78 RüdigerKunow
States... PHS officers readily conflated the Chinese race [sic] and the
spread of bubonic plague in their health care policies along the Pacific
Rim" (Shah 126-28). The label "Chinatown" did social and cultural
work as a conflation of place, ethnicity, and biology, all in the danger
mode.Inthewakeofsuchabiopoliticsoflocationanddespiteitshighly
professional and medically up-to-date character, the medical
managementoftheSanFranciscoplagueproducedaveritablefeedback
loop in which the fact that the infection could be traced back to the
Chinese population confirmed existing cultural stereotypes about the
"YellowPeril"anddeterminedthemedicalcoursetobetaken.
ThearrivaloftheplagueontheWestCoastwasnotaboltoutofthe
medicalblue.Sincethemid-1890s,theplaguehadbeenahighlymobile
disease, traveling from inland China to India, Hong Kong and harbor
cities on the coast, causing devastating losses of human lives along its
course.^31 On December 9, 1899, it had reached Hawai'i. That day, in
Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, a Chinese doctor was called to a sick
patient, also a Chinese. Suspecting infection by the plague, the doctor
calledforamorein-depthexamination(corroboratinghisdiagnosis)and
with three more deaths occurring in the next few days, the Hawai'ian
Board of Health (BOH) on December 12, 1899, made a public
announcement that the Black Plague had broken out in the Territory of
Hawai'i. In hopes of containing the disease, the BOH adopted "the
Casablanca method of infection control," i.e., "round[ing] up the usual
suspects" (Markel,Germs159), namely the Chinese population. The
BOHimmediatelyplacedastrictquarantineonHonolulu'sChinatown,a
crowded tenement district which housed more than half of the city's
population (with a total of 30,000). The BOH also closed the port of
Honolulu to all incoming and outgoing traffic (Ikeda 76; Link 69).
Possibly yielding to pressures from the business community, and
because no new infections became known for a while, the BOH soon
after lifted its quarantine, "a dramatic error in judgment" (Ikeda 76), as
would soon become apparent when new cases were emerging in quick
succession.Thus,onlyfivedaysafterthebanhadbeenlifted,itwasre-
imposed and remained in effect until August 17, 1901 (Link 71). And
(^31) The U.S. health authorities not only knew about this but actively monitored
thecourseofthedisease(Shah126).