JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2497, 10 May 1909, Page 2

JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

A BETROTHAL THAT RAISED A

STORM

WHITE GIRL AND YELLOW FIANCEE.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 26

' The anti-Japanese crusade has boc-n vigorously pursued on this coast during tlie past fortnight. As the cables briefly advised you popular indignation'.has been aroused bv tho announcement of the betrothal of Helen Emery to Gunjiro Aoki. Both have been driven from Corte Madera, the suburb of San Francisco, where they lived. Aoki was pelted there last week, and thought it discreet to quit. If lie had any thought of returning he was probably deterred by the open threat of the residents to tar and feather him. Miss Emery has now been driven forth by means of insults. Her old friends “cut” her, Hie newspapers kept up a continuous shriek at her. expense, crowds jeered at her and hustled her. Worst of all, her father, Archdeacon Emery, left the home in anger when her engagement to Aoki was announced, and refused to return. The Emery family has been split in twain. The mother sides with the daughter and has gone with her to Tacoma ; the father firmly refuses to sanction the marriage; a brother, who was appealed to to intercede with the father, has shown hitter hostility. Thus he replied to his mother’s message:

“Dear Mother, —You know how I love a nigger.”

The sympathy of the public, as far as it is openly manifested, is all with the father. No one in the crowd says, “It is a shame that the house should be divided by the father’s prejudice.” Everywhere one hears, “What a shame that 'the poor old man should be driven from his home by the infatuation of his daughter, and the scheming of that, wretched dago!” The newspapers vie with each other in trumpeting the popular cry. Here is a typical paragraph:—“The rooftree erected by the husband and father after years of toil and self-sacrifice has been torn down. Tho fire of the new love is being fanned to life from the ashes of the old. Custom, etiquette, husband, father, friends, the very standards mutually maintained by both races, which declare that white is white and yellow naught but yellow, have, been cast to the winds for—the love of a Japanese houseboy.” When this betrothal was first announced it was stated that Aoki was a noble Samurai; but it soon became known Jliat, however bine his blood, his station in America was that of domestic servant. It was not, however, solely as a domestic that he entered the Emery household. Airs and Miss Emery had been making efforts to convert him to Christianity, and they thought to further this object by bringing him to the home. They were attracted hom the first by the sincerity with which no applied himself to the religious problem. Then came the betrothal, the father’s departure, publicity, insults. On Wednesday last Airs and Miss Emery left for Tacoma amid jeers and ]osa lino - and spiteful showers of rice and lilies. It is expected that Aoki will al-o go to Tacoma. If he “makes trood’’’there the marriage is to become a fact. At present, however, according to his own brother, Aoki has no money, position, or prospects. [The cables have since announced that the marriage ■ lias taken place at Seattle.]

THE CRUSADE CONTINUES. While the popular outcry has been mainly directed against Aoki, the crusade against his race has been carried on in more formal ways. The resolution of the Californian -Legislature urgino- Congress to pass a law to exclude alf Asiatics is to go to W ashington after all. It was shelved by tlie Speaker, and was supposed to be quite dead, but the session was prolonged by a party deadlock, and this gave an opportunity to unshelve it. “Fire'the Jap, and give work to ten thousand unemployed,” is the exhortation that some labor body displays about the streets of San Francisco. A strong union of earnenters in Alameda County, across the bay from this city, is nwk ino- a powerful effort to induce oi-o-anised 1 labor throughout the States to Join in the crusade.