On this day, 20 January 1900, health officials in Honolulu, Hawaii, trying to fight an outbreak of bubonic plague attempted to conduct controlled burnings of homes and businesses in Chinatown which quickly got out of control. The fire accidentally set light to the wooden roof of the old Kaumakapili church, then continued to spread for 17 days, devastating an area of 38 acres, including 4,000 homes of mostly Chinese and Japanese residents.
Authorities disregarded evidence that rats spread the disease, and instead scapegoated Asian residents for the disease which had killed a Chinese bookkeeper. They based their tactics not on science but on racist stereotypes about Chinese homes being dirty. So they set up a cordon sanitaire, effectively quarantining people of Asian descent in the city for weeks. Their possessions were thrown out into the street, their homes sprayed with carbolic acid, and they were forced to shower in public in mass, makeshift cleaning stations. Officials then began burning the homes of Chinese and Japanese people.
When the January fire first started spreading out of control, residents fleeing for their lives were turned back by the National Guard, backed up by white vigilantes. Eventually a single exit in the cordon was opened to allow people to escape the fires.
The Honolulu Advertiser declared that “intelligent Anglo-Saxon methods” had been employed to combat a “disease wafted to these shores from Asiatic countries”. Another local paper celebrated the fire for supposedly eradicating the plague while also clearing valuable real estate.
After the fire, many of the residents made homeless were never able to return to live in the area, and its demographics were permanently altered. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/1903709669814174/?type=3
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