FOUR CHINAMEN HELD IN BANGOR: First Local Hearing This Morning Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, a headline in the Bangor Daily News said Jan. 20, 1916.
The lead explained the significance of the event in the city’s history: “What is believed to be the first prosecution in Bangor under the provisions of the Chinese exclusion act will be heard this forenoon by United States Commissioner Charles H. Reid, following the detention on Wednesday of four Chinamen who were found by a Chinese inspector of immigration after a search of the city.”
The four men were Ng Hong Wah, Goon Teung, Ng Sing and Ng Goon. “A deputy United States marshal arrived from Portland on Wednesday night to take charge of them,” the newspaper story said.
Why were these four men being held in “the detention room of the police station” guarded by a deputy United States marshal? Had “Chinese inspector” John McCabe reason to believe they were terrorists, smugglers or some other sort of dangerous criminals?
It turns out they were merely laborers — victims of one of the most racially charged laws in U.S. history — trying to support themselves in Bangor’s Chinese laundries. Unless they had been born in the United States, Chinese laborers were banned from entering the country under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Passed in 1882, it was the first U.S. law to deny immigration rights to a particular ethnic group.
Like most American cities, Bangor was a melting pot in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of immigrants from Albania, Austria, Canada, all the Scandinavian countries, England, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Syria and many other countries lived here. Thousands more second-generation immigrants had been born here. Finally, thousands more passed through Bangor annually for varying periods of time on their way to work in the logging camps and on the log drives in the North Woods.
Among Bangor’s immigrants were about two dozen Chinese, according to the 1920 U.S. Census. They worked mostly in laundries and in one or two Chinese-American restaurants. Some of them had been in Bangor for decades.
Bangor’s earliest Chinese resident was probably Wah Lee, who was listed in the city directory as a laundryman at 17 East Market Square in 1887, according to Gary Libby, an authority on the history of Maine’s Chinese population.
Charlie Soo was the proprietor of the city’s first known Chinese restaurant, the Oriental Cafe Co. at 54 Main St. in 1903, said Libby, who is writing a book on Maine’s Chinese history. The first women and children were not recorded in Bangor’s census until 1920, according to Libby’s research.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the end result of years of political and labor unrest in California beginning with the arrival of thousands of Chinese workers in the 1849 gold rush and ending in major cities like San Francisco, where Chinese laborers continued to compete for jobs and higher wages with white laborers.
Even though there were few Chinese in Maine, the state’s border with Canada became a place for smugglers to bring illegal Chinese immigrants into the United States, according to Libby. One gang of smugglers even arranged to have them cross the border at Vanceboro hidden in ventilated coffins on the Canadian-Pacific Railroad.
“During the first years of the 20th century these rings [of smugglers] seem to have favored two principal border crossings, Lowelltown, in Franklin County, and Dennysville, in Washington County,” Libby said.
Bangoreans were aware of some of this activity through newspapers. But the law was regarded as a remote oddity in 1916 in the Queen City, where a half dozen Chinese laundries (at 212 Hammond, 181 Park, 14 Hodsdon, 123 Exchange, 177 Union and 165B State streets) existed along with at least one Chinese-American restaurant, Chin’s Tea Parlor, at 173 Exchange St., according to the city directory.
The city’s Chinese provided needed services — just like the Albanians, the Greeks, the Irish and the many other ethnic laborers. Some Bangoreans had even developed a taste for chop suey.
Undoubtedly there would have been more Chinese in Bangor, if not for the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned laborers, while allowing in diplomats, businessmen, students, tourists and Chinese who were born in the United States, if they could produce the proper paperwork or other evidence.
The hearings in Bangor in 1916 began on Feb. 16 in Bangor’s municipal courtroom. The reporter predicted the case would become “a battle royal on legal points.” U.S. Attorney John F.A. Merrill was prosecuting the government’s case. Well-known Bangor attorneys as well as attorneys from Boston and New York were present to defend the Chinese. Character witnesses were lined up to attest to the respectability and veracity of the defendants.
BIG LEGAL BATTLE OPENS IN BANGOR, said the headline in the Bangor Daily News the next day. The municipal courtroom was filled by interested people. “A number of Chinese added a picturesque touch to the scene,” commented the reporter.
The first case was that of Ng Goon. His uncle, Ng She (or Cee) Dong (or Fong), who operated a laundry at 181 Park St., testified in his behalf. The uncle said Ng Goon was born in San Francisco, but that his birth certificate was burned in Bangor’s 1911 fire.
Ng Goon had moved to New York, where his father died, and then to Boston and Bangor with his uncle. Character references for the defendant and his uncle were provided by several local people, including the courthouse janitor.
The case was then continued to give the prosecuting attorneys time to find discrepancies in Ng She Fong’s testimony in previous cases. The next day the government lawyers “shot his testimony all to pieces.” Ng Goon was ordered deported.
At a subsequent appeal in U.S. District Court in Portland on June 8 before Judge Clarence Hale, the deportation order was reversed after the government’s effort to discredit the testimony of Ng Goon’s uncle was itself discredited. Research by historian Libby shows that Ng Goon registered for the draft in World War I in 1917 and died in Bangor in 1919 at about age 29.
The second case was that of Ng Sing, who claimed to be in the country legally, having a certificate admitting him as a merchant. Even though he had worked in laundries, such as the one owned by Ng She Fong in Bangor and had failed to start his own business, he was still a merchant, he said.
He produced his certificate of admission as a merchant, and despite the government’s testimony that he had entered the country so he could become a laborer and despite further efforts to discredit the testimony of Ng She Fong, Commissioner Reid ruled in the defendant’s favor.
In the midst of the hearings, a story appeared in the Bangor Daily News on Feb. 18 describing some interesting visitors to Bangor. One of them was Ah Foon of New York, who had come to lend support to the four men targeted by the government for deportation. He was “a wealthy man of the Ng clan.” He had encountered several old friends in the city who he had not seen since he left China.
Ah Foon wore on one finger of his left hand “two huge diamond rings set in heavy gold bands.” He “kept a paternal eye on his countrymen” and traveled the country seeking those who needed his money or services. When called upon in an earlier case to furnish bail for a fellow Chinese, a call was made to New York, and authorities were told he “could easily be trusted for a hundred thousand dollars.”
The fate of the other two Bangor laundry workers was settled in hearings in March. Ng Hong Wah was declared to be in the country legally based on a certificate of admittance declaring he was a student, according to a Bangor Daily News story on March 14. He had been carrying on his studies since 1902. He demonstrated his ability to read English in the courtroom. Several witnesses, including two lawyers, a policeman, a fireman and a plumber, testified to his character.
Goon Teung (“pronounced Tank”) said he was 29 and was born in San Francisco. He owned or worked in a laundry at 14 Hodgdon St. He said he had moved to Cambridge and Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he had worked in laundries. Five years earlier he had moved to Bangor. He said that his parents had returned to China, where they died.
He was able to name a number of streets in San Francisco, including the address where he was born. A man identified as an uncle, Tuong Wah, said that Goon Teung’s parents had come to the United States around 1880.
Government prosecutors, however, produced an earlier statement that contradicted his current testimony. For example, he had said he didn’t know where he was born and that he didn’t know the names of any streets in San Francisco and didn’t know of anyone in the country who could tell his background.
The next day Goon Teung was ordered deported by Commissioner Reid. The case was appealed to U.S. District Court in Portland in April, the Bangor Daily News reported on March 15. The record of that hearing has not been located, but apparently Goon Teung convinced the court to let him stay in the United States.
Gary Libby records that he registered for the World War I draft in 1917. In the 1920 census, he was recorded as the owner of a laundry with several employees and the head of household at 14 Hodgdon St. He was able to read, write and speak English, as noted at his deportation hearing in 1916.
Searches for illegal immigrants under the Chinese Exclusion Act were not uncommon throughout the country. At least one other occurred in 1925 in Bangor when an immigration inspector rounded up 30 Chinese men for examination. Only one, a laundry worker, was found without entrance papers and “locked up.”
S.H. Howes, district director of immigration for Maine, “declared that the investigation had revealed that Bangor has a class of orderly, industrious Chinese living here. To find only one out of some 30 illegally living in the city is an unusual percentage, he said.”
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. China had become an ally of the United States against Japan in World War II.
Wayne E. Reilly’s column on Bangor a century ago appears in the newspaper every other Monday. Comments can be sent to him at wreilly.bdn@gmail.com