Chinatown fire of 1900

Chinatown fire of 1900

Honolulu
Hawaii
Chinatown Fire
bubonic plague
epidemic

This picture shows the burning of a building in Chinatown, Honolulu, which was home to a lot of the Chinese migrants in Hawaii. Following the death of You Chong in 1899 from the plague, the Board of Health decided to quarantine the area. They proposed using fire to burn and cleanse the area, however the wind led to the fire spreading. The plague is thought to have began in 1899 and ended in 1900. The significance of this photo has links to the treatment of the Asian community. They were seen as the inferior race. With the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was used to reduce the flow of Asian migration in the US, it could further highlight that there were some racial hostilities towards these groups.

Unknown

HawaiiHistory.org

http://www.hawaiihistory.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ig.page&PageID=548

1900

Catherine Kennedy

I have searched google for the rights to this photo and have had no luck in finding where it was originally from. I did trace the picture back to Wikipedia which said the rights to this photo was from the Hawaii State Archives. I then tried to search for this particular photo, both in the Hawaii State Archives, but also in the Library of Congress and still had no luck. They have other images similar to this, following the aftermath of the fire, but I could not find this particular image.

English

Visual - photograph

20th century Hawai'i