Midnight Bombing in Chinatown
A mysterious explosion at a local laundry sends residents running into the streets.
About midnight Thursday, a terrific explosion caused windows to be raised, lightly attired people to issue to the streets, and the saloons to be temporarily emptied. Everybody enquired, 'Where is it?' and 'What is it?' but it was some time before the scene was located, when the uproar in Chinatown made it known. Someone had placed a charge of giant powder under one corner of the wash house and store of Gee Lee. The explosion shattered the window glass, loosened the underpinning of the building, and made a great hole in the ground, but beyond that no damage resulted. Chinatown was greatly excited and didn't dare to again tempt sleep for fear that the outrage would be repeated. Whoever placed the charge there either knew nothing about the handling of giant powder, or wasn't disposed to injure anyone, for giant powder, when exploded, always creates the havoc downward, and had the powder been placed on the roof of the building there would have been no more Gee Lee.
“Chinatown was greatly excited and didn't dare to again tempt sleep for fear that the outrage would be repeated.”
Anti-Chinese violence was a pervasive feature of Washington state life in the 1880s and 90s, often fueled by economic anxieties. While this incident seems to have been a scare tactic rather than a fatal one, it underscores the constant threat of racial terror that communities of color faced in frontier cities like Yakima.
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