Taunts, a Barber Shop, a Pigtail — and Only the Chinese Man Arrested
With Japan at war with China, a gang of Japanese boys mocked a Chinese New Year reveler on South Fifth Street. He chased them into a Main Street barbershop, the Japanese proprietor called the police, and Dong was the one charged.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Chinese New Year has not been without its exciting features already. In this case it was like all instances in "Peck's Bad Boy," only there were several boys in this and they were all Japanese. The Chinamen on South Fifth Street were celebrating with their usual enthusiasm, settling debts and making calls, but the Japanese boys, who are naturally incensed against the Chinese, thought that in view of the war the Chinamen should be ridiculed for celebrating.
When they commenced to ridicule Chin Dong they made a mistake, for he forgot all about the Japanese victories and took after those Japanese children in much the same manner that the Japanese take after the Chinamen in the old country. Dong thought he saw his tormentors enter a barber shop on Main street, near South Fifth, and in he went, pigtail streaming and the garments that he wears differently from white people spreading out like a balloon. The story had it that he did not wait to see who was in the room, but gave a genuine "ki ki" and kicked over the stove.
G. Hosaka, the Japanese who runs the place, was greatly alarmed, thinking that the Chinaman was crazy over too much celebration. So he called in Officer Barbee and had Dong arrested for disorderly conduct. The case will not be heard until after Chinese New Year.
“The Japanese boys, who are naturally incensed against the Chinese, thought that in view of the war the Chinamen should be ridiculed for celebrating.”
A decade after the 1885–86 expulsions drove Chinese residents out of Seattle at gunpoint, the Sino-Japanese War gave the city's newspapers a fresh excuse to jeer at Chinese neighbors. Note who went to jail: the man celebrating the holiday, not the boys who baited him. The block in question is today's Chinatown–International District, where Asian American residents still contend with harassment — and with how the press frames who the troublemaker is.
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