JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 99, 28 April 1909, Page 10

JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

A BETROTHAL THAT RAISED A STORM. WHITE GIRL AND YELLOW FIANCEE. BOTH DRIVEN FROM HOME. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, 26th March. The anti-Japane.«e crusade has been vigorously pursued on this coast during the past fortnight. As the cables briefly advised you popular indignation'has been aroused by the announcement of the betrothal of Helen Emery to Gunjiro Aoki. Both have been driven from Cort'e -Madera, the suburb of San Francisco where they lived. Aoki was' pelted there last week, and thought it discreet to quit. If he had any thought of returning he was probably deterred' by the open threat ot the residents to tar 'and feather him. Miss Emery has now been driven forth by means of insults. Her old friends "cut" her, the newspapers kept up v 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 reiused to return. The Emery family has been split in twain. The mother sides with the daughter and has gone with her to Tacoma; the fathei firmly refuses to sanction the marriage ; a brother, who was appealed to to intercede with the father, has shown bitter hostility. Thus he replied to his mother's message: — "Dear Mother. — You know how 1 love a nigger." The sympathy of the public, as far as it is openly 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 u)il an.d selfsacrifice has been torn down. The firo 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 that, however blue his blood, his station in America was that of domestic I servant. It was not, however, solely as j a domestic that he entered the Emery household. Mrs. and Miss Emery had been making efforts to convert him to Christianity, and they thought to further this object by bringing him to tht> i home. They were attracted from the j first by the sincerity with which he 1 applied himself to the religious problem. Then came the betrothal, the father's departure, publicity, insults. On Wed- , nesday last Mrs. and Miss Emery left [ for Tacoma amid jeers and jostling and i spiteful showers of rice and lilies. It is expected that Aoki will also go to 1 fdooma. If he "makes good"' 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 i the marriage has taken place at Seattle.] ! THE CRUSADE CONTINUES, i While the popular outcry has been mainly directed against Aoki, the crusade against his race has been carried * on in more formal ways also. The rej solution of the Californian Legislature j urging Congress to pass a law to exclude I all Asiatics is to go to Washington . after all. It was shelved by the Speakj er, and was supposed to be quite dead, r but the session was prolonged by a party I deadlock, and this gave an opportunity 3 to unshelve it. j j "Fire the Jap. and give work to ten j j thousand unemployed," is the exhorta- . tion that some labour body displays ' E about the streets of San Francisco. A - strong' union of carpenters in Alameda . County, across the bay from this city, is making a powerful effort to induce f organised labour throughout the States " \o join in the crusade.

Now that the Customs authorities are looking for opium smugglers day and night, the law-breaking Chinese have to hit upon something extremely ingenious if they want to bring the drug ashore (says a Sydney paper of recent date). Yesterday another illustration of the yellow man's cunning was | forthcoming. In the morning a carpenter went aboard the E. and A. Company's steamer Aldenham, Jying in Circular Quay, to overhaul the chocks and supports of the ship's lifeboats. When removing an apparently solid piece of hardwood, about 2ft in length, used as a chock, from under the keel of oile of the boats, he accidentally espied a screw in it. A minute examination showed that the block of wood had a neatlymade lid, which, after loosening a few sorews, could bo removed. The carpenter >iook the lid off, and found eighteen tins of smoking opium tightly packed inside. The law-breaker must have gone to considerable trouble in making; | the box, because it had been hollowed I out of a solid length of hardwood. The carpenter handed the box and opium over to the marine superintendent of th,e- E. and A. Company, Captain Green, who forwarded them to the Customs. They were subsequently placed in the King's Warehouse. The normal numbei of telegrams, sent daily through the Ixmdon Central Office, which i& the largest in the world, is about 160,000. About 500,000 words are sent every night in > the form of press telegrams, when Parliament is sitting