80 RüdigerKunow
cities which had in the last decades of the 19thcentury become major
hubsforTranspacifictradeandalsoforTranspacificimmigration.Upon
arrival on the U.S., mainland migrants from Asia were marshaled
through the "Ellis Island of the West," the inspection station at Angel
IslandintheSanFranciscoBay.
Against this background, it was not a big surprise, at least for those
willing to entertain such a thought, that the disease intervening into
people's lives followed on the heels of earlier U.S.-American
interventions. This is the context in which San Francisco had become
"another melting pot—this time, of microbes.. ." (Wald,Cultures51),
and when the plague hit the city, it met with more systemic responses
than had been implemented half a year ago in Honolulu. What was
especially different in San Francisco was the methodological rigor with
which the local Board of Health conducted its measures but also the
resistance (unexpected by the Caucasian medical and political
establishment) mounted by the ca. 25,000 Chinese living in the city
against these measures which they felt were exaggerated and motivated
byeconomicenvyandethnicprejudice(Kalisch119).
During the plague incidents on Hawai'i and in San Francisco,
medical "fact-finding" converged with popular stereotypes about the
social and cultural Others. But this convergence did not automatically
produce a corresponding attitude in the public sphere. As it turned out,
medicalized nativism was, at least initially, more than the city was
willingtofaceupto.Inthiscontext,itwasperhapsnoaccidentthatthe
plague diagnosis for the first victim, the Chinese workman mentioned
above,wasmadebynoneotherthanJosephJ.Kinyoun,atthattimethe
medicalexpertinresidenceatAngelIsland.Hehadreceivedtrainingin
the new field of bacteriology by Koch and Pasteur. While his diagnosis
was medically unassailable, the rest of the city, both Caucasians and
Chinese, politicians and the people in the street, went into wholesale
denial.Asonenewspaperhinteddarkly:"PlagueFakeisPartofaPlotto
Plunder"(qtd.inKalisch116).
following the commercial routes, especially water routes [so that] it would be
surprising and quite accidental if ports of any size have escaped the infection"
(qtd.inE.T.Anderson298).