Monthly Archives: February 2011

Moon Chin finished the mechanics course and thought he might be able to catch on as an airline mechanic. He cast around for openings, but the recession was slipping into a much more serious depression, and nobody was hiring. There … Continue reading →

Moon Chin crossed North America in a train, sitting upright on a wooden bench with his face glued to the window, full of wonder at the sights of the new land. After five days in transit, father and son reached … Continue reading →

Joe Chin wasn’t alone in having his citizenship minted in the San Francisco earthquake. Thousands of other Chinese had seized the same opportunity, and like Joe Chin, at long intervals those men returned to the villages, wives, and families they’d … Continue reading →

Moon Chin and his father lugged a single suitcase out of Wing-Wa village one humid morning in the summer of 1924. Sweat trickled from their short black hair and soaked their shirts. Dust trailed from their feet in the two-rut … Continue reading →

In Wing-Wa Village, Moon Chin grew up with his mother, sister, and brother behind the dingy, sun-seared, windowless exterior walls of a single-story, mud-brick house slowly crumbling back into the earth from which it had been raised. Crunchy lichens sprouted … Continue reading →

Continued from yesterday, part 3 of 3… At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, the San Andreas Fault ruptured off the coast southwest of San Francisco, triggering a monstrous earthquake that hammered the city for 45 seconds, collapsing and toppling … Continue reading →

Continued from yesterday. Predictably, the Chinese suffered a backlash. Working-class whites felt that disciplined Chinese toil forced them to work harder for less pay. In 1871, a dozen Chinese were killed in a Los Angeles race riot – including a … Continue reading →