, 1913), p. 20 (hereafter cited as Chinese in Hawaii, 1913); Tan Shan
Wah Kiu (“Overseas Chinese of Hawaii”)—The Chinese of Hawaii (Hon-
olulu: Overseas Penman Club, 1929), pp. 194–195 (hereafter cited as Chi-
nese of Hawaii, 1929); Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 6 September 1930.
20. Compiled from interviews and biographies in Chinese in Hawaii, 1913, p.
27, and Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 2. Chulan Kee was also referred to as
Chulan Company, Chulan & Co., Chu Lan Lee Hook, and Chulan Brothers.
21. Board of Immigration Report, 1890, pp. 39–41; James W. Girvin, “Chinese
in the Hawaiian Islands,” PCA, 2 July 1903.
330
Notes
22. Agricultural Census of Hawaii, 1920 and 1930; Lund and Murata, Third An-
nual Summary, p. 3. By 1929 acreage in rice had declined further to 2,045
and by 1933 to 825.
23. “Petition to the Administrators of the Government of the United States
of America for the Betterment, Conditions and Admission of Chinese La-
borers to the Territory of the Hawaiian Islands,” in Hearings before the
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House, 64th Congress, First
Session on Petition by United Chinese Society for Admission of Chinese
to Hawaii, Tuesday, September 5, 1916 (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1916), pp. 3–7. Among the thirty-two Chinese individuals or firms
endorsing the appeal were Sing Chong Co., claiming to have already aban-
doned 1,923 acres of rice land, Y. Ahin (Young Ah In), 1,330 acres, Wong
Wai and Ching Shai, 350 acres, and Wong Leong, 800 acres, all of Oahu;
Leong Pah On, 250 acres, and C. Ako, 125 acres, both of Kauai.
24. Iwai, “Rice Industry in Hawaii,” pp. 36, 43.
25. Diane Mei Lin Mark, The Chinese in Kula (Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese His-
tory Center, 1975), p. 1.
26. Y. Baron Goto, “Chinese Brought Most Plant Life to Hawaii,” in Robert
M. Lee, ed., The Chinese in Hawaii: A Historical Sketch (Honolulu: Adver-
tiser Publishing Co., 1961), p. 26 (hereafter cited as Lee, Chinese in Hawaii,
1961). This publication was a fiftieth anniversary volume for the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii.
27. U.S. Bureau of Foreign Commerce, Consular Reports, “Coffee Culture in
the Hawaiian Islands,” 17 January 1898, pp. 2, 8.
28. John Wesley Coulter, Land Utilization in the Hawaiian Islands, University
of Hawaii Research Publications no. 8 (1931), pp. 108–109; PCA, 5 October
1894; Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, p. 72.
29. Lee, Chinese in Hawaii, 1961, p. 87. For a biography of the founder of
Wing Hing Company, Chong Sum Wing (known locally as C. S. Wing),
see Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 47. A biography of a major partner in the
firm, Chong Song, appears in Tan Shan Wah Kiu (“Overseas Chinese of
Hawaii”)—The Chinese of Hawaii: Volume II (Honolulu: Overseas Penman
Club, 1936), p. 19 (hereafter cited as Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936). See also
331
Notes
August Soren Thomsen Lund, “An Economic Study of the Coffee Industry
in the Hawaiian Islands” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1934), pp.
233–235.
30. The leading export variety of banana for many years, known locally as the
Chinese banana, was introduced into Hawaii about 1855. Another favorite in
Hawaiian markets is the “apple” banana, brought by Chun Fong from China
in 1868. See Willis T. Pope, Banana Culture in Hawaii, Hawaii Agricultural
Experiment Station Bulletins, no. 55 (1926), pp. 23, 32.
31. Ibid., p. 21.
32. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 150–151.
33. Ibid., p. 215; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 19; Goto, “Plant Life,” p. 26. C.
K. Ai noted that Au Yong was growing sugarcane and bananas as well as
pineapples in the 1920s.
34. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 217–246.
35. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 138; Lee, Chinese in Hawaii, 1961, p. 127.
Wong Nin, a taro planter in Manoa Valley, Honolulu, in the 1890s, became
wealthier when he turned his taro lands into residential property. See Chung,
My Seventy-Nine Years, p. 230.
36. Goto, “Plant Life,” p. 27.
37. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 64–65, 71–72, 96, 136, 163–168, 253.
38. If census data differentiating between rural and urban occupations by race
were available for the 1860s and 1870s, they would show that even more
than 80 percent of the migrants in those years were in nonurban occupations.
Notes
1. Clarence E. Glick, “The Relation between Position and Status in the
Assimilation of Chinese in Hawaii,” American Journal of Sociology
47(1942):667–669. This article was based on data presented in Clarence E.
Glick, “The Chinese Migrant in Hawaii” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Chicago, 1938).
2. Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928), pp.
25–27.
3. Interview, 14 October 1931.
332
Notes
4. Interview, 12 November 1930.

5. “Fifty Years of Hawaiian Commercial Development,” The Friend, Septem-
ber 1893, pp. 66–67.
6. Lee, Chinese in Hawaii, 1961, p. 90.
7. McKenney’s Hawaiian Directory (Oakland, California: Pacific Press, 1884),
p. 300.
8. Husted’s Directory of the Hawaiian Islands, 1896–1897, p. 404.
9. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, p. 5.
10. The occupational index is generally obtained by dividing the proportion of a
subcategory of employed people (say, Chinese males) in a given occupation
by the proportion of the entire category of employed people (say, all males)
in the same occupation for the same area and date. A quotient of more than 1
means that the group is overrepresented in that occupation; a quotient of less
than 1 signifies less than statistical parity, or underrepresentation. See Lind,
Island Community, pp. 245–264.
11. Idwall Jones claims that during the early Gold Rush days clothing was sent
to Honolulu from San Francisco to be laundered; he also asserts that the first
Chinese laundry in San Francisco was started in 1851. See “Cathay on the
Coast,” American Mercury 8(1926):4.
12. Hawaiian Kingdom, Session Laws, 1890, pp. 18–19. The Supreme Court de-
clared the law constitutional during the same year. In June 1898 The Friend,
p. 48, reported that “the unsanitary practice in Chinese laundries of spraying
clothes from the mouth for ironing has been made a misdemeanor, with a fine
of ten dollars.”
13. Fan kwai (“foreign devil”), a term commonly used in China in reference
to Caucasians, especially during the nineteenth century. Fan wah (“foreign
language”) here means English. See Bung Chong Lee, “The Emigrants as a
Social Force in a Chinese Village: A Study in Social Contacts” (unpublished
manuscript, 1936), p. 5.
14. See, for example, Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 181–182.
15. Ho Pan, after twenty-one years as a yard man and gardener for George P.
Castle, was given a trip to China and assured of a pension for the rest of his
life. See Honolulu Advertiser, 8 January 1930.
333
Notes
16. Hsieh T’ing-Yu (Tin-Yuke Char), “Origin and Migrations of the Hakkas,”
Chinese Social and Political Science Review 13(1929):204. The article is
reprinted in Tin-Yuke Char, The Bamboo Path: Life and Writings of a Chi-
nese in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese History Center, 1977), pp. 78–93.
17. Adapted from a record in files of a Honolulu social welfare agency, 1937.
Several cooks and restaurant operators who were more provident established
families in the Islands.
19. By 1950 there were 388 salaried or self-employed women operating “eating
and drinking places” in addition to the 694 men. By 1970 women held 699,
nearly half, of the 1,470 jobs in this category. The ethnic identity of em-
ployed persons was not reported in the 1970 census; casual information
suggests that Hawaii-born Chinese women were well represented in this
occupation.
20. Tan Shan Wah Kiu (“Overseas Chinese of Hawaii”)—The Chinese of Hawaii
Who’s Who, 1956–1957 (Honolulu: United Chinese Penman Club, 1957), pp.
11, 159 (hereafter cited as Chinese of Hawaii Who’s Who, 1957); Lee, Chi-
nese in Hawaii, 1961, p. 87.
21. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp. 5, 46; conversations with Chong Pang Yat dur-
ing the early 1930s.
22. The ethnic identity of the 6,975 women employed in 1970 as waitresses
is not supplied by the census. Given the popularity of Chinese restaurants
among tourists as well as local residents, and with third- and fourth-gener-
ation Chinese women seeking employment, it is quite likely that Chinese
women now have statistical parity in this occupation. Chinese men and
women of alien status who have migrated to Hawaii from Hong Kong and
Taiwan since 1950 are undoubtedly overrepresented in this type of work. See
David Fu-Keung Ip, “Motivations and Adjustments: An Assimilation Study
of Chinese Immigrants to Honolulu” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaii,
1972); Loraine Koga, Winnie Tse, et al., “Chinese Immigrants: A Descrip-
tive Study” (M.S.W. thesis, University of Hawaii, 1975).
23. In the districts from which most Chinese migrated to the Islands the business
class did not enjoy the prestige it gained in Hawaii’s Chinese community.
334
Notes
24. The occupational categories were: laborers, farmers, fishermen, mariners,

drivers and teamsters, mechanics, planters and ranchers, merchants and
traders, clerks and salesmen, professional men and teachers, and “other
occupations.” For the data from the censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930 this
study follows as closely as possible the classification of “major occupa-
tional classes” adopted by the U.S. census of 1940. The occupational classes
grouped under the term “preferred occupations” include those identified in
the 1940 U.S. census as: professional, technical, and kindred workers; man-
agers, officials, and proprietors; clerical and kindred workers; sales workers;
craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers.
25. Chinese in Hawaii, 1913, p. 33.
26. Ibid., p. 28; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 142.
27. Occupational index: 2.9. Unlike most Chinese migrants, those employed in
these occupations were usually from the large towns and cities of Kwangtung
province, although generally from the same districts as most of the Chinese
in Hawaii—Chung Shan, See Yup, and Sam Yup.
28. Honolulu Advertiser, 20 November 1932.
29. Chinese in Hawaii, 1913, p. 24. One of Lee Chu’s partners in this venture
was Doo Wai Sing, office manager of the lumber company for eleven years
and by the 1930s one of the most successful and prominent Chinese in Hon-
olulu. See Honolulu Advertiser, 27 June 1932; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p.
71.
31. The 1930 census reported 606 seamstresses and female dressmakers; 456
of these were Japanese, only 13 Chinese; the Chinese women were less than
one-third of the number that would be expected according to the occupa-
tional index. Since the year 1930 Japanese women working at this occupation
have become much more numerous. The 1950 census reported 1,102 women
in the occupations of “dressmakers and seamstresses, except factory” but
does not identify the number of Japanese and Chinese women thus em-
ployed.
32. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 59; Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, p. 24; Chinese
of Hawaii Who’s Who, 1957, p. 34; Lee, Chinese in Hawaii, 1961, p. 86.
335
Notes
33. Wah Chan Thom, “Chinese Business from Within,” Hawaii Chinese News,
27 January, 28 July, 3 August 1928; 8 February 1929; 4 April, 18 July, 19
September 1930; Pacific Herald, 3 February 1929; Tin-Yuke Char, interview,
14 October 1931.
34. Kum Pui Lai, “The Natural History of the Chinese Language School in
Hawaii” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaii, 1935), p. 10.
35. Compiled from Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp. 81–82; Pacific Herald, 10 Jan-
uary 1929; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 16 January 1929, 11 May 1931; Chung,
My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 92, 105. Ho Fon died in Honolulu 11 May 1931.
36. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 64; Chinese of Hawaii Who’s Who, 1957, pp.
1–2; Lee, Chinese in Hawaii, 1961, p. 89; Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years,
pp. 37, 43–47, 68, 83, 94, 136, 190–193, 312, 318.
37. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp. 184, 186–187, and interviews.
38. Chinese in Hawaii, 1913, p. 14; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 51; Honolulu
Advertiser, 18 September 1932.
39. The Friend, 4 January 1881, p. 4. S. P. Aheong’s career as a Christian worker
in Hawaii is described by Tin-Yuke Char, “S. P. Aheong, Hawaii’s First Chi-
nese Evangelist,” Hawaiian Journal of History 11(1977):69–76, reprinted in
Char, The Bamboo Path, pp. 232–240.
40. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 192.
41. Ibid., p. 234. The Reverend Canon Wai On Shim, for example, son of the
Reverend Shim Yin Jin of Maui, became rector of St. Elizabeth’s Church in
Honolulu.
42. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 5; Honolulu Advertiser, 14 February 1931.
Other teachers in Hawaii’s Chinese-language schools have been foreign-
born students at the University of Hawaii, Hawaii-born Chinese educated in
China, and in recent years post-World War II immigrants from Hong Kong
and Taiwan.
43. Some of these subjects were still being taught by China-born professors in
the 1970s. Since World War II refugees and the “brain drain” have added
to the number of China-born scholars and scientists teaching subjects unre-
lated to Chinese culture. Outside the field of Chinese studies, the first faculty
member at the University of Hawaii of Chinese ancestry was Ruth Lu Tet
336
Notes
Yap, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Kwai Fong Yap, who became an in-
structor in the mathematics department in 1928 after receiving her B.A. and
M.A. degrees from the University of Hawaii and two years of further gradu-
ate study at Columbia University.
44. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp. 5, 79.
45. Chinese in Hawaii, 1913, p. 22; Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, p. 53; Li Ling
Ai, Life Is for a Long Time: A Chinese Hawaiian Memoir (New York: Hast-
ings House, 1972), p. 327. Min Hin Li, the eldest son of Dr. and Mrs. Li, was
one of the first of the large number of Island-born Chinese to enter the med-
ical profession.
Notes
1. Bung Chong Lee, “Bucktoy Village Families in Hawaii” (unpublished
manuscript, 1936), p. 1; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 30 September 1933.
3. Biographies of Lee Ong and Leong Han in Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp.
112, 119.
4. Biographies of Chun Kam Chow, Doo Wai Sing, Hung Hoy, Lee Chow, and
Wong But Ting in Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp. 57, 71, 86, 107, 177, and
interviews.
5. Honolulu Advertiser, 1 December 1931.
6. C. K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge:
M.I.T. Press, 1959), p. 69; Hsiao-Tung Fei, Peasant Life in China (New
York: Dutton, 1939), pp. 267–274.
7. Sources for this section included Hawaii Chinese News, 10 August 1928;
Hawaii Hochi, 15 October 1928; interview with Lee Kau, 8 October 1931;
and student papers, Sociology Department, University of Hawaii.
8. Data on savings deposits are from Report of the Treasurer to the Legislature,
Territory of Hawaii, 1910–1936. According to one estimate $3 to $4 million
was sent by Hawaii Chinese to Hong Kong for speculative purposes in the
early 1930s, resulting in heavy losses. See Kum Pui Lai, “The Natural His-
tory of the Chinese Language School in Hawaii,” p. 52.
9. Chinese in Hawaii 1913, p. 16.
337
Notes
10. According to a tabulation made by Robert M. W. Lee from a 1950 directory,

129 of the 620 Honolulu realtors listed were Chinese. See “Vertical Mobility
among the Chinese in Hawaii” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaii, 1951), p.
52. This number was more than three times statistical parity for Chinese in
this occupation in 1950.
11. Report of the Treasurer to the Legislature, Territory of Hawaii, 1910–1932.
12. Paul Kimm Chow Goo, “Chinese Economic Activities in Hawaii,” Chinese
of Hawaii 2, 1936, p. 12.
13. High-rise apartment houses and condominiums were to come in later
decades, with Island-born Chinese among those who built them and bought
units for rent or speculation.
14. Some qualification regarding particular occupations is necessary: some
Hawaii-born Chinese men who, according to census tabulations, are placed
in the second category of Table 3 (actually “managers, officials, and proprie-
tors”) have higher prestige than some of those in professional occupations.
The migrant generation’s regard for wealth as a major criterion of status is
still widely shared among Island-born Chinese, as it is among other ethnic
groups.
16. The earliest documented reference to a Chinese woman in Hawaii concerns
a servant who came with an American family from Macao in 1837 and re-
turned to China in 1843. See Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 42–43. The
earliest archival records of Chinese wives in Hawaii appear to be those of
the arrival of a woman, Nip Ashue, age twenty, in 1854 and two others, not
identified by name, in 1855. The arrival of 52 Chinese women in 1865 was
mentioned in Chapter 1. Census data indicate that there were 107 Chinese
foreign-born women in Hawaii in 1872, 231 in 1878, 871 in 1884, and 1,419
in 1896. There were 17,068 foreign-born Chinese men in 1884; in 1896 there
were 17,963. While the high sex ratio among the Chinese caused concern
in Hawaii, arrivals of women in the 1890s and the first two decades of the
1900s resulted in a much more balanced sex ratio in the Islands than existed
among Chinese in the continental United States.
17. One case history in the files of a Honolulu social welfare agency in 1937
338
Notes
mentions a Punti woman with bound feet who was brought to Hawaii as a
wife for a Chinese migrant and who found herself forced to work on her
knees in the fields of her husband’s peanut farm on Oahu.
18. It was common practice for unmarried employed Chinese daughters to turn
over their wages to their parents and receive an allowance in return. As
late as the middle 1930s a Chinese graduate of the University of Hawaii,
employed in a social welfare agency in Honolulu, was living at home and
turning over her salary to her father to be combined in the family fund with
the earnings of her unmarried brothers. However, this money was in a sense
held in trust for her. When she went to the mainland for graduate study, her
expenses were paid for from the family fund.
19. One of these women may have been “Mother Chang” (Mrs. Chang Ki Loy),
who came to Kohala, Hawaii, in 1865 with her husband and sons. When
her husband, a Hakka, died before his three-year contract on a sugar plan-
tation ended, his widow and three sons did truck farming in Kohala for a
year and then with a daughter (Miss Mary Chang) moved to Honolulu where
“Mother Chang” entered domestic service with a prominent Haole family.
See Honolulu Advertiser, 29 November 1931. In the 1890 census two women
were listed under the category of “professional men and teachers.” These two
women may have been Miss Mary Chang and Miss Mary Kwai Shim, both
Hawaii-born and Hawaii-educated Chinese who were teachers in 1890 in a
school for girls started by the Reverend and Mrs. Frank W. Damon in Hon-
olulu. See Ah Jook Ku, “The Pioneer Women,” Chinese of Hawaii Who’s
Who, 1957, p. 24.
20. A few women were teaching in the Chinese-language schools.
21. See Chapter 2, “Getting Off the Plantation.”
22. Hawaii Chinese Journal, 28 December 1939.
23. A sample survey completed in 1977 reported income data for military and
civilian families in Hawaii; data here are for civilian families only. The me-
dian family income (before taxes) for Chinese was $21,183, highest for all
groups for whom the median income was reported; the others, in descending
order, were: Koreans, Japanese, Caucasians, part-Hawaiians, “mixed, except
part-Hawaiians,” Filipinos, and Hawaiians. The median income for all fami-
339
Notes
lies was $17,000. The survey also reported that 3,824 of the 11,885 Chinese
families reporting incomes received $25,000 or more. An acknowledged lim-
itation of the survey was that income data were not obtained for 16 percent
of the families surveyed and for 17 percent of the Chinese. See Population
Characteristics of Hawaii, 1977, Department of Health and Department of
Planning and Economic Development, Population Report, Issue 11 January
1979), pp. 4–5, 25.
24. The third-generation Chinese mother of two recent university graduate sons,
herself a teacher and the wife of a successful medical specialist, commented
that although neither of her sons could get a job of the type for which they
were qualified she was grateful they had found jobs at which “at least they
were earning something.” They were not, she said, like some of her friends’
young Chinese sons who were “just drifting around because they can’t find
the kind of work they want.” Interview, 2 January 1977.
Notes
1. By the 1930s rural communities which had been centers of concentration
of Chinese families had lost most of these families. In the Kohala district of
the island of Hawaii the writer was told in 1935 that of the hundred or more
Chinese families once living in the district, only fourteen remained, most of
them broken by the departure of members for other places in the Islands,
mainly Honolulu and Hilo. Chinese girls complained that no young Chinese
men were left in the district.
2. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 17 March 1937, and interviews.
3. Chinese Bureau, “Women Permits, 1893–1898” (AH). The numbers of Chi-
nese women arrivals (including reentries) by decades were about as follows:
1850s, 5; 1860s, 83; 1870s, 98; 1880s, 375; 1890s, 1,588; 1900–1909, 155.
It is likely that no more than 2,200 Chinese women came before Annexation
and probably no more than 3,000 by 1940.
4. By 1930 some commuter suburbs had developed on Oahu which, if sta-
tistical data were available, should be included in this discussion of the
concentration of Chinese in Honolulu, Oahu’s central city.
5. Much of the material in this chapter is adapted from an article published
340
Notes
by the writer in 1936: “Residential Dispersion of Urban Chinese,” Social

Process in Hawaii 2 (1936):28–34. Boundaries for wards and census enu-
meration districts used by the censuses did not correspond exactly with the
boundaries of the Chinatown area; hence the data given in this section are
only approximate. A similar residential dispersion of Chinese families oc-
curred in the main towns on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai, though
the families were much less numerous than in Honolulu. A certain part of the
main towns on these islands would be designated as Chinatown because of
the location in or near the downtown section of some Chinese stores, a few
clubhouses, a church, a temple. This grouping would serve as a center for
Chinese activities and evidence of a Chinese presence.
6. C. C. Bennett, Honolulu Directory and Historical Sketch of the Hawaiian or
Sandwich Islands (Honolulu, 1869).
7. Based upon records of licenses granted by the Hawaiian government.
8. Hawaiian Annual, 1906, p. 62.
9. “Aala Park,” The Friend, May 1899, p. 35.
10. J. A. Cruzan, “The Chinese in Hawaii,” The Friend, 1 November 1882, p.
115.
11. Husted’s Directory of Honolulu and of the Hawaiian Islands, 1896–1897, p.
65.
12. By 1960 less than two thousand of the more than thirty thousand Chinese
living in Honolulu resided in the Chinatown section; only about 15 percent
of Chinatown’s residents were Chinese.
Notes
1. Over 2,200 of these 4,500 were married, mostly to women left with kinsmen
in China; others in urban Honolulu were married to Hawaiian women.
2. A. W. Palmer, Orientals in American life (New York: Friendship Press,
1934), pp. 1–2.
3. Ching-chao Wu, “Chinatowns: A Study in Symbiosis and Assimilation”
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1928), p. 158.
4. Interview with Young Hing Cham, 17 February 1932.
5. Bung Chong Lee, “The Chinese Store as a Social Institution,” Social
341
Notes
Process in Hawaii 2(1936):35–36.

6. Ibid., p. 36.
7. Sun Yun Wo, reportedly, was established in 1892; for several decades the
proprietor was Hee Cho, then his son, William K. F. Hee. See Hawaii Chi-
nese Journal, 15 September 1949; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 77.
8. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 3, 12, 17, 25, 99.
9. Bark gup biu is a Chinese phrase used locally for a lottery involving picking
the winning combination of words from a printed list. See Chung, My Sev-
enty-Nine Years, pp. 84, 96; Stewart Culin, The Gambling Games of the
Chinese in America, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania Series in
Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, vol. 1, no. 4, 1891, pp. 1–17.
10. Hawaiian Reports 8(1891):206, The Queen vs. Kaka.
11. Honolulu Advertiser, 1 June 1930.
12. Ibid., 10, 11 March 1884; The Friend, June 1892, p. 42.
13. The May 1894 issue of The Friend, p. 37, carries a reference to gambling at
this cemetery on 4 April of that year.
14. Gorham D. Gilman, “Streets of Honolulu,” Hawaiian Annual 1904, p. 77.
15. PCA, 19 February, 12 March, 22 August 1857. For supplementary details,
see Lily Lim-Chong, “Opium and the Law: Hawaii, 1856–1900,” Spring
1978 (paper in files of Department of Sociology, University of Hawaii).
16. PCA, 3 January 1887; 12, 22 September 1888; Daily Bulletin, 13 January
1887; Hawaiian Gazette, 18 January, 1, 15 February, 17 May, 28 June 1887;
Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 174–175.
17. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 98–99; Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp.
226, 302, 305.
18. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 14 November 1930; 2 February 1935; 7 February,
20 December 1936; 16 December 1938.
19. In 1933 the annual report of the Police Department, City and County of Hon-
olulu, listed 492 arrests of noncitizen Chinese during the year; 76 of them
were for drug violations, 301 for gambling. In that year there were about
2,800 foreign-born Chinese men in Honolulu.
20. Only one item concerning the possible involvement of Chinese women in
prostitution in Hawaii was found in the English-language newspapers be-
342
Notes
tween 1880 and 1920. It referred to “the case of some Chinese women who
were being landed in this country for immoral purposes,” but the implication
was that the attempted landing did not succeed. See Daily Bulletin, 17 Au-
gust 1888. James Michener, in Hawaii, seems to imply that such a practice
may have been common there as in San Francisco, but this writer found no
evidence that the fictional Chinese Hakka woman character who is brought
to Hawaii to be sold into prostitution has any basis in fact.
21. “Petition to the Administrators of the Government of the United States of
America…,” 5 September 1916, p. 6.
22. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 297–299.
23. PCA, 25 January 1879.
24. Coulter and Chun, Chinese Rice Farmers in Hawaii, p. 45.
25. Wu, “Chinatowns,” pp. 179–180. See also H. B. McDowell, “The Chinese
Theatre,” Century Magazine 8(1884):41; James D. Ball, The Chinese at
Home (London: Religious Tract Society, 1912), p. 293.
26. Chung Pai, by Kong Leen, to Charles T. Gulick, Minister of the Interior, 28
September 1885 (AH); Hawaiian Kingdom, Reports of Decisions Rendered
by the Supreme Court of the Hawaiian Islands, in Law, Equity, Admiralty
and Probate, 8 (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1893), pp. 156–158. See
Daily Bulletin, 23 August 1888, for a complaint about the “diabolical noise”
at the Chinese Theater. In the Supreme Court decision the Minister of In-
terior’s condition that the orchestra could not play after ten o’clock was
declared to be “not reasonable.”
27. Chinese movies, produced mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, have reap-
peared in recent years as part of Honolulu’s cosmopolitan entertainment fare.
This revival is primarily the result of the recent increase in the number of
foreign-born Chinese immigrants to Hawaii. Most of the films use Kuo Yu,
the Chinese national language, with English subtitles. Hence the films appeal
not only to Hawaii-born Chinese who have studied Kuo Yu but to those who
are interested in their ancestral culture as well.
28. Hawaiian government authorities were willing to let these men practice on
the Chinese migrants, but they early saw the necessity of some regulation as
shown by a law passed by the legislature in 1880 setting forth the conditions
343
Notes
under which a person who could demonstrate his right to practice medicine
in China could secure a license to do the same in Hawaii.
29. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 11 May 1928. Massage, moxibustion, and acupunc-
ture as methods of treatment are claimed to have been practiced among
Chinese for some three thousand years. See K. Chimin Wong and Lien-Teh
Wu, History of Chinese Medicine (Tientsin, China: Tientsin Press, 1932), pp.
28–30. In the 1970s Honolulu had a resurgence of the practice of acupunc-
ture; patients and practitioners included non-Chinese as well as Chinese.
Concern has arisen regarding the need for more stringent regulation of per-
sons allowed to practice acupuncture.
30. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 32, 100, 105.
31. Wong and Wu, History of Chinese Medicine, p. 91.
32. Ah Huna Tong, “Young American Is Priest of Old Chinese Temple Here,”
Honolulu Advertiser, 20 February 1933.
33. Sau Chun Wong, “Chinese Temples in Honolulu,” Social Process in Hawaii
3(1937):27.
35. “A Honolulu Chinese Joss House,” The Friend, April 1880, p. 32.
36. “Idol Temples in Honolulu,” The Friend, October 1887, p. 85.
37. C. K. Ai, who was in business in Chinatown in 1886, says that the destruc-
tive fire of that year was started by a Chinese gambler who was careless in
handling candles he had bought to burn before “the altar of the Goddess of
Chance.” See Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, p. 96.
38. Wong, “Chinese Temples in Honolulu,” p. 29.
39. Ibid., pp. 32–33.
41. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 119, 313–318.
42. St. Peter’s Church, Golden Jubilee, 1886–1936 (Honolulu: W. W. Ahana
Printing Co., 1936), pp. 1–4; Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 192–196.
43. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 230–234.
Notes
1. Romanzo Adams estimated that there were about 400 legal marriages of
344
Notes
Chinese migrants to Hawaiian women during the years 1840–1870 and 400
to 500 between 1871 and 1899; he notes that the period of 1900–1916
was one of increased marriages of Chinese to Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian
women. See Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii, pp. 146–150.
2. Translated by Young Hing Cham, April 1932.
3. Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii, pp. 90–98; Doris M. Lorden,
“The Chinese-Hawaiian Family,” American Journal of Sociology
40(1935):453–463.
4. Interview by Margaret M. Lam, in files of the Department of Sociology, Uni-
versity of Hawaii.
5. Ibid.
6. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 40, 43–44, 62, 75.
7. “A Chinese Family in Hawaii,” Social Process in Hawaii 3(1937):50–55;
reprinted in Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 120–126. The writer of this
account points out that one of her brothers was faced with serious conflict be-
tween the two wives in a home he established in China. The first wife was a
Hawaii-born Chinese; the other, China-born, was brought into the home only
eight months after his marriage to the first wife.
8. Paul C. F. Siu, “The Chinese Family in Chicago,” manuscript (Department
of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1933), p. 3. Samuel G. Wilder, who had
been sent to Asian ports in 1870 to investigate possible sources of contract la-
borers, wrote to the president of the Board of Immigration from Hong Kong,
11 March 1870: “It is very seldom you can induce any Chinese high or low
to take his wife No. 1 with him…. All the information I can get goes to prove
that Chinamen never take their first wife with them.” (See Interior Depart-
ment, Miscellaneous: Immigration—Chinese, AH.) Wilder claimed in 1870,
“You can buy, in China, all the women you want from $75 to $1,000…. I
bought one, for which I paid 75 Mexican dollars, and she is now a servant in
my household.” (See PCA, 22 October 1870.) George N. Wilcox, in an inter-
view on 12 November 1930, told about a Chinese rice planter at Hanalei,
Kauai, who had bought a “slave girl” as a second wife after his first wife
died.
9. Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii, pp. 337–539.
345
Notes
10. Unless otherwise identified, materials quoted in this chapter are from papers
written by Hawaii-born Chinese students.
Hawaii,” p. 49.
12. Secretary, Board of Immigration to H.M.’s Consul-General in Hong Kong,
11 January 1893. (See Interior Department, Miscellaneous: Immigra-
tion—Chinese, AH.)
13. The Friend, 4 January 1881, Supplement, p. 1.
14. Biennial Report of the President of the Board of Education to the Legislative
Assembly of 1882, p. 38 (AH).
15. Secretary, Board of Immigration to H.M.’s Acting Consul-General in Hong
Kong, 2 June 1891. (See Interior Department, Miscellaneous: Immigra-
tion—Chinese, AH.)
16. The Friend, 7 July 1882, p. 80.
17. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 87, 106.
18. Lai, “Natural History,” pp. 93–94.
19. Peak enrollment in one of the two large schools was 1,350; in the other it
was over 1,000. By the fall of 1975 enrollment had dwindled to about 400 in
one and less than 200 in the other. Only two other Chinese-language schools
existed in Honolulu in 1975, both in the Kaimuki area, with less than 100 stu-
dents between them. See Lehn Huff, “Chinese Language Schools in Hawaii
Today” (Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese History Center, 1975). Census data for
1970 indicate that there would have been about 9,000 Chinese from five to
fourteen years old in Honolulu in 1975 and about 14,000 from five to nine-
teen years old.
Notes
1. Stephen Reynolds’ Journal, 1824–1845 (Cambridge: Harvard College Li-
brary Microfilms, no. 9258, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society), 12 No-
vember 1838, 4 May 1841.
2. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 7–8; Chock Lun, “Chinese
Organizations in Hawaii,” Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1956, p. 33. Much of
Chock’s description of over one hundred Chinese organizations in Hawaii is
346
Notes
reprinted in Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 148–159.

3. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 171–176. Char gives the names and lo-
cations of over thirty Chinese cemeteries. The cemetery for Hoklo people is
mentioned in Tin-Yuke Char and Wai-Jane Char, “The First Chinese Con-
tract Laborers in Hawaii, 1852,” Hawaiian Journal of History 9(1975):133.
A Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii Award of Merit states that the
Lin Yee Chung Association (successor of Lin Yee Wui) was established in
1877.
4. S. Couling, “Triad Society,” Encyclopaedia Sinica (Shanghai: Kelly and
Walsh, 1917), pp. 572–573; W. A. Pickering, “Chinese Secret Societies and
Their Origin,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
(July 1878):67–84
5. Hsieh T’ing-Yu [Tin-Yuke Char], “Origin and Migrations of the Hakkas,”
Chinese Social and Political Science Review 13(1929):222; G. Barth, Bitter
Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States, 1850–1870 (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 24–25. Char’s article on the
Hakkas was reprinted in Char, The Bamboo Path, pp. 78–93.
6. Chock, “Chinese Organizations,” pp. 30–31, 35; Char, Sandalwood Moun-
tains, pp. 169–171. Most of the Hoong Moon societies are named in the lists
by Chock and Char, but neither list is complete.
7. Lum Pui Young, “The Chinese on Windward Oahu: Waiahole, Waikane, and
Hakipu,” mimeographed (Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese History Center, 1975),
pp. 2–3.
8. Interview with Shao Chang Lee, 13 October 1930. See also Maurice Freed-
man, “Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Sin-
gapore,” in L. A. Fallers, ed., Immigrants and Associations (The Hague:
Mouton, 1967), pp. 17–48. Freedman’s observations are similar to those of
Professor Lee, but he found that other branches had mixed membership. A
list of forty-one contributors to the reconstruction in 1917 of the Ling Hing
Wui Goon building in Hilo showed that twenty were from See Yup (thirteen
from Toi Shan, four from Sun Wui, three from Yen Ping); twenty were from
Heung Shan (Chung Shan); and one was from Pao On. Twenty-eight sur-
names were on the list. Information compiled with the help of Bung Chong
347
Notes
Lee, 28 December 1935.

9. Interviews at Halawa, Kohala, Hawaii, 25 December 1935.
10. Interviews with Tarn Tinn Chong, Kahalui, Maui, and Chun Ah Lung, Hana,
Maui, December 1930.
11. There is no published description of these ceremonies in the Hoong Moon
societies of Hawaii. For information on Hoong Moon societies elsewhere see
W. A. Pickering, “Chinese Secret Societies, II,” Journal of the Straits Branch
of the Royal Asiatic Society (July 1879): 1–18; J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese,
5th ed. rev. (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1925), pp. 605–614; W. P. Mor-
gan, Triad Societies in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Government Press, 1960).
According to Chock Lun the last two Chinese to administer these oaths in
Hawaii died in 1935.
12. Mark, Chinese in Kula, p. 10.
13. To disguise their real nature and activities and to make their organizations
appear acceptable to the government, some Hoong Moon societies in South-
east Asia and the continental United States referred to themselves as Chinese
Freemasons and even included the square and compass among their public
symbols.
14. PCA, 5 February 1881, 29 March, 5 April 1884.
15. F. W. Damon, “Tours among the Chinese, No. 2: The Island of Kauai,” The
Friend, Chinese Supplement, 7 July 1882, p. 80.
16. Disclosures as to Chinese Secret Societies (Honolulu, 1884). All references
to the thirty-six oaths are based on this pamphlet.
17. Leon Comber, Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya: A Survey of the Triad
Society from 1800 to 1900 (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin Inc. for the
Association for Asian Studies, 1959), pp. 134–136.
18. PCA, 9 April 1886; Daily Bulletin, 9 April 1886. In November 1885, three
months after the act went into effect, twenty-three Chinese were arrested on
the charge of maintaining an unlicensed secret society. The organization, the
Tung Hing Company, was by this time located in Honolulu’s Chinatown. The
men were acquitted.
19. Daily Bulletin, 17 October 1888.
20. Biennial Report of the Attorney-General to the Legislative Assembly of
348
Notes
1890, pp. 4–16. Ling Hing Wui Goon, organized in Hilo in 1899, replaced
Yee Wo Kung Si. When the writer interviewed members of the Ling Hing
Wui Goon in 1935, this organization was functioning primarily as a social
and benevolent society for its aging members. The Ling Hing Wui Goon
clubhouse was destroyed by a tidal wave in 1960.
21. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 168–169.
22. Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom 3:425, 429; Hawaiian Annual 1890, pp.
89–90.
23. Quoted in Board of Immigration Report, 1890, p. 80.
24. Ibid., pp. 88–89.
25. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 9 November 1928.
26. Mark, Chinese in Kula, pp. 24–25. Additional information about the
functioning of this Hoong Moon society is reported by Irma Tam Soong and
Ted T. K. Gong in A Study of the Meeting Records of the Ket Hing Society,
Kula, Maui, 1913–1947 (Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese History Center, 1979).
27. Mark, Chinese in Kula, p. 25.
29. Interview, Halawa, Kohala, Hawaii, 25 December 1935.
30. Interview with a Caucasian-Hawaiian sugar boiler, Hana, Maui, 1930.
31. William J. Bonk, “Tong Wo Society Celebration,” Hawaii Heritage News
(June-July 1976), pp. 1–2; working papers prepared by Tin-Yuke Char in
1972 for the Hawaii Chinese History Center include information about sever-
al Hoong Moon societies organized on the islands of Kauai, Maui, and
Hawaii.
32. Hawaiian Directory, 1880–1881, p. 455; C. C. Bennett, Honolulu Directory
and Historical Sketch of the Hawaiian Islands, 1869, p. 43.
33. PCA, 8 February 1879.
34. “Constitution and By-Laws of China Engine Company No. 5” (AH).
35. From the petition of this society in 1899 for a charter of incorporation. Un-
less otherwise stated, quotations from such petitions, charters granted, and
constitutions and bylaws of Chinese organizations are from documents filed
in the State of Hawaii Bureau of Regulatory Agencies, Honolulu.
349
Notes
36. Daily Bulletin, 4 February 1886. Another newspaper added that “the rear
was brought up by a Chinese band consisting of a drum and gong.”
37. The China Engine Company was said to have been ineffective in the China-
town fire of April 1886 only a few months later.
38. Lau Cheong was also one of the organizers of a district association and a sur-
name society. He was connected with a prominent Chinese firm located on
the edge of Chinatown nearest the Haole business district and was an official
interpreter for the Board of Immigration as well as a well-known recruiter of
Chinese immigrants.
39. Henry A. Peirce, U.S. Minister to Hawaii, to Hawaiian Acting Consul-Gen-
eral F. B. Johnson, Hong Kong, 9 March 1878. (See Foreign Office Letter
Book Typed Copy, No. 10, p. 17, AH.)
40. Wing-Iu Leung, University of Hawaii student from Canton, translated shang
tung as “merchant director.” “We have the shang tung in China. The Cham-
ber of Commerce in Canton … appoints one of the big merchants as shang
tung. He settles all commercial disputes brought before him and decides what
is to be done in cases of insolvency and bankruptcy. The idea of having a
shang tung is that people can settle their cases without taking them to the
courts.” Interview, March 1932.
41. The Hawaiian government recognized Afong’s appointment on 18 February
1880. (See Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 1879–1900, AH;
“The United Chinese Society,” Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section,
pp. 65–66; Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom, 3:138–140.) Afong was the suc-
cessful bidder for the opium monopoly license in some of the years between
1860 and 1875, when the government auctioned such licenses.
42. Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, pp. 163–169; letters for 12 July, 7 Sep-
tember, and 12 December 1881 in Correspondence with the Chinese Consu-
late, 1879–1900, AH; letter for 3 January 1882 in Foreign Office Letter-book
No. 10, AH. A document entitled “Chinese Immigration—Forced Labor,”
dated July 1881, contains a copy of the translated extracts from the Afong
letter to the Chinese paper regarding “Laborers of the Ship, Septima,” and
also a copy of a letter of Commissioner Tschen Lan-Pen (Ch’en Lan-pin)
to the governor-general at Canton, translated from a German copy. (See
350
Notes
Interior Department, Miscellaneous: Immigration—Chinese, AH.) Afong’s

name does not appear on the list of officers of the United Chinese Society
and there is no mention of his being present at the opening of the clubhouse
in 1886. Four years later (1890) he returned to China where he lived until his
death in 1906.
43. “The United Chinese Society,” Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section,
pp. 65–66; Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom 3:138–139, 674–675.
44. The petition for a charter, submitted 11 February 1884, was in both English
and Hawaiian. In the English version the organization was referred to as the
Chung Wa Ui Kon (United Chinese Society); in the Hawaiian version it was
called the Chung Wa Hui Quon (Hui Pake i Hoohui ia). In the charter granted
by the government 27 August 1884 it was called Chun Wa Hui Quon (The
United Chinese Society).
45. PCA, 14 August 1884.
46. The Friend, May 1882, p. 40; August 1892, pp. 63–64; Chinese in Hawaii,
1913, p. 19; PCA, 27 May 1892.
47. Daily Bulletin, 9 April 1886.
48. Sources for the account of the building of the United Chinese Society head-
quarters and the opening ceremonies: Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese
section, pp. 65–66; “History of the Forming of the United Chinese Society,”
Tan Heong Shan Chung Wah Wui Goon Ng Sup Chow Nyin Gee Nim Duck
Han [Hawaii United Chinese Society Fiftieth Anniversary Volume] (Shang-
hai: Chung Hwa Book Company, 1934), p. 9 (hereafter cited as United
Chinese Society Anniversary Volume); Daily Bulletin, 3, 4 February 1886;
PCA, 4 February 1886.
Notes
1. Report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1884, pp. 104–105 (AH).
2. Ibid., pp. 105–106.
3. Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom 3:273, 693.
4. Minister of Foreign Affairs to Hawaiian Consul in Hong Kong, 8 July
1885. Foreign Office Letterbook No. 10 (AH). Almost from the beginning
of restrictions on Chinese immigration, various techniques were used to gain
351
Notes
illegal entry, including: adults claiming to be only thirteen years old in or-
der to be admitted on a permit for children of that age or younger; merchants
staying on indefinitely after being allowed to enter for a maximum of six
months; bribing ships’ officers to falsely check off merchants as having
boarded ship for China; using another migrant’s return permit. Several of the
methods necessitated continued use in Hawaii of a false identity. In the early
1900s payments of about thirteen hundred dollars for false birth certificates
gave rise to the term chin sam (“thirteen hundred”), used within the Chi-
nese community in reference to certain migrants. For comparable reference
to “slots” and “paper sons” in the U.S. mainland see Rose Hum Lee, Chinese
in the United States, pp. 389, 439, and Victor G. Nee and Brett de Bary Nee,
Longtime Californ’: A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 62–63.
5. Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 1879–1900, 1 December 1885
(AH).
6. United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, 1934, p. 9.
7. Correspondence with Chinese Consulate, 9 November, 13 December 1887
(AH). It was this same “ticket” arrangement between U.S. authorities and the
Chung Wah Kung Saw (Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association) in
San Francisco that more than anything else gave the Six Companies its great
power. See Barth, Bitter Strength, pp. 51, 68, 91–99.
8. Foreign Office Letterbook No. 10, 27 June 1887, 15 October 1891 (AH).
9. United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, p. 1.
10. Report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1884, pp. 104–105 (AH).
11. Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 9 November 1887 (AH).
12. Statutes, 1887, Act Regulating Chinese Immigration.
13. The Friend, November 1889, p. 91; February 1895, p. 13; Chung, My
Seventy-Nine Years, p. 173; Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom 3:425; Biennial
Report of the Attorney-General to the Legislative Assembly of 1890, pp.
25–26.
14. Hawaiian Annual, 1893, addenda, p. 8.
15. Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 29 January 1897 (AH).
16. The Friend, September 1897, p. 71; January 1899, p. 4; April 1899, p. 28.
352
Notes

America …,” 5 September 1916, p. 7.
18. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 6–7.
19. Ibid.
20. Daily Bulletin, 20, 30 August 1888; Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom 3:180.
21. PCA, 19 May, 6, 12, 13 September 1888; Daily Bulletin, 14, 29, 30, 31 Au-
gust, 3, 5, 6, 11 September 1888.
22. Hugh D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui (London: Frank
Cass & Co., 1968), p. 13.
23. Daily Bulletin, 31 August 1888.
25. H.M.’s Minister in Washington to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 24 November
1890. Hawaiian Officials Abroad: Minister, Washington, July-November,
1890 (AH).
26. The Friend, March 1894, p. 24.
27. Hawaiian Star, 15 February 1894.
28. PCA, 1, 10 May 1897. Complaints about treatment were also made by work-
ers on sugar plantations at Koloa, Kauai, and Honokaa, Hawaii.
29. Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 16 November 1897 (AH).
30. Ibid.,13 August 1897.
32. Letter from J. A. Hassinger, Clerk, Interior Department, to R. A. Lyman, 8
August 1897. Interior Department Letterbook No. 30 (AH). See also PCA,
20 July 1897; Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom 3:402, 406–407.
33. The Friend, June 1894, p. 45; PCA, 17, 18 May 1894.
34. PCA, 9 July 1870; Interior Department Letterbook No. 52, July 1881 (AH).
35. “Supreme Court: The Queen vs. Leong Man,” PCA, 15 March 1892. See
also Board of Immigration Report, 1890, p. 80.
36. PCA, 19 May 1888.
37. Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 9 April 1896, 19 September
1899et seq. (AH).
38. PCA, 21 April 1892; 16, 17, 19, 30 October 1893; The Friend, November
1893, p. 88.
353
Notes

40. Lana Iwamoto, “The Plague and Fire of 1899–1900 in Honolulu,” Hawaiian
Historical Review 2(1967):389. Nevertheless, The Friend (February 1900)
notes that when a Mrs. Boardman who lived in “one of the best residence
sections” (Manoa Valley) died of the plague on 16 January her home “with
the whole of the furniture and Mrs. B’s rare collection of curios” was burned.
41. Sixty-one persons died during the epidemic. Of the seventy-one contracting
the disease nearly half (thirty-five) were Chinese; fifteen were Hawaiians,
thirteen were Japanese, seven were Caucasians, and one was from the Gilbert
Islands. Most of the rest of this account of the plague and fire is based upon
reports in The Friend, February through May 1900.
42. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, p. 174.
43. Iwamoto, “Plague and Fire,” p. 381.
44. Correspondence between the Chinese consul and the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, 2, 3, 8, 15, and 22 January 1900. Foreign Office and Executive
File—Consul for China (Yang Wei-pin) (AH).
45. Ibid., 16 January 1900.
46. The Friend, February 1900, p. 3.
47. Honolulu Advertiser, 22 November 1931.
48. The Friend, February 1900, p. 3.
49. Iwamoto, “Plague and Fire,” p. 390.
51. United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, p. 6. According to the Hawai-
ian Annual, 1903, p. 25, some 3,728 of the 5,727 claims were filed by
Chinese. The amount awarded to Chinese was nearly $850,000, slightly less
than half the total claimed. About the same proportion of claims submit-
ted was awarded to 2,574 Japanese, less than half to 278 Hawaiian and 19
Portuguese claimants. Some Chinese were dissatisfied with the settlement.
According to Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, p. 193, some of the dissatis-
faction was caused by the delay of two or more years in settling the claims,
a period during which the claimants desperately needed money in starting
business again; part of the problem was that some who were dishonest had
overstated the amount of their losses and honest claimants were unjustly af-
354
Notes
fected.
52. George Charles Hull, “Chinese in Hawaii,” Chinese in Hawaii, 1913, p.
1; Richard A. Greer, “‘Sweet and Clean’: The Chinatown Fire of 1886,”
Hawaiian Journal of History 10(1976):33–51; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929,
Chinese section, pp.59–60. According to Hull the aggregate insurance
amounted to only $228,500.
53. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 8, 80.
54. PCA, 23, 26 August 1895; The Friend, September 1895, p. 72.
55. United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, pp. 5–6.
56. The Friend, October 1895, pp. 73–74, 76, 79.
57. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, p. 65; The Friend, April 1897, p.
26.
58. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 269, 275, 307–310.
59. Quoted in a report of the speeches at the Chinese mass meeting, 14 February
1894, Hawaiian Star, 15 February 1894.
Notes
1. The cemetery associations, Hoong Moon societies, and Chinese-language
schools alone amounted to more than a hundred formal organizations. Mi-
grants developed at least 24 organizations on the island of Hawaii, 27 on
Maui, and 20 on Kauai. Well over half of the formal organizations estab-
lished by migrants on these islands were of the types mentioned above.
2. Apart from the formally organized societies there were also many informal
groups of migrants who shared old-world connections but did not develop
formal associations. A common gathering place for an informal migrant
group was a store operated by a migrant from the same district or village or
with the same surname.
3. The main migration of See Yups to Hawaii was that of contract laborers in
1895–1898. Application of American immigration laws to Hawaii in 1898
meant that only a small fraction of the See Yups were able to have Chinese
wives and families in Hawaii. Many of them established families in See Yup
villages; it was only after World War II that some of these men, still living in
the Islands, were able to bring their wives and families to Hawaii. Unlike the
355
Notes
Chinese in Hawaii, the majority of those in the continental United States are
of See Yup origin.
4. Chung Shan hsien (“district” or “county”), which lies in the delta region be-
tween Canton and Macao, had only about five hundred square miles; some
of its subdistricts (doo) had less than fifty square miles; others, such as
Wong Leong Doo, were larger. Under the Manchus the doo was the smallest
administrative unit for most government purposes.
5. The petitions of several other district associations had similar opening
statements: some said “merchants and taxpayers”; one had “merchants and
tradesmen and taxpayers.”
6. Interview with Lee Kau, March 1931. Fifty-six migrants were listed in the
petition for a charter of incorporation dated 13 January 1905.
7. The formal structure and functions outlined in the constitutions and bylaws
of some of the early district associations had some similarities to those of
earlier district associations or “companies” on the West Coast. A translation
published in 1868 of the rules of the district association formed by migrants
from Chung Shan in California and of the “Sze-Yap Company” is reprinted
in Rev. William Speer, The Oldest and the Newest Empire (Hartford, Conn.:
S. S. Scranton & Co., 1870), pp. 557–567.
8. “See Yup Wei Quan Notice,” Chee Yow Sun Bo, 25 February 1910. Chu
Gem, president of this society for over twenty-five years, was the first presi-
dent of the Chinese Hospital Association (1897).
9. Such beliefs had been important in the common feeling among Chinese that
to become a soldier was a tragic misfortune.
10. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 27 September 1909. Wing Lock Ngue Hong was the fish
dealers’ guild; Kwock On Wui was a Hoong Moon society.
11. See Chapter 9, “Cemetery Associations.”
Hawaii,” pp. 37–38.
13. Interview with Lee Kau, March 1931.
14. The district associations thus repudiated some actions that members of the
Hoong Moon societies swore to take on behalf of “sworn brothers” in trouble
with the law. Strong social pressure by an association was likely to cause an
356
Notes
expelled member to leave the Islands.

15. Information from records of the Lung Doo and See Dai Doo societies was
tabulated for the writer by a Hawaii-born Chinese student at the University
of Hawaii in 1936. The writer is indebted to the officers of these societies for
making the records available for this purpose. The term “village” follows the
usage of the migrants themselves. It includes market towns that might have
more than five thousand inhabitants. A large collection of contiguous resi-
dences that might look to an outsider like one village might be regarded by
the inhabitants as two or more villages—with separate names, separate vil-
lage headmen, separate identities.
16. Interview with Bung Chong Lee, November 1935.
17. C. K. Ai, who migrated to Hawaii from Chung Shan, was inclined to restrict
the term “Punti” to Chinese from Chung Shan district, particularly excluding
See Yups, but he would not have considered Hakkas from Chung Shan to be
Puntis. See Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 14–15. But even within his
home district Punti migrants from Lung Doo were somewhat set apart from
other Chung Shan migrants because of the markedly different dialect they
spoke—a dialect of Fukienese origin. See Tin-Yuke Char and Wai-Jane Char,
“The First Chinese Contract Laborers in Hawaii, 1852,” Hawaiian Journal
of History 9(1975):132.
18. Interior Department, Miscellaneous: Immigration—Chinese, 2 March 1881
(AH). See also Bureau of Immigration Report, 1886, pp. 163–166. If 4,000 to
5,000 Hakkas were in Hawaii, as claimed, they would have constituted about
one-third of the Chinese population at that time, which is unlikely.
19. The largest contingents of Hakkas came from two districts lying between
Canton and Hong Kong: Pao On (Sun On) and Tung Kun. In the previous
section it was noted that Hakkas from Pao On organized a village club in the
early 1930s. There was also a lineage-village club of Hakkas from Chung
Shan. Hakka migrants, as noted earlier, had established Hoong Moon soci-
eties in a few rural areas of Hawaii as well as one in Honolulu, and Honolulu
Hakkas had acquired a cemetery in the 1880s.
20. Chock Lun estimated in 1936 that 7,000 of the 27,000 Chinese in Hawaii
were Hakkas. Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, p. 23.
357
Notes

22. A Chinese source, Po Chia Hsing [Hundred names], lists 408 single-char-
acter and 30 double-character surnames. Pronunciation of Chinese surnames
varies among speech groups and dialects, with resulting variation in ro-
manization, giving the Western reader the impression of a larger number of
surnames—for example, Lum, Lam, Lim, Lin, Linn; Ng, Ing, Wu; Chun,
Gunn, Chen, Chan, Chin. Surnames among Island-born Chinese were in-
creased by the adoption of given names as surnames, as in the case of Chung
Kun Ai who became known as C. K. Ai, with a son known as David Ai; other
sons used Chung as their surname. “Hawaiianization” of Chinese names also
added to their number. See Chapter 14, “Cultural Compromises and Cultural
Change.” See also Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 318; Irma Tam Soong,
“East Maui Chinese History,” Hawaii Heritage News, November 1973.
23. Char, The Bamboo Path, pp. 5–6, 9; William K. Luke, “A Concise History
of the Origin of the Luke Clan of China,” mimeographed (Honolulu: Hawaii
Chinese History Center, n.d.); Harold C. Hill, Ing Families Directories (Hon-
olulu, 1972); Honolulu Advertiser, 10 May 1931.
24. Lawrence W. Crissman, “The Segmentary Structure of Urban Overseas Chi-
nese Communities,” Man, new series, 2(1967):185–204.
25. Societies were organized for the surnames Au, Chang, Char, Chee, Ching,
Chock, Chun, Goo, Hee, Ho, Hu, Ing, Kam, Lee, Leong, Loui, Luke, Mau,
Pang, Tom, Young, and Yuen. Twelve are discussed in Aileen O. L. Lee,
“The Surname Tongs in Hawaii,” senior honors thesis under the direction of
Clarence E. Glick, University of Hawaii, 1966.
26. The historical bond between persons with these four surnames was a sworn
brotherhood between an emperor and three generals, each of one of these sur-
names, in the third century A.D. According to informants, this bond has not
brought persons with these surnames together into formal societies in China
as it has in Hawaii, the continental United States, and some other immigrant
areas. Because of beliefs about this bond, migrants with these four surnames
opposed marriages among themselves.
27. During the 1890–1904 period when most of the guilds were being formed,
some craft unions in Honolulu (for example, carpenters) were exclusively
358
Notes
Caucasian in membership and vocally anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese.

28. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 19 May 1909.
29. Interview, March 1931.
30. This complex of groups involved, of course, many other organizations in ad-
dition to those discussed in this chapter.
31. PCA, 4 February 1886. Much of this speech was quoted at the end of Chap-
ter 9.
33. The Chung Wah Kung Saw (Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Associa-
tion)—the “Six Companies”—in San Francisco also had this function. See
William Hoy, The Chinese Six Companies (San Francisco: Chinese Consoli-
dated Benevolent Association, 1942), pp. 11, 19–20.
34. Interview, March 1931.
Notes
1. Clarence E. Glick, “Transition from Familism to Nationalism among Chi-
nese in Hawaii,” American Journal of Sociology 43(1938):734–743.
2. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 14 March 1928.
3. Ibid., 25 March 1931.
4. Interview with Bung Chong Lee, June 1936.
5. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 17 May 1928. Amounts of money given in the text are in
U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise.
6. Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section, pp. 31–33. Migrants from Toi
Shan district also raised funds in 1927 and 1932 for the Toi Shan Middle
School. Information about the hospital in Shekki was obtained by the writer
in Shekki, July 1932.
7. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 5, 16 June 1930; conversations with Chung Shan
migrants in 1931.
8. Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section, p. 25. Information about other
fund drives for projects in Kwangtung and Hong Kong is from the same
source.
9. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 8 February, 3 March 1928.
10. The account that follows is based largely upon Chinese of Hawaii, 1929,
359
Notes
Chinese section. The author was probably Chock Lun, one of the Chung
Shan intellectuals in the Honolulu Chinese community at the time. From
1910 to 1927 he had been active in the Kuomintang as well as a translating
editor for the Kuomintang newspaper, Chee Yow Sun Bo. Other sources
include H. B. Restarick, Sun Yat Sen: Liberator of China (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1931); Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years; Phoebe Liang,
“The Influence of K’ang Yu-Wei and Liang Ch’i-Ch’ao in the Making of
New China” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaii, 1933); William K. Luke,
“The First Man That Shed Blood for the Chinese Republic,” mimeographed
(Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese History Center, n.d.); idem, “Spared by the Exe-
cutioner’s Sword,” mimeographed, ibid.; Honolulu English-language news-
papers.
12. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, p. 315.
13. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 326. Char says that another English name
for the Bow Wong Wui was “Royal Protective Union of the Hawaiian Islands
for the Support of Emperor Kuang-Hsu.”
14. The Friend, April 1900, p. 28; May 1900, p. 37.
16. PCA, 14, 21 December, 1903.
17. Mark, Chinese in Kula, p. 31. Some Kuomintang spokesmen have denied
that Dr. Sun joined the Ket Hing Fui Kon.
18. Interview with editor, Chee Yow Sun Bo, 19 February 1936.
19. Information on the contested elections of the United Chinese Society in
1902 and 1912–1915 in File 77, State of Hawaii Department of Regulatory
Agencies, Honolulu; also PCA 11, 16, 17, 25 December 1913, 2 January
1914.
20. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 25 January 1909.
21. Material for this account is drawn largely from Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936,
Chinese section, pp. 24–36.
22. Sources for this account are: Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section,
pp. 79–81; Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 300–306; The Friend, April
1900, p. 28; PCA, various dates, January 1900-December 1911.
360
Notes
23. In addition to Hawaii-born Chinese, some of the Chinese-Americans taking

part in such activities were migrants who held American citizenship because
of naturalization prior to Annexation.
24. The account of subsequent events is based mainly on: PCA, 20, 21, 30 No-
vember 1911; 4, 7, 30 December 1911; 2 January, 2 June, 18 July 1912; 27
July 1915; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 28–30.
26. Pacific Herald, 29 October 1928.
27. Honolulu Advertiser, 22, 27 May 1931; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 27 May
1931; interview with Lee Kau, March 1931.
28. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 35, 69. Along with this
change in emphasis in the Chinese Constitutional Party, the party’s leaders
were active in 1928–1929 in developing the Hawaii Branch of the Confucian
Society of China. The Sun Chung Kwock Bo (New China News) supported
this organization, and Mun Lun School cooperated by celebrating Confu-
cius’s birthday and teaching Confucian values.
29. PCA, 21 May 1913; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 2 December 1929.
30. This section on Chinese newspapers draws upon an article in Chee Yow Sun
Bo, 31 August 1936; see also Char, The Bamboo Path, pp. 220–223.
31. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 27 August 1909.
32. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 52–55.
33. Other branches of Dr. Sun’s organizations established Wah Mun language
schools.
34. Sources for this section include: Kum Pui Lai, “The Natural History of the
Chinese Language School in Hawaii”; D. C. Chang, “The Fifty-Year History
of Mun Lun School,” Mun Lun School Golden Jubilee, 1911–1961 (Hon-
olulu, 1961), p. 36; Chinese of Hawaii 1929, Chinese section, pp. 52–55.
35. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 23 May 1909. The United Chinese Society’s fiftieth
anniversary publication does not mention the conflicts within the Society
during the 1901–1915 period. The editor observed that “the United Chinese
Society … has created unity and brotherly love among the Chinese people of
Hawaii.”
36. Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section, pp. 24–36.
361
Notes
37. The Friend, August 1894, p. 37.

38. Ibid., April 1899, p. 31.
40. Data drawn from Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chinese section, pp. 29–30, 32;
Chee Yow Sun Bo, 28 March 1919.
41. In 1935 Kum Pui Lai said he knew of 105 Hawaii-born Chinese holding
jobs in China. Among them were 23 teachers, 17 in government service, 11
clerks and businessmen, 9 physicians, 9 engineers and mechanics, 5 YMCA
and social workers. See Lai, “Natural History,” p. 102. See also biography of
Young Sun Yet in Chinese of Hawaii Who’s Who, 1957, pp. 47, 176.
42. Sources for this section include: Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section,
pp. 24–32, and Hawaii Chinese Annual 8 vols. (Honolulu, 1930–1937).
43. Translated by Young Hing Cham and Wing-Iu Leung, May 1932.
44. Sources for this section include: Hawaii Chinese Journal, 1939–1950;
Chinese of Hawaii Who’s Who, 1957, pp. 1–187; “Appendix B, List of Do-
nations,” in Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 4–128.
45. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 264, 284.
46. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 26 May 1930; observations by the writer of the cam-
paigning at a Double Ten Day celebration, Mun Lun School, 10 October
1936.
47. The Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section, p. 32.
Notes
1. Chinese of Hawaii Who’s Who, 1957, p. 122.
2. Interview, 25 February 1937.
3. Preamble to Registration, Lum Sai Ho Tong, 10 October 1931 (pamphlet).
4. Interview with editor, Chee Yow Sun Bo, 19 February 1936. In this editor’s
view, vitriolic attacks in the two pro-Kuomintang papers had stung backers
of the Sun Chung Kwock Bo into keeping the paper alive.
5. “The Campaign to Raise Funds for Purchasing of Land and Erection of
School Buildings in 1929,” Mun Lun High School Twenty-fifth Anniversary
Edition (Shanghai: Sincere Press, 1936), p. 6.
6. Ibid., pp. 7–10.
362
Notes
7. Report on the Purchase of the Premises for the Chinese Consulate in Hon-
olulu (Honolulu, 1933), p. 11.
8. PCA, 31 March, 22 May 1896; The Friend, April 1896, p. 30; June 1896, p.
46.
9. Clarence E. Glick, “Residential Dispersion of Urban Chinese,” Social
Process in Hawaii 2(1936):28–34; Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 198–201.
10. Interview with Consul King-Chau Mui, 29 September 1931.
11. Pacific Herald, 6 December 1928; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 208.
12. James Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home, 1912, p. 22.
13. An earlier example is given by a notice in the Chee Yow Sun Bo, 25 February
1910, in which the Bark Yee Hong (Dressmakers’ Guild) thanked “organiza-
tions and stores, as well as friends, for taking part in the funeral services” for
the deceased president of their guild. The list included Kwock On Wui Goon,
Wo On Wui Goon, Chee Kung Tong, Kwong Yee Tong, Quon On Kwock,
Hoy On Tong, Yee Yi Tong, Wah Hing Tong, Chuck Sin Tong, Kwon Lock
Hong, Seong Gar Hong, Hing Chung Wui, Hup Sung Co., Kum Yee Hong,
Wing Lock Ngue Hong, and the Hawaii-Chinese Koong Co.
Notes
2. Adapted from accounts in Polynesian, 15 November 1856, and PCA, 20 No-
vember 1856. No Chinese women were mentioned as being present.
3. PCA, 27 June 1861.
4. Correspondence with the Chinese Consulate, 1879–1900, 12 August 1884
(AH).
5. Most of these receptions for more than twenty years after 1900 were re-
ported in English-language newspapers at the time of Chinese New Year.
6. “Resolutions Denouncing the Boxer Uprising in China,” 31 July 1900 (AH);
PCA, 31 July 1900.
7. PCA, 16 January 1912; 16 May 1913.
8. Lily Lim-Chong, “Opium and the Law, Hawaii: 1856–1900” (research paper
under the direction of Harry V. Ball, Department of Sociology, University of
Hawaii, 1978). When the writer made his original study of the Chinese com-
363
Notes
munity in the 1930s, Chinese proudly pointed out the very low crime rate
of their group compared with that of other groups in the Islands, a situation
which continues today.
9. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 323; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, pp. 57, 117.
11. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 16 February 1910.
12. Ibid.
13. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 302–303, 305–310.
14. PCA, 9 March, 14 April 1892.
15. “Chu Gem,” Mid-Pacific Magazine, August 1911, p. 189.
18. See, for example, Bessie C. Lai, Ah Yā, I Still Remember (Taipei, Taiwan:
Meadea Enterprise Co., 1976), p. 15.
19. Honolulu Advertiser, 28 August 1932. For an analysis of clothing changes
see Douglas D. L. Chong, Reflections of Time: A Chronology of Chinese
Fashions in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hawaii Chinese History Center, 1976); the
account is accompanied by twenty-nine photos.
20. Questions concerning wills and inheritance occasionally brought such cases
to public notice. See Reports of Decisions Rendered by the Supreme Court of
the Hawaiian Islands, vol. 3, pp. 489–498.
21. PCA, 3 April 1910.
22. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 247. Char reprints (pp. 247–253) an ac-
count by Elizabeth Wong of the experiences of a mui tsai brought to Hawaii:
“Leaves from the Life History of a Chinese Immigrant,” Social Process in
Hawaii 2(1936): 39–42.
23. The Friend, September 1895, p. 70.
24. PCA, 6 February, 30 November 1900.
25. Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 121; Chinese section, pp. 71–72.
26. The Friend, May 1892, p. 38; PCA, 3 August 1912.
27. The Friend, May 1895, p. 36.
28. Ibid., October 1895, p. 85.
29. United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, 1934, p. 11.
364
Notes
30. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 27 March 1937. In Chinese tradition, red symbol-

ized good luck and happiness, white death and mourning.
32. Chock Lun, “Chinese Organizations in Hawaii,” Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936,
pp. 31–32.
33. United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, p. 5.
34. Annual Report of the President of the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Com-
merce for the Year 1930 (Honolulu: Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Com-
merce, 1931), p. 2. The president at the time was a migrant who had come to
Hawaii in 1886 at the age of eighteen.
35. Wai-Jane Char, “Three Chinese Stores in Early Honolulu,” Hawaiian Jour-
nal of History 8(1974):34; Peggy Kai, “Chinese Settlers in the Village of
Hilo before 1852,” ibid., pp. 53, 62.
36. PCA, 20 June 1902.
37. Ibid., 18, 20 December 1910.
America … 5 September 1916,” p. 6.
39. Sources for the following account include: Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, Chi-
nese section, p. 66; Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section, pp. 24–25;
United Chinese Society Anniversary Volume, pp. 6–8; Kum Pui Lai, “The
Chinese Home at Palolo,” Hawaii Chinese Annual 8(1937):7–9; Chung, My
Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 307–310; Mei-Li Lee Lo, “Palolo Chinese Home”
(seminar paper under the direction of J. L. Watson, Department of Anthro-
pology, University of Hawaii, 1973); annual reports of the Honolulu Social
Service Bureau in the 1930s; Pacific Herald, 13 September 1928; Honolulu
Advertiser, 7 August 1929; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 4 November 1930, 19
May 1936; visits to the Home and interviews.
40. Admissions to the Palolo Chinese Home increased until a peak number
of 165 were living there in 1937. During the 1930s the Home’s expenses
ranged between $15,000 and $20,000, and various welfare agencies were
also giving outside aid to several hundred Chinese dependents. In 1935 the
Social Service Bureau report showed that 1,848, over 17 percent, of the
10,706 individuals given relief were Chinese. They constituted almost 10
365
Notes
percent of the estimated Chinese residents of Oahu that year.

41. Chinese of Hawaii 2, 1936, Chinese section, p. 25; Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
19 May 1936.
42. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 26 September 1936.
43. Hawaii Chinese Journal, 11 August, 1 September, 6 October, 1 December
1949.
44. During this period and later, of course, other non-Caucasian businessmen
were admitted to membership in the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce.
45. Annual Report of the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce, p. 3.
46. PCA, 5 November 1881.
47. Chee Yow Sun Bo, 2 February 1910.
48. Ibid., 25 February 1910.
49. PCA, 4 June 1912.
50. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 28 July 1934.
51. PCA, 30 January 1910; 14 October 1912; 13 October 1913; Li, Life Is for a
Long Time, p. 239.
52. Sources for this section are mainly reports in the Hawaii Chinese Journal
between 12 February 1948 and 16 February 1950. See also Narcissus Festi-
val, issued by the Honolulu Chinese Chamber of Commerce in 1950.
366
Index
Accommodation, economic adjustment Au Tin Kwai, 308

and, 100–101 Au Young (On Young), 53, 332 n.33
Acculturation: changing cultural practices,
301–320; Banana industry, 53–53
Christianity and, 231; Banks: American Security Bank, 82;
early migrant societies and, 182–183; Chinese American Bank, 82;
economic adjustment and, 100–101; Liberty Bank, 82
Hakkas vs. Puntis, 231; Bethel Street Mission, 147
marriage and, 308–308; Board (Bureau) of Immigration, 323 n.24;
in migrant families, 307–308; recruitment of Chinese laborers by, 185
names and, 303; Bow On Guk, 197–197
personal appearance and, 302–303 Bow Wong Wui, 248–248, 249, 250, 254,
Adams, Romanzo, 324 n.33, 326 n.52, 343 256, 257, 260, 262, 265, 359 n.13;
n.1 Mun Lun School and, 266–267
Afong. See Chun Fong Boxer Rebellion, 254, 269, 296–297
Afong and Achuck Co., 181, 184 Bubonic plague, 206–208, 353 n.40, 353
Age distribution. See Population n.41
Aheong, Samuel P., 87, 336 n.39 Buck Toy, 227
Ahung. See Hungtai Co. Business, 78–82;
Ai, C. K. See Chung Kun Ai ethnic, 80;
Akana, W. S., 198 nonethnic, 81–82;
Alexander and Baldwin Co., 285 partnerships, 64–65;
American Chinese Federation, 231 pioneer migrants in, 2, 60–61;
Amoy, 5 sequence of phases in Chinese, 80–82
Annexation: effect on Chinese immigra- Businessmen, leadership roles of, in mi-
tion, 16, 18, 195–196; grant societies, 279–281
effect on labor contracts, 195;
effect on naturalized Chinese, 204 C. Ako, 330 n.23
Anti-Chinese agitation, 9–16, 177–178, C. Alee, 189, 191, 192, 206, 238, 296;
196–197, 295–296, 324 n.44, 358 n.27 commercial agent, 185–186;
Anti-Chinese legislation, 196–204 first president United Chinese Society,
Anti-Opium League, 299–300 185
Atai. See Hungtai Co. C. Monting, 198, 204
378
Index
C. Q. Yee Hop Co., 285 Christian migrants in, 147;

C. Winam, 189 gambling in, 134–136;
Cantonese drama, 137–140 Hawaiians in, 124–125;
Cass, Captain John, 5 health conditions in, 123–124, 211–211;
Castle and Cooke Co., 285 help for migrants in, 141–147;
Caucasians: attorneys employed by Chi- Honolulu, 123–125;
nese, 196, 200; Honolulu vs. San Francisco, 125;
and migrants in preferred occupations, letter writers in, 128–129;
73–74; as link to home villages, 128–130;
relations between Asians and, 16; medical practitioners in, 141–142;
relations be tween Chinese and, 2–3, migrant families in, 123, 153–154;
9–11, 13–15, 62, 79–80, 82–85, 184, newspapers of, 261–265;
204–205, 209–210, 235, 301 non-Chinese in, 124–125;
Cemeteries, 223–224, 346 n.3 opium in, 136–137;
Cemetery associations, 170–172, 224; posters, 261;
Tung Sin Tong, 224. restaurants in, 133–133;
See also Manoa Lin Yee Chung as social center, 129–133;
Chang Chau, 247 sojourners in, 127–127;
Chang Dai Yen, 141–142, 285 Sunday market of, 132–133;
Chang, Mary, 339 n.19 temples (miu) in, 142–146;
Chang Nee Sun, 71, 285 wah fau (Chinese port), 125
Chang Yum Sin, 285 Chinatown fire (1886), 123, 211, 343 n.37
Char, Tin-Yuke, 144, 179, 200, 304 Chinatown fire (1900), 123, 208–210, 353
Chee Kung Tang, 261 n.51
Chee Kung Tong, 173, 260 Chinatown stores: contacts with home vil-
Chee Yow Sun Bo (Liberty News), 254–255 lages through, 128–130;
Ch’en Lan-pin, 184–185 migrant societies and, 355 n.2;
Chi li (fellow districtmen), 251 as social centers, 130–132;
Chiang Kai-shek, 252, 259–260 village clubs and, 132, 227
Chin sam, 351 n.4 Chinatowns (Hawaii, Kauai, Maui), 340
China: Hawaii-Chinese and war in, n.5
272–274; Chinese Benevolent Society. See United
migrants and civil war in, 259–260; Chinese Society
migrants as representatives of, 295–297 Chinese camps, 5
China Fire Engine Company, 180–183, Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 253, 259,
211, 212, 349 n.37 281, 282–283, 284, 296, 313;
China relief: Island community support of, fund drives of, 244, 269, 310;
310; Honolulu Chamber of Commerce and,
migrants and, 268–269; 314
projects listed, 270 Chinese consulate, 284–286
Chinatown, 127–147; Chinese consuls, conflict between mi-
Cantonese drama in, 137–140; grants and, 253–256
Caucasian view of, 127–128; Chinese-English Debating Society, 231
and changing way of life, 127–127; Chinese Exclusion Act, 16;
and Chinese businesses, 123; repealed (1943), 19
and Chinese residents, 340 n.5; Chinese governments, 259, 259–260;
379
Index
awards to migrants, 260, 274–276; Hakkas vs. Puntis, 231;

language schools and, 266–267 in Kohala, 147;
Chinese-Hawaiians, 11, 149–150 in plantation communities, 27, 87, 147
Chinese Hospital, 212–213, 221 Christians, relations between Chinese and
Chinese imperial government: awards of, Caucasian, 86–88, 147
to migrants, 268; Chu Gem, 219, 301, 310, 311, 355 n.8
edict of, against emigration, 1; Chuck Hoy, 86
emigration tolerated by, 5; Chuck Hoy, Cecelia, 312
migrants and, 184–185, 200, 269–271; Chulan & Co., 42, 48, 50, 184, 186
wah kiu and, 252 Chun, Chee Kwon, 138
Chinese language, teachers of, 88–89, 336 Chun Fong (Afong), 2, 48, 115, 181, 204,
n.42 268, 332 n.30, 349 n.41, 349 n.42;
Chinese-language schools, 140, 159–161, commercial agent, 185–185
265–267; Chun Hoon, 63, 276, 285
attendance at, 161, 345–346; Chun Kam Chow, 285, 299
Mun Lun School, 161–161; Chun Kim Chow, 78
Wah Mun School, Honolulu, 161–161 Chun Kwai Hin, 285
Chinese Merchants Association, 252–253, Chun Quon, 285
311 Chung Hoon, 324 n.37
Chinese Physical Culture Association, 316, Chung Kun Ai (C. K. Ai), 84–85, 88, 134,
316 160, 213, 247–248, 254–254, 301, 311,
Chinese stores, 53, 57, 63–64, 81–82; 324 n.37
concentration of, in Honolulu, 65; Chung Kuo Hsien Cheng Tang, 260
on sugar plantations, 33 Chung Kuo Kuomintang, 259–259
Chinese theater, 342 n.26. Chung Shan (Heung Shan), 203, 215;
See also Cantonese drama district associations, 217;
Chinese YMCA, 160, 231 hsien (district or county), 355 n.4;
Ching Chau, 276 projects in, 243–244;
Ching Nin Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo. See village clubs, 227
Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo Chung Wah Kung Bo (United Chinese
Ching Shai, 50–51, 330 n.23 News), 259
Chock Lun, 359 n.10 Chung Wah Kung Saw, 185, 187, 352 n.7,
Cholera, 211–212 358 n.33
Chong Pang Yat, 72 Chung Wah Kuo Ming Tang, 258
Chong Park Shun, 71, 88–89, 90, 285 Chung Wah Tung Ming Wui. See Tung
Chong Song, 330 n.29 Ming Wui
Chong Sum Wing, 330 n.29 Chung Wah Wui Goon. See United Chi-
Choy Hung, 246 nese Society
Christian Chinese, 86–88, 174; Churches: Fort Street Chinese, 147–147;
cemeteries, 172; St. Peter’s, 147
centers in Chinatown, 147; Citizenship, 2, 204–204, 294–294
churches, language classes in, 88; City Mill Co., 48, 285
denominational differences, 147; Civil rights: defense of, by United Chinese
dialectal differences, 147; Society, 205–208;
education of daughters of, 110; denied to naturalized Chinese, 15;
Hakka, 147; personal and property, 206–210
380
Index
Clans: and personal status in China, 278; Fukien-Chaochow, 171;

rivalry in China, 217, 229; Fukienese, 7, 323 n.21;
rivalry in migrant societies, 229–230 Hakka, 7, 230–231
Coffee industry, 53 Discrimination: legal, 205;
Commercial agent (shang tung), 185 organized response to, 184;
Community events, Chinese participation political, 204–204;
in, 314–317 protests against legislative, 191–193,
Concubinage, 150–152, 304 197–202;
Confucian Society of China, Hawaii reaction to economic, 196–203
Branch, 361 n.28 District associations, 215–227;
Confucianism, 260 clubhouses, 221–221;
Constitutional Party. See Bow Wong Wui control of members, 225–226, 356 n.14,
Contract labor, 21–22; improvements in home districts,
opposition to, 12. 242–244;
See also Labor contracts; Labor recruit- Kong Chau Wei Quan, 218;
ment listed, 218;
Contract laborers, 203; rites for the dead, 223;
attitudes toward Chinese, 5–7, 203; Yee Yi Tong, 218.
grievances of, 203; See also Lung Doo Society; See Dai Doo
Japanese, 15–16; Society,-See Yup Society
number of Chinese, on sugar plantations, Doo (subdistrict), 217, 355 n.4
326 n.49; Doo Wai Sing, 273, 276, 334 n.29
from See Yup, 355 n.3; Double Ten Day (Chinese Independence
as servants, domestic, 5, 66; Day), 140, 283
wages of, 114 Drama, Cantonese, 137–140
Coulter, John W., 138
Courts, 204–205 Education: clan schools in China, 158;
Cultural revival and ethnic identity, of daughters, 160–161;
316–316 government schools, 160–161;
of Hawaii-born Chinese, 97, 100, 110,
Dai Kwock Hin Jing Wui. See Hin Jing 158–161.
Wui See also Chinese-language schools; Mis-
Damon, Frank W., 33, 40, 43–44, 144, sion schools
147, 175, 189, 212, 248, 329 n.4 Emigration, reasons for, 5, 20–22
Daughters: education of, 110; Ethnic business, 80
employment of, 337 n.18; Ethnic identity: Chinese, in Island commu-
migrant attitude toward, 305 nity, 308–317;
Deities: Choy Sun, 146; cultural revival and, 316–316;
Fut Mu, 146; migrant vs. Hawaii-born Chinese, 317;
Goon Yum (Kuan Yin), 144, 145, 146; tourism and, 316
Hin Tan, 146;
How Wong, 144, 145; Families: Chinese-Hawaiian, 149–150;
Kwan Dai (Kuan Ti), 145; in Honolulu, 127, 152–153
Tin Hau (Tien How), 145; Families, migrant, 149–169;
Yuk Wong Dai Dei, 146 acculturation, 307–308;
Dialects: Cantonese, 7, 230–231; birthday observances, 166–167;
381
Index
childbirth customs, 155–156; vice-commercial agent, 185–186

in Chinatown, 123, 153–154; Great Mahele (land division), 5
customs (general), 154–158; Guilds, 234–238;
death and mourning customs, 167–168; Kum Yee Hong, 235;
education of Hawaii-born children, listed, 235;
158–161; Luen Hing Kee Lock Bo, 236;
extended family households, 162; Quon On Kwock, 236–237.
in Honolulu, 123; See also Kutt Hing Kung Soh; Hoy On
inter-family relations, 154, 156–158, Tong; Seong Gar Hong; Wing Lock
163–166; Ngue Hong
life cycle, 154;
marriages in, 161–163; Hakka, 110, 147, 173–175, 215–217, 356
and social status, 288–292. n.17, 356 n.18, 356 n.19, 356 n.20;
See also Festivals cemetery, 172
Fan kwai (foreign devils), 127, 333 n.13 Hakka association, 230–231;
Fan wah, 67, 333 n.13 Nyin Fo Fui Kon, 231;
Farmers on Oahu, 118 Tsung Tsin Association, 231–232
Festivals: Chinese New Year, 156–157, Hawaii Island, 2, 3, 64, 118, 172, 173, 255,
283–283; 259, 273, 294
Ching Ming, 171, 233, 283; Hawaii-born Chinese, 339 n.24;
Dragon Boat, 316; in China, 361 n.41;
Feast of Lanterns, 233 China relief organizations and, 273–274;
Fong Inn (Yuen Kwock), 290–291 early second generation, 85;
Footbinding, 109–110, 305–307, 337 n.17 education, 97, 100, 110, 158–161;
Fort Street Chinese Church, 87 education and family conflicts, 161;
Fort Street Mission School. See Iolani and family status, 288–292;
School interfamily relations, 166;
Freedman, Maurice, 346 n.8 in intermediary roles, 86;
Fukienese migrants, 7–8 migrant societies and, 221;
Fun kung (divide work), 44, 54 occupational position, 97–100;
Funerals, 133, 167–168, 291–292; physicians and surgeons, 142;
migrant societies and, 171, 224, 233, in public schools, 160–161;
237, 362 n.13 school attendance, 307
Fung shui, 225, 291 Hawaii Chinese Civic Association,
312–313
Gambling, 205, 300, 340 n.9, 342 n.13; Hawaiian Board of Missions, 87, 147
in Chinatown, 134–136; Hawaiians: in Chinatown, 124–125;
convictions, 342 n.19; Chinese lotteries and, 135;
games, 34, 135–136; marriages of Chinese with, 2, 124, 149,
Hoong Moon societies and, 178–179; 149–150, 294, 304, 324 n.33, 340 n.1,
and law enforcement, 135–136; 345 n.1;
and legislation, 135; as plantation workers, 4–5;
lotteries, 135; population decline, 5, 24;
on sugar plantations, 33–34 on sugar plantations, 34, 40;
Goo Kim, 191, 192, 203, 204–204, 206, relations between Chinese and, 2, 11–12,
212, 253, 296, 298–299; 34, 41–42, 61–62, 79–80, 124, 185,
382
Index
199, 294–294; Hoy On Tong, 236

and taro land, 40–41 Hungtai Co., 2–3, 60, 310
Hee Cho, 340 n.7
Hee Fat, 255–256 Immigration: arrivals, Chinese, 8–10, 13,
Hee, Jackson, 90 15, 16, 17–18, 323 n.24, 323 n.28;
Hee, William K. F., 340 n.7 arrivals, Japanese, 15–16, 324–326, 326
Hee Yau Kun, 285 n.50;
Herbalists, 141 Board (Bureau) of, 8, 9;
Heung li (fellow villagers), 44, 127, 130, Caucasian attitudes toward Chinese,
131–132, 154, 161, 214, 226, 230 11–12;
Hilo, 118, 161 of children, 8, 18;
Hin Jing Dong. See Bow Wong Wui of Chinese after World War II, 19, 334
Hin Jing Wui. See Bow Wong Wui n.22;
Hing Chung Wui, 246–248, 264, 275 of Chinese financed by Chinese, 12–13,
Ho Fon, 83–84, 86, 88, 246–247, 262, 334 324 n.37;
n.35 of Chinese in exempt categories, 18;
Ho Seong, 175 congressional legislation regarding,
Ho Yee, 42, 46, 329 n.15 18–19;
Hoklo, 171 effect of Annexation on, 16;
Hong, 170, 234 effect of Chinese Exclusion Act on, 16;
Honolulu: Chinatown, 123–125, 127–147; Hawaiian government policy toward, 12,
Chinese concentration in, 118–123; 15, 16–17;
distribution of Chinese in, 123–123; passage to Hawaii, 22–24;
movement into, 119–123 and quarantine, 24, 191;
Honolulu Academy of Arts, 316–316 reaction to discriminatory policy of,
Hoong Moon societies, 172–180, 182, 187, 191–196;
249–250, 256, 261, 302, 346 n.6, 348 regulations, 9, 17, 191–194;
n.11, 348 n.13, 348 n.26, 348–349; regulations, evasion of, 192, 351 n.4;
cemeteries, 172; restriction of Chinese, 184;
in China, 172–173; of women, 8, 12, 18, 123, 323 n.24,
clubhouses, 178–179; 339–340 n.3
decline of, in Hawaii, 180; Income: of Chinese as a group, 115–116,
functions of, 174; 339 n.23;
Hung Sin Tong, 175; employment and, 114–116;
initiation, 174–175; of migrants, 114–115
Ling Hing Wui Goon, 346 n.8, 348 n.20; Indigent migrants: migrant societies and,
oaths, 175, 175–176, 180; 221–223, 233, 311;
sugar planters and, 175–175; on public welfare, 36, 365 n.40
Tung Hing Kung Si, 172–173, 348 n.18; Inn, Henry, 290–291
welfare functions, 180–180; Intermediary roles: Chinese in Caucasian
Yee Hing Chung Wui, 260; firms, 82–85;
Yee Wo Kung Si, 176–177, 348 n.20. Chinese professors in, 89;
See also Chee Kung Tong; Ket Hing Fui Hawaii-born Chinese in, 86
Kon; Ket On Fui Kon; Tung Wo Kung Investment: in businesses in China, 92;
Si in the home village, 92;
Hop pun (partnership), 44, 54 in real estate in Hawaii, 95–97;
383
Index
and settler vs. sojourner, 96–97 327 n.27

Iolani School, 246 Labor force: Caucasians in, 73;
Iwamoto, Lana, 209 migrants in, 73, 97
Labor recruitment: of Chinese by Cau-
Japanese: in Chinatown, 211; casian entrepreneurs, 3–4;
as contract laborers, 15–16; of Chinese by Chinese entrepreneurs, 3,
relations between 8–9, 15, 21, 42–43;
Chinese and, 269 of Chinese by Hawaiian government,
Jewelry stores, 82; 8–9, 12, 22–23, 323 n.24;
Bo Wo Co., 75; by Chinese recruiters, 25, 28, 323 n.25;
Sun Wo Co., 75 of first contract laborers, 1852, 5;
of Japanese, 17, 326 n.47;
Kalakaua, 13, 136, 188, 315 of non-Chinese, 9, 184;
K’ang Yu-wei, 248, 262 of Portuguese, 12;
Kau-Tom Post, American Legion, 309 Republic of Hawaii and, 17–18;
Kauai, 2–3, 3, 62, 64, 118, 161, 172, 173, in South China, 5–5.
175, 273, 329 n.15 See also Board (Bureau) of Immigration;
Kee lock bow, 170 Contract labor
Kee loo, 170 Lai, Kum Pui, 82, 161
Ket Hing Fui Kon, 175, 178, 180, 249 Lam, Margaret M., 345 n.4
Ket On Fui Kon, 173; Land: purchase of, in Hawaii, 2, 4;
cemetery, 172 for rice production, 40–41
King Street Fish Market, 285 Lau Cheong (Lau Chong Kong), 183, 211,
Kohala, 87, 174, 178, 180, 339 n.1; 349 n.38
Christian Chinese in, 147 Lau On, 276
Kong Tai Heong (Mrs. K. F. Li), 90, 142 Laundries, 333 n.12
Kong Tet Yin, 87 Lee, Bung Chong, 131, 346 n.8, 358 n.4
Kong, Yin Tet, 311 Lee, Charles Tim, 71
Kula, 178, 180 Lee Chau, 66
Kung si (kong si), 170 Lee Chu, 334 n.29
Kuo Min Hsien Cheng Tang, 258 Lee Kau, 355
Kuomintang, 258; Lee Ong, 92
migrants’ contributions to appeals by, Lee, Shao Chang, 89, 346 n.8
271–272; Lee, Y. K., 276
recognition of Hawaii members, Leong Bew, 285
275–276; Leong Chew, 299
Wah Mun schools and, 266 Leong Han, 71, 92
Kutt Hing Kung Soh, 237 Leong Pah On, 48, 330 n.23
Kwangtung: emigrant districts, 22; Letter writers in Chinatown, 128–129
projects in, 244–245 Leung, Wing-lu, 349 n.40
Li Cheung, 247
L(au) Ahlo, 199 Li, Khai Fai (K. F. Li), 90, 137, 142, 206,
Labor contracts: Annexation and voiding 248, 300, 312
of, 195; Li Ling Ai, 206
evasion of, by migrants, 15, 16; Li, Min Hin, 336 n.45
provisions of, 5, 22–23, 25–26, 323 n.26, Li shee, 142
384
Index
Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, 248, 254, 262 Maui, 2, 3, 7, 118, 161, 172, 173, 174, 203,
Liang Kuo-ying, 254–256 249, 255, 259, 259, 273, 294
Liberty News. See Chee Yow Sun Bo Medical practitioners in Chinatown,
Life histories, migrant, 20–21, 21–22, 141–142, 343 n.28
22–23, 23–24, 36–37, 37–38, 42–43, Medicine: traditional Chinese, 141–142,
46–48, 49–51, 54–56, 63, 68–69, 343 n.29;
70–71, 76–77, 83–84, 84–85, 96, 122 Western, 142
Lin Yee Wui. See Manoa Lin Yee Chung Middlemen, Chinese as, 62.
Lind, Andrew W., 332 n.10 See also Intermediary roles
Lineage-village clubs, 229; Mission schools, 159–160;
listed, 228 Bethel Mission School, 159;
Loan associations: in South China villages, Fort Street Mission School, 86, 159;
93; Mills Institute, 159;
migrant, in Hawaii, 93–95 St. Louis College, 159
Loan companies, Chinese, 96 Moo Hock Kee Lock Bo, 266–267, 285
Lock Shin Tong, 174 Mou, 326 n.6
Loo Ngwak, 199 Movies, 140–141, 343 n.27
Luke Chan, 247, 275 Mui, King-Chau, 273, 279
Lum Hoon, 53 Mui tsai, 304–305, 345 n.8, 364 n.22
Lum King, 75 Mun Lun School, 267, 284–285
Lum Sai Ho Tong, 232, 234, 281–282 Mun Sing Tong, 274
Lum Yip Kee, 54–56
Lung Doo: migrants, 236; Names, 232, 322 n.5, 356–358;
projects in, 243 acculturation and, 303
Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong. See Lung Doo Narcissus Festival, 316–317
Society National Guard, all-Chinese companies of,
Lung Doo Society, 219–221, 221–222, 309
226, 227, 259, 278, 281, 282 Nationalism: among wah kiu, 245;
Lung Kee Sun Bo (Hawaiian Chinese migrant, and crises in China, 269–274
News), 90, 197, 248, 262 Nationalistic societies, 245–261
New China News, See Sun Chung Kwock
Manoa Chinese Cemetery, 136 Bo
Manoa Lin Yee Chung (Manoa Chinese Newspaper editors, 89–90
Cemetery Association), 171, 346 n.3 Newspapers, 261–265;
Mark, Diane Mei Lin, 178 Hawaii Chinese News, 262–263;
Marriage: acculturation and, 308–308; Hon Mun Bo, 260;
arranged, 149, 161, 162–163; listed, 263;
betrothals, 161, 163; as political organs, 264;
concubinage, 150–152; Sun Wan Yat Bo, 90;
early second generation, 308; Tan Shan Sun Bo, 261, 262.
interfamily relations through, 163–166; See also Chee Yow Sun Bo; Chung Wah
plural, 149–151, 345 n.7; Kung Bo; Lung Kee Sun Bo; Sun
weddings in migrant families, 161–162, Chung Kwock Bo
163 Nip Chan Poo, 75
Masters and Servants Act, 12, 20, 326 n.1;
laborers’ recourse under, 30 Oahu, 118
385
Index
Occupational competition: between Cauca- shoemakers, 77–78;

sians and Asians, 16; skilled, 74–78;
between Caucasians and Chinese, 14–14, symbiotic, 60–60, 65, 72;
235; tailors and dressmakers, 77, 334 n.31;
between Japanese and Chinese, 237–238 teachers, 88–89, 111–112, 339 n.19;
Occupational distribution, by occupational urban, 119–120;
classes: of males, 97–109; waiters, 72–72;
of women, 110–114 women in preferred classes, 112–114.
Occupational index, defined, 332 n.10 See also Business; Newspaper editors;
Occupational indices, 65–65, 334 n.24, Professions; Religious workers; Re-
337 n.10; tailing; Taoist priests; Trade
Chinese (Hawaii vs. U.S. mainland), 104; Opium: campaign against, 299–300;
of males (by occupational classes), 100; in Chinatown, 136–137;
of women (by occupational classes), convictions, 136;
112–114 Hoong Moon societies and, 176,
Occupational mobility, 72–75 178–179;
Occupational opportunities: in preferred and law enforcement, 136;
occupations, 73–74; legislation concerning, 136–136;
off the sugar plantations, 35 smoking in migrant society clubhouses,
Occupations: actors, 138; 221;
bankers, 96; smoking on sugar plantations, 33;
barbers, 69–70; smuggling, 136–137
builders and contractors, 96; Overseas Chinese Merchants Association,
carpenters, 75–77; 252
clergymen, 87–88;
clerks and salesmen, 65–65; Palmer, A. W., 127–128
college professors, 89; Palolo Chinese Home, 240, 312–313, 365
cooks, 66–67, 70–71; n.40
druggists, 90; Philanthropy and personal status, 283–288
gardeners, 67; Pineapple industry, 53–54
herbalists, 141; Pioneer migrants (before 1852), 1–3;
insurance agents, 96; Achun, 3;
interpreters and translators, 85–86; Ahung, 3;
jewelers, 75; Atai, 2–3;
laundrymen, 65–66; business enterprises of, 2, 60–61;
males in preferred classes, 101–102, 104; business partnerships of, 3;
painters, 76–77; Chun Fong, 2;
peddlers, 61–63; in business with Caucasians, 2–3;
physicians and surgeons, 90; recruitment of Chinese workers by, 3;
preferred classes, 73–74; Tyhune (Wong Tai-Hoon), 2–3
prestige of, professional vs. proprietary, Political rights, defense of, 204–204
100–101; Population, 60–61;
professional, 85–90; age distribution, 134;
realtors, 96, 337 n.10; children, 158;
restaurant proprietors, 71–72, 333 n.19; concentration in Honolulu, 118–123;
servants, domestic, 66–69; geographic distribution of, 118–118;
386
Index
of Hawaiian Islands, 1853–1970, Japanese in, 52;

319–320 (table); mills, 48;
Honolulu Chinese, 127; North American market, 40;
marital status among, 149; number of workers in, 51;
of migrant women (1850–1896), 337 Sing Chong Co., 48;
n.16; Young Ahin, 49
sex ratio in, 12–13, 134, 337 n.16 Rice plantations: acreage, 41;
Professions, 85–90 compared with sugar plantations, 41–44;
Prostitution, in San Francisco vs. Hon- cooperative arrangements on, 44–46;
olulu, 137 fun kung system, 44–46;
Punti, 109, 173, 356 n.17; hop pun system, 44–46;
subgroups of, 217 labor supply, 42–43;
Punti-Hakka: conflict in China, 173; living conditions, 43–44;
relations in Hawaii, 174, 185–186, 187, managers, 42–43, 44–45
230–231, 278–279; Rice planters: Caucasian, 40;
stereotypes, 230 Ho Yee, 42, 46, 329 n.15;
Leong Pah On, 48;
Queues, 249–250, 257, 302 Wong Loy, 47–48
Rice production: acreage, 40, 329 n.22;
Real estate (Chinese ownership of, in by Chinese, 8;
Hawaii), 96–97 Chinese methods of, 41–42;
Reciprocity Treaty, 8 land for, 40–41
Religious workers, Chinese, 86–88 Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, 3, 5
Remittances to family in China, 92–92, Rural enterprises, migrant, 52–57
129–130 Rural occupations, Chinese in
Republic of China, 251–252, 257, 297 (1884–1930), 57–58
Republic of Hawaii, 17–18
Restaurants, 71–72; in Chinatown, Sam Yup, migrants from, 172
133–133; Samsing & Co., 2, 60, 180–181, 310
dim sum, 133; Sandalwood Mountains, 1
Lau Yee Chai, 72; Sandalwood trade, 1
Sun Yun Wo, 133–133, 340 n.7; “Save China” organizations, 273–273
Wo Fat Chop Suey, 71–72 Savings: bank deposits, 95;
Retailing, 63–65 of migrants in Hawaii, 92–93
Revolution in China (1911), 256–258 Say (sha, shah, sheh), 170
Reynolds, Stephen, 324 n.31 Schools. See Chinese language schools;
Rice industry, 40–52; Iolani School; Mun Lun School; Wah
acreage, 51; Mun School, Honolulu
Caucasian firms, 48; Secret societies, 176, 182, 188
Chinese agents and factors, 48–51; See Dai Doo Society, 219, 227, 250–251,
Chinese domination of, 40, 327 n.2; 278, 281
Ching Shai, 50–51; See Dai Doo Wui Goon. See See Dai Doo
Chulan & Co., 50; Society
crop value of, 52; See Yup, 203, 215, 227
decline of, 51–52; See Yup Society, 217, 281
Hawaiian market, 40, 48; See Yup Wei Quan. See See Yup Society
387
Index
Seong Gar Hong, 237–238 See also Cemetery associations; Chinese

Settlers: attitudes of, 92; Chamber of Commerce, District asso-
interfamily relations of, 166; ciations; Guilds, Hakka association;
and real estate investment in Hawaii, Hoong Moon societies; Lineage-vil-
96–97 lage clubs; Nationalistic societies;
Sex ratio. See Population Surname societies; United Chinese
Shang tung, 349 n.40 Society; Village clubs
Shekki, 92 Sojourners: attitudes of, 41, 92, 242;
Shim, Mary Kwai, 339 n.19 in Chinatown, 127–127;
Shim, Wai On, 336 n.41 Chinatown stores and, 130–132;
Shim, Yin jin, 336 n.41 customs retained by, 302;
Sing Chong Co., 48, 199, 330 n.23 familyless migrants, 149–149, 154;
Sit Moon, 87 interest in home province, 244–245;
Siu, Paul C. F., 151 investment in home village, 92, 242;
So (soh, saw, shaw), 170 remittances to China, 129–130;
Social distance between migrants and non- status in Chinatown, 243, 245;
Chinese, 204–205 village and clan orientation, 242;
Societies, migrant, 170–189, 215–241, 346 visits home, 242;
n.2, 355 n.1; wives of, in China, 340 n.1
and aid to indigent migrants, 311; Sook jut (kinsmen), 214
and arbitration of disputes among mem- Sports, 315–316
bers, 179–180, 226–227, 229–230, Status, group, 294–317;
234, 236–236, 238–239; Chinese ball (1856), 294–295
awards to, from Chinese governments, Status, personal, 278–292;
275–276, Chinatown projects and, 284–286;
charter petitions for, 355 n.5, 355 n.6; Chinese government awards and, 274;
China relief organizations, 273–274; criteria of, 279–280, 286–288, 337 n.14;
Chinatown stores and, 132; migrant families and, 288–292;
Chinese community and, 238; migrant orientation and, 278;
clubhouse altars, 179, 225, 233–234, migrant societies and, 278–283;
237; occupation and, 72–73;
clubhouses as social centers, 132, through philanthropy, 283–288
178–179; Subgroups, migrant, 215, 240;
community crises and, 191–214; cultural differences, 217;
constitutions and bylaws of, 182–183, district origins, 217, 334 n.27, 346 n.8,
355 n.7; 356 n.17, 356 n.19;
control of members, 356 n.14; sojourners and, 242
crises in China and, 272–274; Sugar masters (long see), 2, 3
dramatic clubs, 140; Sugar plantations: as havens, 35–38;
early, 170–189; Atai and French, 3;
fees and special donations for, 219; care for aged laborers, 36;
funerals of leaders, 291–292; Caucasian domination of, 3–4;
hierarchy of status among, 281; Chinese camps, 32;
nationalistic factions within, 250–253; Chinese contractors, 28;
status through, 278–283; Chinese entrepreneurs, 1–3;
welfare functions of, 219–221, 225, 233. Chinese migrant laborers on, 20;
388
Index
Chinese stores on, 32; Tai gung (great ancestor), 171

Chinese women on, 327 n.20; Taiping Rebellion, 5, 173
Chulan & Co., 50; Tarn Tinn Chong, 346 n.10
Chun Fong, 2; Tan Heung Shan. See Sandalwood Moun-
communication on, 28–28; tains
contract labor system of, 20; Tan, S. H., 273
cooperative work arrangements, 28–29; Tan Shan Chung Shan School. See Wah
free or day laborers on, 35; Mun School, Honolulu
gambling on, 33–34; Tang (dong), 170
Grove Farm, 30; Taoist priests, 143–146
Hawaiians on, 4–5, 34; Taro, 40
Hoong Moon societies and, 175–175; Taro and poi industry, 54–56;
Kohala Plantation, 147; Lum Yip Kee, 54–56
labor supply for, 4–5; Taylor, Wray, 30–32
Lihue Plantation, 30–31, 194; Temples (miu), 142–146;
living conditions on, 20–21, 27–33; ceremonies, 143–146;
lunas (overseers), 28–28, 35; Goon Yum Miu, 144, 146;
number of Chinese workers on, 15, 17, How Wong Miu, 144;
34, 35–36, 324 n.45, 326 n.49, 327 Kwan Dai (Kuan Ti) Miu, 145.
n.30; See also Deities
opium smoking on, 33; Ticket system, 193, 352 n.7
paternalism of, 30, 36; Tom Awana, 64
reasons for leaving, 34–35, 327 n.29; Tong, 170
rules of, 29–30; Tong Phong, 246, 247
Samsing & Co., 2; Trade, 60–65
ukupau system on, 28; Triad societies. See Hoong Moon societies
unskilled workers on, 327 n.24; Trust companies, Chinese, 96
wages on, 35, 114; Tung bau (fellow countrymen), 214, 269
workers leaving, 16, 34–35; Tung Ming Wui, 248–249, 255, 257, 258;
workers’ grievances, 30–32, 203, 352 Wah Mun School, Honolulu, and,
n.28 265–266
Sun Chung Kwock Bo (New China News), Tung Wo Kung Si (Tong Wo Society), 174,
90, 248, 260, 262, 267 178, 179, 180
Sun Mi, 160, 246 Tyau Fook, 122
Sun Yat-sen, 160, 246–248, 248–250, 252, Tyhune (Wong Tai-Hoon), 2–3, 40
255, 257–258, 259, 262, 265–266, 359
n.17; United Chinese News. See Chung Wah
Tsung Li, 275 Kung Bo
Sun Yat-sen School. See Wah Mun School, United Chinese Society, 137, 183–189,
Honolulu 198, 238–240, 248, 250, 253, 257, 259,
Surname societies, 232–234, 358 n.25, 358 281, 283, 284, 296, 301, 307, 311, 313;
n.26; as agency for Chinese mutual aid, 189;
clubhouses, 233; charter of, 186–188, 351 n.44;
Lung Kong Kung Shaw, 233, 234; Chinatown crises and, 210–213;
Wong Kong Har Tong, 232, 234. Chinese community consciousness and,
See also Lum Sai Ho Tong 186;
389
Index
Chinese community status and, 188–189; n.8

Chinese Hospital and, 212; Wilder, Samuel G., 345 n.8
clubhouse, 188; Wing Coffee Company, 53
conflict with Chinese consuls, 254–256; Wing Lock Ngue Hong, 236
and contract laborers, 203; Wing Sing Wo Co., 92, 129
cooperation with government, 206, 298; Wirth, Louis, 60
defense of civil rights, 205–208; Women: acculturation of, 302–303;
fund drives, 244, 257, 268, 309; employment of, 109–114;
as government within a government, Hakka, 110;
193–194; married, in China, 149;
as mediator between Chinese and non- married, in Hawaii, 149, 152;
Chinese, 189; migrants, 109;
migrant group consciousness and, migrants (1850–1896), 337 n.16;
213–214; Punti, 109;
nationalistic factions in, 251–252, United Chinese Society and, 257
268–269; Wong Buck Hung, 259–260
petition to Congress (1916), 51; Wong But Ting, 276
protests against discrimination, 191–193, Wong, Elizabeth, 364 n.22
202; Wong Goon Sun, 285
relations with government, 192–196; Wong, Henry Awa, 71
ticket system and, 193; Wong, K. Chimin, 143
Wah Mun School and, 266; Wong Kwai, 184, 330 n.23
Women’s Committee, 311 Wong Leong, 254, 330 n.23
United Welfare Fund, 313–314 Wong Loy, 47–48
Urbanization, 118–125 Wong Nin, 308, 332 n.35
Wong, Sau Chun, 146
Village clubs, 227–231; Wong Wai Wing, 285
Buck Toy Villagers’ Club, 227; Woo Yee Bew, 147–147
Chinatown stores and, 132; Wu, Lien-Teh, 143
improvements in home village, 242; Wui (wei, hui, hoey), 170.
listed, 228; See also Loan associations
On Tong Villagers’ Club, 227; Wui goon (hui kuan, wei quan, fui kon),
Oo Sack Kee Loo Society, 227 170
Wah kiu (Overseas Chinese), 92–92, 127, Y. Ahin. See Young Ahin
131, 203, 269; Y. Anin (Young Anin), 96
in Chinese government, 272, 275–276; Yap, Ruth Lo Tet, 336 n.43
and crises in China, 269–274; Yap See Young, 247
migrant societies and, 238 Yap, William Kwai Fong, 85, 86, 247–248
Wah Mun School, Honolulu, 88–89, 266 Yee Chun, 285
Wah Yun Lin Hop Wui, 185 Yee Mun Wai, 285
Wai Wah Yee Yuen. See Chinese Hospital Yee Yap, 55
Wang, Tien Mu, 89 Yim Quon, 254
Welfare fund drives, Chinese participation Yong Wei-pin, 253–254
in, 310–314 Young Ahin (Y. Ahin), 49, 242–242, 284,
Wilcox, George N., 36, 62, 327 n.20, 345 291–292, 330 n.23
390
Index
Young, Hing Cham, 345 n.2 Young Siu Hin, 143–144

Young Kum Hoy, 89 Young Sung Kee, 276
Young Kwong Tat, 275 Yuan Shih-k’ai, 252, 258, 260
391
Authors Cited in Notes
Adams, Romanzo, 324, 326, 327, 343, 345 Freedman, Maurice, 336
Alexander, Arthur C, 322
Allen, E. H., 323 Gilman, Gorham D., 342
Girvin, James W., 330
Baker, Hugh D. R., 352 Glick, Clarence E., 323, 332, 340, 362
Ball, James Dyer, 345, 348, 362 Gong, Ted T. K., 348
Barth, G., 346, 352 Goo, Paul Kimm Chow, 337
Bennett C. C, 324, 340, 349 Goto, Y. Baron, 330, 332
Bonk, William J., 348 Greer, Richard A., 353
Chang, D. C., 361 Hill, Harold C, 358

Char, Tin-Yuke, 323, 326, 327, 329, 333, Hill, S. S., 324
336, 337, 343, 346, 348, 352, 356, 358, Hoy, William, 358
359, 361, 364 Huff, Lehn, 345
Char, Wai-Jane, 322, 323, 329, 346, 356, Hull, George Charles, 353
364
Chock Lun, 346, 356, 364 Ip, David Fu-Keung, 333
Chun, Chee Kwon, 329, 342 Iwai, Charles K., 329, 330
Chung Kun Ai (C. K. Ai), 324, 329, 330, Iwamoto, Lana, 353
332, 333, 334, 340, 342, 343, 345, 352,
356, 359, 361, 365 Jones, Idwall, 332
Comber, Leon, 348
Couling, S., 346 Kai, Dan Kane-za, 327
Coutler, John W., 329, 330, 342 Kai, Peggy, 322, 364
Crissman, Lawrence W., 358 Koga, Loraine, 333
Cruzan, J. A., 324 Kuykendall, Ralph S., 329, 348, 349, 351,
Culin, Stewart, 340 352
Damon, Frank W., 327, 343, 348 Lai, Bessie C, 364

Diell, John, 322 Lai, Kum Pui, 334, 337, 345, 355, 361,
365
Fallers, L. A., 346 Lee, Aileen O. L., 358
Fei, Hsiao-Tung, 336 Lee, Bung Chong, 333, 336, 340
392
Lee, Robert M. [W.], 330, 332, 333, 334, Rebel, A., 329
337, 356 Restarick, H. B., 359
Lee, Rose Hum, 348 Reynolds, Stephen, 346
Leong, Ah Jook Ku, 339
Li Ling Ai, 336, 342, 343, 353, 359, 362, Siu, Paul C. F., 345
364 Soong, Irma Tam, 348, 358
Liang, Phoebe, 359 Speer, William, 355
Lim-Chong, Lily, 342, 362
Lind, Andrew W., 327, 332 Taylor, Wray, 327
Lo, Mei-Li Lee, 365 Thom, Wah Chan, 334
Lorden, Doris M., 345 Tong, Ah Huna, 343
Luke, William K., 358, 359 Torbert, L. L., 322
Lund, A. S. T., 329, 330 Tse, Winnie, 333
Mark, Diane Mei Lin, 330, 348, 359 Vancouver, George, 322
McDowell, H. B., 342
Meares, John, 322 Wirth, Louis, 332
Morgan, W. P., 348 Wong, Elizabeth, 326, 364
Murata, K., 329, 330 Wong, K. Chimin, 343
Wong, Sau Chun, 343
Nee, Brett de Bary, 351 Wu, Ching-chao, 340, 342
Nee, Victor G., 351 Wu, Lien-Teh, 343
Palmer, A. W., 340 Yang, C. K., 336

Pickering, W. A., 346, 348 Young, Lum Pui, 346
Pope, Willis T., 332
393
Map 1. Kwangtung Province
Source: Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains (Honolulu: University Press of

Hawaii, 197 pp. 18–19.
394
Migrants on board ship arriving from China; in the background, migrants returning to
Hawaii after a visit to China. 1901. Hawaii State Archives.
Workers cutting sugarcane under the direction of a luna. 1896. Hawaii State Archives.
Planting rice in lower Makiki, Honolulu (an area at present changing from residential to
commercial use). About 1900. Hawaii State Archives.
Bringing taro to town; on the left, a typical Chinese store of the period. About 1910.
Hawaii State Archives.
Chinese carrying food and tea to field workers, 1912. Peddlers used just such carrying
poles. Hawaii State Archives.
A produce store in Honolulu’s Chinatown, about 1910. Hawaii State Archives.
The Honolulu store of a Hawaii Chinese wholesale-retail firm with related businesses in
Hong Kong, Shekki, Maui, and San Francisco. Flowering narcissus plants indicate the
Chinese New Year season. 1920s. Courtesy of Irene Chang Letoto.
News center on Beretania Street in Honolulu’s Chinatown. Before 1900. G. Bertram Col-
lection, Hawaii State Archives.
The first two leaders of the Chung Wah Wui Goon (United Chinese Society). Left,
C(hing) Alee, President 1884–1892; right, Goo Kim, Vice-president 1884–1892, Presi-
dent 1892–1900. Courtesy of the United Chinese Society and the Hawaii Chinese History
Center.
Residents fleeing the 1900 Chinatown fire, moving across town to Kawaiahao Church
grounds under the direction of guards. Hawaii State Archives.
Dragon dance passing Goon Yum (Kuan Yin) Temple, corner of River and Kukui streets
in Chinatown. About 1905. G. Bertram Collection, Hawaii State Archives.
The first Chinese Consulate in Hawaii, 1933. The building, the former home of a Hon-
olulu Chinese businessman and organization leader, was purchased with funds raised by
Hawaii Chinese. Photo from Report on the Purchase of the Premises for the Chinese
Consulate in Honolulu.
Wo Hing Wui Goon, Lahaina, Maui. The clubhouse of one of the more
than thirty Hoong Moon societies in the Islands. About 1908. Hawaii
State Archives.
Lung Doo Chung Sin Tong, Honolulu. The first clubhouse of this dis-
trict association. 1910. Courtesy of the Lung Doo Society.
Main hall used jointly by the United Chinese Society and the Honolulu Chinese Chamber
of Commerce. 1929. Courtesy of Leigh-Wai Doo and the Hawaii Multi-Cultural Center.
A few of the Hawaii and West-Coast members of the revolutionary society Tung Ming
Wui meeting in San Francisco with Dr. Sun Yat-sen (first person from left in second row).
About 1910. Courtesy of Au Siu Hen (Edward S. H. Au).
A funeral procession in downtown Honolulu on its way to the Manoa Chinese Cemetery.
1932. Collection of the author.
Ching Ming (spring festival) at Lin Yee Chung (Manoa Chinese Cemetery). April 1977.
Courtesy of Norma A. Lum and the Hawaii Multi-Cultural Center.
A Honolulu Chinese family, about 1915. Courtesy of Larry F. C. Ching.
A Honolulu Chinese family, about 1909. Courtesy of (Mrs.) Git Lee Chow and the
Hawaii Multi-Cultural Center.
Sixty-first anniversary portrait of a Honolulu merchant and organization leader, with
sons, daughters-in-law, and grandson. About 1921. On Char Collection, Bishop Museum.
Second generation wedding party at the clubhouse of See Dai Doo Society, Honolulu.
1933. Courtesy of David W. L. Au and the Hawaii Multi-Cultural Center.

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Sojourners and Settlers

CHINESE MIGRANTS IN HAWAII

HAWAII CHINESE HISTORY CENTER

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Glick, Clarence Elmer, 1906–

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Title Page iii

1. The Cycle of Migration 1

Appendix: Population of the Hawaiian Islands by Racial and Ethnic Groups:

1. Arrivals of Chinese in Hawaii: 1852–1899

The Transcription of Chinese

MANY people have helped in many ways—supplying information, making trans-

Larry and Beatrice Ching Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Inn

by the Caucasian members of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society who in

Plantation Expansion and a New Era of Colonization

The introduction of Cooly labor is as yet an experiment, but a very important

Agitation against Chinese Immigration

Year Number of Year Number of

1865 615 1889 439

indigenous population contended that Chinese were a “cognate race” of the

Planters continued to favor importing Chinese male workers, willing to come

Everywhere the Chinaman is quietly, peaceably, smilingly but persistently

The minister continued:

Three years later the editor of The Friend warned:

Prompted by complaints about the Chinese, the government turned to Japan

A prominent builder and official of an employers’ organization in Honolulu

tition of Asiatics.” … Many large employers are decidedly opposed to having

With Annexation Chinese labor immigration ended but Japanese laborers, as

From Regulation to Exclusion

exempt category played a disproportionate role in this process. They included

The Contract Labor System

early phases of plantation development. Their industriousness, perseverance, and

The characteristics that made the Chinese so attractive to plantation manage-

Precautions by immigration authorities to minimize the danger of introduc-

that are given to any Citizen of the Country.

The Plantation Experience

The housing furnished by the plantations, though simple, seems to have

1. Laborers are expected to be industrious and docile and obedient to

2. Any cause of complaint against the overseers, of injustice or ill

The P — [Plantation] Chinese were vigorously prosecuted for their riotous

In a report on labor in Hawaii in 1899, Wray Taylor gave “a general view of

Most contracts in the nineteenth century stipulated twenty-six working days of

as he observed it while visiting plantation camps:

Here we found quite a company of Chinamen. As we came into the main

According to Chinese informants, lotteries—chee fa—were widely patron-

Getting Off the Plantation

The Plantation as Haven

An elderly Chinese, living in a Chinese society building in one of the sugar-

Another improvident plantation worker gave his life history to a Hawaii-born

After spending a few weeks in Honolulu, he went to the sugar planters’

SINCE Hawaii’s primary attraction for the nineteenth-century Chinese migrants

Chinese Rice Plantations

As migrants intent upon accumulating wealth, Chinese would not have

plantation development, like so many other forms of economic enterprise by

dom and shortly afterward he married a Chinese-Hawaiian girl, the daughter

Other Forms of Rural Enterprise

Supplying the Local Market

Year Number of Chinese Number of Chinese Percentage Number of Chinese

A typical pattern of these rural enterprises was a growth in the number of