[ { "id": 211424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "116\n\nhad to postpone its Christmas celebrations by a week, and that several Kauluwela boys were unsuccessful in their attempt to enter high school. After a quarantine of a week, the disease was considered stamped out. Ping Lim and Ting On, both of whom were attending Oahu College, were on a three-week vacation then.\n\nIn a letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim wrote:\n\n\"My dear brother Ping Yip Chan:- On account of the great distance between town and our residing place in Moanalua and the inconvenience of getting your letter at once which came to me on Tuesday afternoon, the 14th of Feb., when the steamer was about to leave, I did not answer you immediately. You are, no doubt, wondering why I am in Moanalua. The cause was that S. M. Damon was afraid that his brother F. W. Damon's residence and the school might burn down in case one of our members should have attached the plague, and also the school's neighbourhood is in a very bad condition. So we moved to a small island owned by S. M. Damon, which is near to the 3 mi. water pumping tank, and borrowed six tents from the Kamehameha School to make our chambers. Four of them used for us, sixty in number, and one for the three teachers, and one for a food storeroom. You may think it is crowded but there the ocean wind is pretty strong. At first we expected to live there one week or two, but after having been there a week the news reached us, stating that several Chinamen working in the Pantheon stables, which are adjacent to our school, have died of plague and so these buildings were soon turned to ashes. Afterwards the whole block in which we live was said to be infected and a rough fence has been built around the block. The people of this spot have been put under quarantine. Had we not made the move we are surely in quarantine.\n\nNow I must turn to another important subject. Well, you have told me that the burning of Chinatown is the most cruel act that was done to our Chinese by the whites. No, the properties destroying itself was not so half bad as to see our ignorant helpless bind-footed Chinese women and babies crying and running forcibly for their lives on the streets, when the unexpected fire came. More than this, some few women who were about to let their babies out to earth were pushed to the drays which took them to quarantine. While during these hours it has been said that some births have occurred. Of course the Chinamen were driven like cattle by the inspectors who carried stakes or some other beating instruments in their hands. After that the men and women, numbering several thousand, were taken to the Kawaiahau Church and grounds. The women lived inside the church while the men outside on the grounds with tents. I am sorry to say that father, brother and in-law's whole family were among these people. During their residing in the church, I went to see father every day, asking if there was anything wanting. Many articles and foods have been taken there by our store partners. But after having been in there for a week they were driven to Kalihi just a little below the Kamehameha School where a great number of new rough rooms have been set up. In Kalihi's I can't see any of our known people to talk with there. All I can do is to send letters to them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211425, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "There besides Chinese are Japs and Hawaiians of both sex but these women are not so weak and helpless as the Chinese women are.\n\nHaving told you so many unpleasant things now I tell you some good chances that we have met. The whole Chinatown is gone except fifteen to twenty brick buildings were left. It was very very fortunate that the fire did not reach our store side. The Honolulu Chinese Chronicle's whole block was burned, including several brick buildings, as Sing Chong, Yee Wo Chan and others.\n\nThe unexpected fire was caused by the strong wind. Anyway the whole town shall be burned but gradually had not the big fire had happened.\n\nWhen the people left their homes for quarantine they were not allowed to take anything more than they can carry. So one of these numbers had to lose 90% of what he had or more. The Chinatown Quarantine did not raise entirely but King St's quarantine was raised on the 15th Feb. Our store had been resumed to business on that day. The business is very rapid and profitable because there are only four or five big grocery stores in town now. It is also lucky that Yim Quen, Lum Kam Chin, Yim Seg Lock, Lum Chock Hoo and Chong Chug are not in quarantine, if they are the store will probably not reopen so soon.\n\nAll schools will probably reopen in a couple of weeks, if no more new cases have been known from now on. There have been no case for nearly two wks. in Honolulu. It is said that the quarantined people in Kalihi will be all let out before March.\n\nI shall be glad to tell you some more news happened later.\n\nYour loving brother\n\nPing Lim Chan**\n\nOn 14 April 1900, Ping Lam informed Father that all schools had reopened and that the Board of Education had designated Kauluwela School open to both Chinese boys and girls in view of the fact that the school for Chinese girls had been destroyed. Apparently there was sexual segregation as well as racial discrimination then. Ping Lim had been depressed over his mother's death on 4 October 1899, but the upheaval caused by the Chinatown fire a few months later drew his attention away from his grief.\n\nNo record has been preserved to indicate when Ping Lim matriculated at the University of California in Berkeley where he became interested in dentistry, then in law and in political economy. In his letter of 17 January 1903, he said that 250 students were expelled and 900 more received conditions because the large enrolment forced these eliminations.\n\n[17", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211465, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "157\n\nconverted to Christianity. Although I did not understand the import of the occasion, I sensed it was a special event the Sunday we were all baptized at the Fort Street Chinese Church to which Father already belonged. We were amused when Helen, then a baby, pushed the minister's hand away when he reached out to baptize her. Thereafter the family attended church regularly, participating in all the religious celebrations in new outfits, especially during Christmas when our excitement ran high. On Sunday afternoons we would worship again at the Kauluwela Mission on Vineyard Street, located midway between Liliha and River Streets. Mrs. Cooper had come from Chicago to carry on this mission work financially supported by Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Richards, in order to reach out to the different races (Chinese, Hawaiians, Portuguese, Puerto-Ricans, and even a few Russians) living in several camps in that area. Mrs. Cooper would often ask Mother to accompany her when visiting Chinese families. In time we became good friends. Whenever Mrs. Cooper visited us, she would have us kneel while she prayed long and fervently, giving me the impression that we were sinners needing forgiveness.\n\nIn 1917 we moved to 178 South School Street in order to accommodate a growing family, at a time when many of our Chinese neighbours were beginning to move to other parts of the city. The more affluent ones bought or built larger and better homes around and beyond Thomas Square. The arrival of the automobile, electricity, and telephone changed our way of life. Within several years tragedy came into our lives when Father died. After an initial severe grief reaction, Mother knew that she had to face reality. She heeded the advice of Bishop Bank to let the Bishop Trust Company administer Father's estate, and as a result, she discovered, to her regret, that she had no say in any decision-making. She was allowed only 60 dollars a month. It was a neighbour, Lam Ôn, who counselled Mother to contest the application of the trust company to continue as guardian of her minor children's share of the estate, and to retain I. M. Stainback as her attorney. Thus she was able to secure the guardianship. By careful management of the assets, she was able to turn over our respective interests to us when each of us reached the age of majority. Although Father did not leave much, there was enough to support Mother through life and for her to leave what remained to her surviving daughters.\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211472, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "164\n\nfor being arrogant, did not accept Ruth, probably due to her discrimination against Mrs. Chang's programme. However, she accepted me, perhaps because I was considered uncontaminated and because Father was employed in a bank owned by \"white\" people. She made a poor choice because Ruth was by far the better student. Ruth then was accepted by Mrs. Creighton of Kauluwela School where she was placed directly in the third grade with Mrs. Bowman. Ruth stood out scholastically and was the pride of her teachers. She continued to do well in McKinley High School and won first prize and a gold medal upon graduation. Granted a Barbour scholarship at the University of Michigan, after a premedical programme at the University of Hawaii, she completed her academic medical studies and received a medical degree in 1929.\n\nAt Michigan Ruth met and became engaged to Herbert Kai Gee Wong of Hong Kong before he left to finish his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Ruth sprained an ankle on a tour of a theatre during her last year of school and, even after surgery, was not able to walk normally or to accept an internship in a Philadelphia hospital. On her way back to Honolulu to recuperate, she spent a few days with me in Lincoln and some weeks with Dr. George S. Chan, a distant cousin, in Los Angeles. Being a herbalist, he tried unsuccessfully to heal the ankle with Chinese herbs. Once home she came under the care of Dr. Joseph Lam, family friend and schoolmate of Ruth's at Michigan. An injection of some new medication from Germany, administered by Dr. Mils Larsen, resulted in her death from septicemia on 6 June, 1932. Her three years of illness were a great strain on her and on the family. It was a great tragedy that such a brilliant woman was struck down just at the beginning of a promising career.\n\n―\n\nHelen was a very appealing child bright, sweet and smiling. During the Easter, Children's Day and Christmas services at the Kauluwela Mission, she was always asked to sing or perform. She attended Central Grammar School as I did and was a favourite of her teacher, Miss Padgett, and of the principal, Mrs. Sophie Overend, who had replaced Mrs. Carter. From there Helen went to McKinley High School, where, during her senior year, she was elected ROTC Sponsor for Company L. At the University of Hawaii, from which she graduated in three and a half years with a B.A. degree in Education, she was selected runner-up by movie star John Gilbert in a beauty contest among a group of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 } ]