American Experience (1988–…): Season 34, Episode 7 - Plague at the Golden Gate - full transcript

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[distant rumbling]

♪

NARRATOR:
January 20, 1900.

The skies above Oahu
were black with smoke.

[fire crackling]

Bubonic plague had been discovered

in Honolulu's Chinatown

and panicked health officials
were doing everything they could

to try to stop the spread.



DAVID MORENS: In those
days, they didn't really understand

how plague was transmitted,
so the public health approach

was isolate people.

They would wall off a whole area
with police and checkpoints

and wouldn't let anybody in or out.

But if they couldn't stop the problem,

they would often do targeted
burnings of buildings.

[hose spraying, people
shouting in background]

Their point of view is,

you know, "We don't care what you do.

"If you have to burn the place down,

just make sure that you contain
this epidemic."

♪

NARRATOR: Desperate
residents fled their burning homes



as the fire spiraled out of control.

[people shouting]

And mobs of white residents stood by

with clubs and revolvers...
threatening to kill any Asian

who tried to skirt the exit lane
out of the quarantine zone.

♪

[fire crackling, water spraying]

NAYAN SHAH: This is the Black
Plague of the Middle Ages that wiped out

one-third of the population in Europe.

♪

So, we have this sense
if it wasn't stopped,

the consequences would be unbearable.

NARRATOR:
The fires burned for 17 days

and left nearly all of Chinatown in ashes.

4,500 of its residents were homeless.

The most feared disease in history,

bubonic plague, was an unsolved mystery.

It had decimated the populations
of Europe and North Africa

in two separate pandemics
over hundreds of years,

and the third was now raging across Asia.

♪

This was the start of the steamship era.

So now disease and people and goods

can travel around the world
incredibly quickly.

And the bubonic plague
spreads along Hong Kong,

spreads to Japan, it spreads to India,

and millions of people start dying.

♪

At that time, there was still
a medieval sense of what

this disease was

and how it was spread.

Many people thought it was
"miasma"... bad air...

or it was simply a disease of filth.

♪

Other people thought that
this is only a disease

of rice eaters.

♪

NARRATOR: Racism
and ignorance were already in the air

as the bubonic plague made its
silent way across the Pacific.

♪

It would arrive in North America
for the first time in history

where it would spark nationwide
terror, denial, and blame.

♪

Two men would try to stop it,

struggling with not only
the scientific unknowns,

but unanticipated forces of
politics, commerce, and race.

[seagulls squawking, waves lapping]

♪

[seagull squawking]

♪

NARRATOR:
June 28, 1899:

in the cold morning fog,
a lone Italian crab fisherman

made an unsettling discovery.

Two bodies were floating
face down in San Francisco Bay.

♪

The previous morning,
the Japanese steamship

the Nippon Maru had arrived
in San Francisco from Hong Kong,

stopping at Shanghai, Yokohama,
and then Honolulu.

Ominously, she flew a yellow flag:

the international signal
indicating disease.

♪

MARILYN CHASE: When the Nippon
Maru entered San Francisco Bay,

two stowaways,

who evidently were ill, jumped overboard

into the bay waters.

And when their bodies were recovered,

the local doctors found them
to be suspicious.

NARRATOR: Unnerved
by both their autopsy findings

and recent reports of plague in Asia,

the city doctors immediately
sent their results

to Joseph Kinyoun, the nation's
foremost plague authority,

and the newly appointed head
of the Marine Hospital Service

on nearby Angel Island.

CHASE: Angel Island in San Francisco Bay

had a quarantine station
where cargoes and passengers

were checked for all kinds of
disease by the doctors

of the Marine Hospital Service.

♪

NARRATOR: The Marine Hospital
Service had been established

30 years earlier to treat sick seamen.

[indistinct chatter in background]

But the idea of "public health"
had since evolved into a matter

of national concern.

The MHS was now charged with
fighting the spread of epidemics

using federal powers of
quarantine and surveillance.

♪

RANDALL: Their main responsibility
was protecting the people

of the United States

from the spread of disease
around the world.

So, there were Marine Hospital
Service officers stationed

in Rome, in London, in Asia.

♪

NARRATOR:
Just weeks into his posting,

Kinyoun knew better than anyone
that hospitals around the world

were reporting 90% death rates
from the plague.

And that millions had already
perished from a pandemic

that had been raging since the 1850s.

Although no one knew why,

rats and filth had long been
associated with plague.

Kinyoun ordered the
Nippon Maru to be disinfected

and checked for vermin before
having all 55 passengers

quarantined on Angel Island.

♪

Then he faced
the most critical step of all:

determining how the men had died.

JOSEPH HOUTS JR.:
Kinyoun suspected plague.

And there was a little rattle
in the papers.

♪

Well, Kinyoun thought the bodies
were too far gone.

There wasn't definitive proof.

So the press kind of backed away,

Kinyoun backed away,
and everybody backed away.

♪

NARRATOR: A positive
diagnosis would be calamitous.

But the condition of the tissue
samples and decomposed bodies

made forensic confirmation impossible.

Without scientific proof,
Kinyoun could not assert

that plague had arrived.

Yet his years of
rigorous training had taught him

to remain alert.

♪

CHASE:
Joseph Kinyoun was a star.

He was beautifully educated.

He had studied with the best
scientists in the world

to learn the state-of-the-art methods

of diagnosing infectious diseases.

Then, at the age of 27,

while he was at the
Hygienic Laboratory in New York,

he diagnosed the first case

of cholera with the new
bacteriologic tests

in the Western Hemisphere.

He was truly the elite
of American scientists.

NARRATOR: But Kinyoun's meteoric
rise was interrupted by personal tragedy.

♪

TRISH REEVES: Joe and Elizabeth
Kinyoun's daughter died of diphtheria

at the age of three.

It's a terrible disease to die from,

and it must be devastating for a parent.

♪

RANDALL: Diphtheria at the time
was one of the most devastating

childhood diseases.

So, Kinyoun goes to Germany
to work with Robert Koch,

who had discovered these cures
for diphtheria.

And he can't believe his own eyes,

seeing these kids recover as if by magic.

And he can't help but believe

that he's seeing his own daughter's face

on all of these children.

And that really gives him
this idea that medicine

can conquer anything.

♪

NARRATOR: Kinyoun was fueled
by not just a new sense of purpose

but of possibility.

♪

DAVID MORENS:
Joseph James Kinyoun,

he was a very unique guy
from the day he set foot

in the Marine Hospital Service.

He was fascinated by technology.

He taught himself photography
and radiology,

which was a new technique around
the turn of the century.

He was an inventor.

And he invented an enormous
number of machines and devices

to steam sterilize, for example,
or chemically sterilize.

Any new technique,
he was just in love with

and he wanted to master it.

He was an early adopter of ideas.

♪

NARRATOR: The 39-year old scientist
had already proven himself a leader

in the fledgling fields of microbiology

and infectious diseases.

Once in D.C., Kinyoun developed
the Hygienic Laboratory

into a national state-of-the-art
research center,

which supported the MHS
by identifying diseases

and controlling epidemic outbreaks.

CHASE: Dr. Joseph Kinyoun
loved the National Hygienic Lab.

He and his young family loved
the finer East Coast living

and the cream of scientific
society in Washington D.C.

However, Walter Wyman,

the surgeon general of the
Marine Hospital Service,

his eye was on the West Coast,

where he feared plague would be entering

and he transferred
the young Joseph Kinyoun

to San Francisco to run the
Angel Island quarantine station.

[wind whipping]

And, of course, Kinyoun was not
pleased about being dispatched

to what he thought was this
frontier outpost.

NARRATOR: The MHS
quarantine station on Angel Island

in the middle of San Francisco
Bay was a jumble of filthy

and neglected buildings.

[birds chirping]

Kinyoun now had to contend
with a workplace

that was completely unsuitable
to the urgent task at hand...

protecting the nation
from a deadly epidemic.

MORENS:
The Marine Hospital Service

was a uniform branch
of the United States government.

And Kinyoun himself,
he's a very military guy.

He always followed orders,
and he did what he was told,

and didn't complain about it.

He was clearly the best man for the job.

He probably knew that.

So, as everything else,
he threw himself into it 100%.

[birds squawking]

NARRATOR: From the moment
Kinyoun assumed his post in California,

he had been on high alert for plague.

San Francisco was not only the
busiest port on the West Coast,

but connected by rail
to the rest of the country.

It was terrifyingly well-placed
to spread disease far and wide.

♪

To miss even a single diagnosis
could be cataclysmic.

♪

SHAH:
Joseph Kinyoun is really intent

on checking every ship from Asia.

Because after bubonic plague
emerges in Honolulu,

and is discovered in the Chinese quarter,

it becomes kind of a confirmation bias.

It was only going to affect
Chinese people.

That one could contain it in some way.

And that set up

a terrible dynamic.

It only percolated more fear,
more confusion,

more misunderstanding.

And all eyes were targeted on
a Chinese source.

[traditional Chinese music playing]

[firecrackers popping]

[music continues]

♪

NARRATOR:
As the 20th century dawned,

everyone celebrated.

♪

And no place had more optimistic
swagger than San Francisco.

It was home to one
out of every four people

who lived west of the Rockies.

♪

A third of the nation's money
west of the Mississippi

flowed through her banks.

The city was a trading hub,
the portal to the east,

and the diamond in the crown
of a state already rich

with natural resources.

It truly was the city of the future.

CHASE:
As a Gold Rush boom town,

San Francisco had new money.

It had three opera houses,

railroad and mining tycoons
living in palaces on Nob Hill,

and a new cable car system.

[cable car bells clanging]

San Francisco in 1900 aspired to be

the Paris of the Pacific coast.

[people chattering]

NARRATOR: Nearly six percent
of the city's population lived in

a 12-block district.

HARRY CHUCK: Chinatown
is home and it always will be.

My mother was born in the year 1900

in San Francisco's Chinatown.

And she lived in Chinatown
throughout her entire life.

Because they didn't have any choices.

They were not permitted to move
outside of the neighborhood.

Things were red lined,
there was discrimination,

and people were very stereotyped.

MAE NGAI: Chinatowns primarily
exist because Chinese weren't allowed

to live in white neighborhoods
or any other neighborhood.

♪

They are what sociologists call
ethnic enclaves,

where people like to live with
people who speak their language,

or eat similar foods,
or practice the same religion.

But they're also confining.

So, Chinatowns are a combination
of ethnic solidarity

and discrimination and exclusion.

♪

NARRATOR: As the Year of the
Rat dawned on January 31, 1900,

shop owners in Chinatown began
noticing a disturbing sight:

rat carcasses littered

the district's alleys and courtyards.

And for 41-year-old Wong Chut King,

something was definitely wrong.

A worker in a nearby lumber yard,

Wong lived in the Globe Hotel
on DuPont Avenue,

the main artery of Chinatown.

♪

RANDALL: He shared
one bed with two other men.

They'd take turns sleeping.

It was really a meager existence
of survival.

He, like many people who came from China,

expected their time

in San Francisco to be short-lived.

They come, they make a lot of money,

then they go back home a wealthy man.

That didn't play out
for almost all of them.

♪

NARRATOR: For several weeks,
Wong Chut King struggled with

mounting fever, exhaustion,

and painfully swollen
lymph nodes, or "buboes."

Because city hospitals
were closed to the Chinese,

he sought traditional Chinese remedies,

but nothing seemed to help.

Eventually, he was too sick to move.

RANDALL:
His roommates,

they see that he's dying.

They take him to a local,
you know, what was called

a Hall of Tranquility.

♪

GUENTER RISSE: The
Chinese have a holistic view.

They believe that when they die,

their spirit needs to be tended to.

And the remains

had to be brought back
because of their view

that the ancestors played
a great role in the afterlife.

NGAI: One of the sources of
mistrust between the community

and Western doctors was
a very different view of

life and death.

The body should not be cut,
autopsies were anathema,

one's soul had to return
to one's home village.

So the Chinese were very careful.

CHASE:
So, it was a quiet affair.

And Wong Chut King died alone,

on March 6, 1900.

♪

[bell rings, horse hooves clomping]

NARRATOR: State law required a
physician to issue a death certificate

so a health inspector was
summoned to examine the body.

[horse whinnying]

He notices a bubo
in, in Wong Chut King's groin

and he jumps back because
he does know what this is.

He knows it's a sign of bubonic plague.

So, he figures that,

"I'm going to take a sample of this tissue

"from Wong Chut King's body.

"I'm going to run it over
to Kinyoun at Angel Island.

"And I'm going to let him
make the decision

of whether this is plague
or not."

♪

NARRATOR:
Kinyoun knew all about buboes,

where the word "bubonic" comes from.

The swollen lymph nodes were
an infamous sign of the plague.

Yet he also knew that they
weren't enough for a diagnosis

and he had to be 100% certain.

♪

MORENS: To prove a
plague death scientifically,

you couldn't just do it by examining

the live patient or the cadaver.

You had to isolate the organism
from tissue.

♪

NARRATOR: In 1900,
microbiology was still a fledgling field.

And the idea that germs
could cause disease

was not fully accepted,
even by many doctors.

Kinyoun's superior,
Surgeon General Walter Wyman,

had himself published a paper
on the plague that was full

of speculations and misinformation:

that the disease was spread

by dust, tainted food,
and contaminated objects.

Wyman also endorsed
racial theories of the time

that the disease targeted Asians

while sparing whites.

RANDALL:
Surgeon General Wyman, himself,

said it was only a disease of rice eaters.

If you ate a "muscular diet of meat,"

you were somehow immune to it.

NARRATOR: Such ignorance was
widespread due in part to the fact

that scientific confirmation
could take years.

Nevertheless,
European scientists had recently

identified the bubonic plague bacteria

using a test called Gram's stain.

MAY CHU: Bubonic plague is
transmitted by a bacteria called

Yersinia pestis.

And Gram stains are used
under the microscope to enhance

the difference in colors.

So, you can see the bacteria in
what we call a smear on a slide.

♪

And Yersinia pestis stains pink.

♪

NARRATOR: As the first
American to have studied the bacilli,

Kinyoun was unquestionably
the most qualified scientist

in the country to test for plague.

Hours after Wong's death,

he undertook the exacting forensic work,

using the sample taken from the body.

[glass clinking]

CHASE:
Isolate the germ in biopsy,

test it with the Gram stain.

Put it under a microscope...

♪

And look for the distinctive
pink rod-shaped bacilli

with rounded tips.

And that was the classic
signature of plague.

♪

NARRATOR: Yet the presence of
the telltale marker alone wasn't enough

to confirm a diagnosis.

Kinyoun would have to grow
the culture in his lab,

which would take time,

and there was none to spare.

For he couldn't help but wonder:

how many others might be infected?

♪

Across San Francisco Bay,

the city board of health
was too spooked to wait.

To them, it was clearly
a "Chinese problem,"

confined to Chinatown.

So they decided to
control matters by quarantining

the entire district.

One day after Wong Chut King's death,

the Chinese community awoke
to find ropes cordoning off

their 12-block district.

Overnight, 20,000 people...

nearly all of the city's Asians...

found themselves virtual prisoners.

McCLAIN:
What was unusual

was that it didn't apply
to this one particular house

where the man was found, but applied to

the whole Chinese quarter,

sealing off a whole area of a city.

SHAH:
There was this kind of idea that

the Chinese carry
a particular virulent form

of some kind of disease,

whether it was smallpox,
or syphilis, or bubonic plague.

And that the disease is endemic
to their bodies,

that it would be possible to infect

innocent middle-class white people.

McCLAIN: There was definitely
this view that Asians were

more susceptible to the disease
as opposed to whites.

And this was a widely shared
view at the time.

♪

RANDALL: The residents of
Chinatown were really stuck.

They weren't allowed to be citizens.

They weren't allowed to own property.

They weren't allowed
many fundamental rights.

NARRATOR: In 1900, anti-Chinese
sentiment wasn't isolated...

it was codified by federal law.

The Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882 prohibited all Chinese

from citizenship,

essentially relegating them
to the margins of society.

♪

POWELL: The Chinese were
already not seen as human

before the Chinese Exclusion Act,

which is why the act passed.

♪

The only time in our history
that we specifically named

an ethnicity to say they can't
come to the United States;

they don't belong,
they're too different than us.

♪

CHASE: The building of
the transcontinental railroad

required tons of hard labor,

which Chinese workers had taken on.

Once that final golden spike was driven,

the welcome mat was withdrawn.

And the once-essential
Chinese workers were regarded as

a surplus that would cut into
demand for white labor.

So, the white labor movement
was very hostile.

[crowd shouting]

NGAI: Almost 20 years have
gone by since the Exclusion Act.

And this has been a very
tumultuous number of decades

where the government tries
to take this right away,

impose that discriminatory law,

to try to drive people away.

NARRATOR: The Chinese community
saw the cordon for what it was:

the latest unjust action
taken against them

based on flimsy evidence
and a convenient excuse.

CHASE: The populace was
violently opposed to being sealed

inside Chinatown.

Many people worked outside the district.

They had jobs to get to.

And interestingly,

the white community,

while not so sympathetic

to the viewpoint of the people
in Chinatown,

wanted their cooks and gardeners
and domestic back on the job.

And so all sides were at war.

And by March 10, the ropes came down.

McCLAIN: So, the first
quarantine of Chinatown,

it didn't last very long...

only three days.

RANDALL: Because the
quarantine came down so quickly,

many people in San Francisco
thought it was just all a sham.

It almost eroded public trust immediately.

NARRATOR: In the face of
such apparent incompetence,

the city's response was one of relief...

and amused contempt.

CHASE: One of the papers
celebrated the end of the first quarantine

by writing a silly poem,

"Sweet Fong is at his post once more

and cooking reigns supreme."

Because the people had gotten
their domestic servants back.

It was that kind of racial supremacy

emanating from every corner of the city.

[birds chirping]

NARRATOR: Alone
in his lab on Angel Island,

Kinyoun had managed to successfully grow

the microorganism within 48 hours.

But the next step... injecting it
into a healthy animal

to see what would happen...
would take days.

Once again,
Kinyoun took extra precautions,

choosing to inoculate not one
but four lab animals:

two guinea pigs, a rat, and a monkey.

[animals chittering, glass clinking]

HOUTS JR.: Three of the
animals died pretty quickly.

The last one, the monkey,
was the one he was hoping on.

If it didn't die, then maybe
it's not the plague.

Well, it died.

♪

NARRATOR: On March 13, seven
days after Wong Chut King passed away,

Kinyoun was finally able
to confirm the cause of death.

♪

Wong became the first
diagnosed case of bubonic plague

in the United States.

But Kinyoun feared
he would not be the last.

♪

[machine clicking]

RANDALL:
Kinyoun immediately sends

a coded telegram to D.C.

"Bumpkin confirmed."

And that was the code word
that plague is here.

MORENS: Kinyoun's boss Walter
Wyman had every reason to believe

that if it got out of
San Francisco, it would

go over the whole country and
countless deaths would occur.

♪

So, the people in Washington
were just alarmed,

and their point of view is,
"We don't care what you do.

"If you have to burn the place down,

"just make sure that you contain
this epidemic.

It's a national emergency."

♪

NARRATOR: As federal officials frantically
tried to coordinate a response,

word of Kinyoun's diagnosis spread quickly

among San Francisco's leaders.

Yet powerful merchants and politicians

like Mayor James Phelan
refused to accept his findings.

[seagulls squawking]

RISSE: Shipping exchanges around the world

was very, very important

source of income.

So, if there was plague in San Francisco,

it would be blocked,

it would no longer be open.

So industries were at stake.

McCLAIN: Mayor Phelan was very
concerned that if word got around

that San Francisco

had cases of plague that the
city's commerce would be dealt

a really serious blow.

NARRATOR: City leaders
were used to autonomy,

and didn't like being told what to do,

especially by authorities
at the federal level.

[birds chirping]

SHAH: With the Marine Hospital
Service, the federal government,

they were now centrally becoming
involved in public health

across the United States.

And they felt they had supreme authority.

But the city government,
the merchant elite

was saying to them, "We have
jurisdiction in San Francisco."

And then there were state officials

and the governor who thought,

"Well, we have authority over
all of California."

And it becomes a question immediately

of who has authority.

If there is an outbreak, is this
a federal responsibility?

Or is this the city, or is it the state?

NARRATOR: Most San
Franciscans didn't care.

They couldn't be bothered with the death

of a faceless stranger in Chinatown,

especially given widespread
beliefs that whites were immune.

As for city leaders,

while they refused to accept
Kinyoun's diagnosis,

they did agree that what they
called the "Chinese problem"

needed to be contained.

MORENS: They didn't really
understand how the bubonic plague

was transmitted to people.

But they knew if it occurred in

a city it would be in one area.

And so, the public health
approach was to find the focus

and go in there and do whatever you could

to get rid of the disease.

NARRATOR:
The moment Mayor Phelan declared

"Asiatic infections are a constant menace

to San Francisco's public health,"

75 health inspectors
and dozens of policemen,

armed with sledgehammers and axes,

descended on an unsuspecting Chinatown.

They smashed down doors,
ransacked homes, stole brazenly,

and beat anyone who stood up to them.

CHASE: They were subjected
to plague measures, which included

torching of belongings,
they would bring in

smudge pots of sulfur,
and fumigate a building.

If you were a merchant selling
fine silks or ceramics,

it would spoil your goods.

So, these measures, which were
crude and discriminatory

and not very effective,

frightened the populace.

People were not eager to report

a case of sickness in their home.

♪

BRUCE QUAN JR.: In 1900,
at the time of the bubonic plague,

my great-grandfather had a business called

the Pacific Fruit Packing Company.

And my family lived above the cannery

on Stockton Street in Chinatown.

They went to church

where Ng Poon Chew
was the assistant pastor.

And that's how when he started
a newspaper,

my great-grandfather helped him fund

the "Chung Sai Yat Po."

And in Chinatown, they would
post some of the newspapers

on the walls.

So the Chinese knew exactly
what was going on.

♪

SHAH: Ng Poon Chew and his
newspaper documented what the deeply felt

fears and concerns were
of Chinese laborers,

how they distrusted
Western medical authority,

how they feared
what was going to happen to them

from a Chinese perspective.

MAN [reading]: "Alas, why should
Chinatown's good name depend on

"the life and death of a monkey?

"We don't know whether they are
rooting for Chinatown

or the monkey."

"Chung Sai Yat Po Daily."

♪

NARRATOR: Nine days
after Wong Chut King's death,

Kinyoun confirmed three more cases...

all within Chinatown.

♪

Kinyoun had feared
such an outbreak all along,

knowing that even a handful of cases

could explode exponentially

into a national epidemic within weeks.

The urgency of the situation
caught the eye

of newspaper magnate
William Randolph Hearst.

On March 18, his paper,
"The New York Journal,"

published a special national edition

trumpeting the sensational story
from California.

Pressured by commercial stakeholders,

San Francisco's leaders quickly responded,

enlisting the editors
of leading newspapers to dismiss

what they now called "rumors."

RANDALL: City Hall and all
of San Francisco's elite,

they had the same idea in mind,

"We're not going to report
any news of the plague."

You have the "Chronicle" saying,

"We're gonna write an editorial

"saying that Kinyoun or anybody else from

"Marine Hospital Service
is just trying to pick

San Francisco's pocket."

CHASE: Dr. Joseph Kinyoun was a proud man.

He regarded the tools of science,

the enlightenment
of his technology, as a gift.

And he expected, quite rightly,

some deference and respect for
what he brought to the city.

And he got none of it.

Because from the moment that
Joseph Kinyoun diagnosed plague

in the glands of Wong Chut King,
science was on trial.

♪

And Bubonic plague was called
"Kinyoun's fake."

♪

[bird squawking]

NARRATOR: As the media
storm swirled around him,

a frantic Kinyoun

tried to retrace the last days
of each victim's life

in a desperate attempt
to determine who or where

the next might be.

RANDALL: What made Kinyoun
so terrified when he started

identifying the disease,

was he found one victim and he
could not find any connections

to the next victim.

♪

It's almost like
you're looking at the ocean,

and you can't see it, but you
know something is down there.

And he had no idea what it was.

CHASE:
It was a mystery.

There was a kind of creeping pace.

There would be a case or two,
and then it would pause.

Kinyoun tried to puzzle it out.

MORENS: He was looking
for other cases of plague.

He also knew that because of the
way Chinatown was being treated

by local officials, they might hide cases.

♪

MAN [reading]: "Suspicions everywhere
and every shadow becomes an enemy."

"Chung Sai Yat Po Daily."

CHASE: A plague death would
require autopsy to confirm the case.

It was an offense in the culture.

So no one was eager to call in
the scientists.

RANDALL: And it becomes
a cat and mouse game.

And people keep on questioning him.

If the plague is as scary
as you're saying it is,

there should be bodies everywhere.

We should also see living victims

who are struggling with this.

♪

McCLAIN:
People thought,

"Well, if the plague existed,

"it should be spreading like wildfire.

Why aren't hundreds of people
infected with it?"

And it obviously made things
difficult for Kinyoun,

because in the face of
pretty clear evidence,

people denied that the plague
existed at all.

♪

NARRATOR: When three
more people died in mid-May,

Kinyoun telegrammed Wyman urging
a bold and unprecedented plan.

He proposed vaccinating
every Chinatown resident

with the recently developed
Haffkine vaccine.

In 1900, vaccination was still
a frightening concept to most.

But in Chinatown, the proposal
was further complicated

by the dark racial dynamics of the time.

♪

MORENS: There'd been a
long history of white people,

European-descended people,

treating the Chinese
in San Francisco badly.

So, the rational expectation
was, you know,

if the white power structure
wants this done,

there's gotta be something wrong with it.

NGAI: The Chinese relationship
with city health authorities,

there was nothing positive about it.

There was a history of malignant neglect.

Chinese were routinely refused
treatment at city hospitals.

It was only that year that
a Chinese clinic was allowed

to open in Chinatown
called the Tung Wah Dispensary.

So Chinese had absolutely no trust

in city health authorities.

Also, they weren't vaccinating
white people.

So it seemed to be targeted at them.

NARRATOR: The Haffkine
was largely untested.

Existing data showed only
a 50% protection rate.

Furthermore, the drug's
purported side effects

were so notorious that a
headline-hungry reporter

from a Hearst newspaper

volunteered to be injected himself.

♪

MAN [reading]: "Within two
hours, the serum had spread

"through my system and
its effects began to be felt.

"Shooting pains extended
through the chest, down the arm,

"and even into my neck and head.

"My left arm felt numb.

The pain in my shoulder, chest,
neck, and arm was quite severe."

♪

NARRATOR: Out of thousands
of Chinese living in San Francisco,

only 53 were willing to be vaccinated.

Growing desperate,
Kinyoun telegrammed Wyman.

JOSEPH KINYOUN [dramatized]:
Regard situation very serious.

Will require almost superhuman
efforts to control now.

So much time has been lost.

MORENS: And that's
when Marine Hospital Service

had to make its first authoritative

stand against plague.

[machine clicking]

RANDALL: Surgeon General Wyman
telegraphs Kinyoun immediately, saying,

"You are our man in San Francisco.

"It all depends on you.

You know,
you have to protect us all."

NARRATOR: Now charged with
overseeing the entire West Coast,

Kinyoun quickly hired additional officers,

whom he dispatched across
California and Oregon

to beef up inspection and patrols.

He also made vaccination mandatory,

and took exclusive aim
at not just the Chinese,

but Japanese with
an unheard-of travel ban.

McCLAIN: On May the 18th, the
Board of Health of San Francisco

passes a resolution to order
the transport companies

to refuse transportation
to Chinese and Japanese

without the certificate
that said that the person

had been inoculated
with this Haffkine's vaccine.

And it's quite clear
that they have endorsed

the recommendations
that have been passed onto them

by Kinyoun.

So now the Chinese and Japanese
are being told,

"Do it, or you're confined
to San Francisco.

You won't be able to leave."

It was being pushed on them coercively.

♪

MAN [reading]: "The doctors are
about to compel our Chinese people

"to be inoculated.

"Tomorrow, all business houses
large or small must be closed

and wait until this unjust
action is settled."

"Chung Sai Yat Po Daily."

NARRATOR: Its back to the
wall, a defiant Chinatown

turned to its own leaders:

a consortium of
district associations called

the Chinese Six Companies.

NGAI: The leaders of the Six
Companies were the biggest merchants

in Chinatown,

the most influential members

of their associations.

Any dispute with the city government

or the state government, Chinese
would send their representatives

to negotiate or to protest.

NARRATOR: The Chinese leaders
met with Kinyoun at the consulate

and implored him to call off his plans.

When he refused, the Chinese
felt they had no option left

but to take to the streets.

From the most powerful merchant
to the lowliest worker,

all of Chinatown took immediate action

to protest Kinyoun's orders.

[crowd shouting]

CHASE:
There were riots.

A thousand Chinese protesters
descended on Portsmouth Square

in Chinatown where federal
doctors had set up tents

to vaccinate people.

[crowd shouting, whistle blaring]

And they pulled cobblestones
out of the streets

and threw them in shop windows,

pitching furniture into the street.

[shouting, whistles continue]

They stood up to him, and they said,

"We are not standing for
these measures."

♪

MORENS:
It was so terrible that

a hundred police had to protect Kinyoun

because the San Francisco mobs
would have killed him.

♪

NGAI: The Chinese in San
Francisco are beleaguered,

but they also have fought every
inch of the way

with legal cases that are brought by

the leadership of the community,

the merchant leaders,

sometimes together
with the Chinese Consul.

[chuckling]: They sued the
government over everything.

♪

NARRATOR: Chinatown rose
up as one to fight the travel ban.

Within days of the mandate,
a class action suit was filed,

naming Kinyoun and the
San Francisco Board of Health.

CHASE: A businessman named Wong Wai sued,

he went to court,

and he charged that Dr. Kinyoun

and everyone involved

had violated the rights of the Chinese.

[gavel banging]

McCLAIN: There was a
petition for an injunction to stop

the health authorities
from preventing people

from leaving the city.

It was racially discriminatory
and that was forbidden

by the 14th amendment,

which says, "No state shall
deprive any person of life,

"liberty, or property without
due process of law,

"nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction

the equal protection
of the law."

The Chinese were not eligible
to become citizens,

but they had secured for themselves

recognition as constitutional persons.

And as such,
they came under the protection

of the 14th amendment.

SHAH: What you end up having
for the court case is a question.

Is this a kind of unfair use
of the law that targets

one group racially unfairly?

CHASE: The judge agreed with the Chinese.

And he said, "I see no proof
that you've offered

"that this is a disease
more likely to be contracted by

or transmitted by
Chinese people."

He said, "This travel ban
had been illegally applied

"with an evil eye and an uneven hand,

"focused on racial theories
of disease transmission...

completely unscientific."

♪

NARRATOR: In addition, the judge
issued a restraining order against

Kinyoun and advised him and the MHS

in no uncertain terms to back off.

Stung by the emphatic ruling,

Kinyoun wired his fears to Wyman.

KINYOUN [dramatized]: Believe
situation to United States very grave.

The decision practically
nullifies all acts

of federal government.

Most serious blow Service has received.

♪

NARRATOR:
Unwavering in his convictions,

Kinyoun ignored the judge
and continued to enforce

the known scientific measures
of isolation and sanitation.

He pushed for camps on Angel Island,

as well as remote Mission Rock,

to detain people even suspected
of having the plague.

CHASE: There were now threats
to remove people forcibly from Chinatown.

♪

And at the head of it all
was Dr. Kinyoun,

so he was called the Wolf Doctor.

♪

He acquired this nickname
for what was perceived as

this snappy and officious manner...

aggressive, an assault on people,

kind of adding insult to injury.

♪

MAN [reading]: "The wolf doctor
is baring his claws and teeth."

"Enforced relocation
to an icy remote island"

"renders us without wings to fly."

"Chung Sai Yat Po Daily."

NGAI: The city and the health
authorities were never really

interested in ameliorating
the conditions in Chinatown.

What they wanted to do was
isolate the Chinese community,

protect white people,
and that was their goal.

So there's very little space
to gain people's trust

because the whole thing is rotten.

♪

NARRATOR: And now,
other states were starting to put

commercial pressure on California as well.

Everything erupted

in an acrimonious three-day meeting...

with Kinyoun weighing in forcefully.

[people chattering in background]

McCLAIN:
The state of Texas

was preventing people and products

from San Francisco,

from entering Texas.

So, the state board of health
was putting tremendous pressure

on the local board of health
and says, "What you need to do

is quarantine Chinatown."

♪

NARRATOR: On May 28,
Kinyoun privately exulted

when the state health board
secured what he had long thought

was the best option...

a full lockdown of all
of Chinatown, indefinitely.

Within hours, 159 policemen
descended on the district,

working in three around-the-clock shifts.

[whistling, people shouting]

McCLAIN: They start putting
barbed wire around the quarter,

they start putting
a wall up around Chinatown.

It becomes very clear
to the Chinese that this is

not like the first quarantine.

♪

The Chinese were very, very
upset immediately,

as soon as the quarantine was declared.

NARRATOR: Once again, nearly
20,000 people were locked down.

They had no idea when
they would be allowed out

or whether the authorities
might even attempt to burn down

the district like Honolulu
only months before.

♪

With no streetcar service,

or incoming shipments of food
and other vital supplies,

panic quickly spread.

♪

POWELL: It was very
draconian for the Chinese.

You had this complicated
interaction between

the city, state,
and the federal government.

But there was almost a consensus
that, among all of them,

that somehow the heart of
the problem were the Chinese.

And if we could just control the Chinese,

we could control this plague.

♪

SHAH:
People had that sense of doubt.

Is this the way in which
the health officials

who never cared about our
wellbeing want to eradicate us?

♪

NARRATOR: Once more, the Chinese
turned to the most powerful tool they had.

♪

McCLAIN:
They file suit again.

And this leads to

the second case,
Jew Ho vs. Williamson.

And, again, Kinyoun was a named defendant.

CHASE:
A grocer on Stockton Street,

Jew Ho noticed that the
quarantine lines were not drawn

in a straight line around
all businesses in the region,

that they zigged and zagged
to exclude white merchants.

And was specifically designed
not to protect the health

of an entire district,
but to isolate the Chinese.

♪

BRUCE QUAN JR.: The quarantine
line was along Stockton Street,

so the cannery was in quarantine.

And the white workers, women and girls,

employed by Lew Hing

in the cannery, they were
allowed to come and go,

but not the Chinese.

McCLAIN:
The judge says,

it's very clear that the
Caucasians on the perimeter

are being treated differently.

And it has to do with whether this is

a reasonable exercise of the police power.

And again, the court says no, it isn't

because the Chinese are not
being protected at all.

They're not being prevented from
intermingling with each other;

the individuals who had contact
with these people

who died of the plague
have not been quarantined.

So, if the idea is to prevent

the spread of a contagious disease,

isn't this an unreasonable way to do it?

[gavel banging]

♪

NARRATOR:
A day after the ruling,

Kinyoun imposed a sweeping travel ban

on all Californians, regardless of race.

This meant no one could leave the state

without a health certificate from him.

And, of course, that made him
a menace to the entire city

and the whole state of California.

Dr. Kinyoun
was a top-down officer.

He led by issuing
sound scientific diagnoses.

That plays very well in the lab,

and not so well on the street.

[trolley clattering]

NARRATOR: Three days
later, on June 19, 1900,

Kinyoun was dealt a stunning rebuke.

President William McKinley
was forced to apologize

to enraged state legislators

for the actions of his federal officer

and swiftly revoked the travel ban.

Desperate to do the right thing,

Kinyoun had played his biggest card

and lost.

[bell ringing]

But the situation only worsened.

Until now, there had been
13 confirmed plague deaths,

all Chinese.

From the beginning,

racial pseudoscience had lulled many

into the complacency of ignorance.

What's more, the disease came and went

in mysterious and inexplicable waves.

Kinyoun feared that the plague
was spreading in darkness.

This was confirmed in mid-August

when the first known white
victim, William Murphy,

fell ill and died.

A worker who routinely made
deliveries to Chinatown,

he was succeeded that fall
by another non-Chinese victim,

a nurse at the children's hospital,

who had never been to the district.

♪

Panicked that the disease had
begun to spread

beyond Chinatown, Kinyoun put
all his men on high alert.

[ship horn blares, birds squawk]

Late that September,
a steamship called the Coptic

arrived from Hawaii
and docked at Angel Island.

An overzealous health official
ordered that all passengers,

rich and poor, male and female alike,

be strip-searched en masse

and examined for buboes
in the armpits and groin.

First-class passengers were outraged,

and vowed to never again sail
into San Francisco

as long as Kinyoun was in charge.

CHASE:
And now,

everyone is out for blood.

♪

RANDALL:
The state senate in California,

say that Kinyoun should be hung
for what he's doing.

CHASE:
He had been decried

by the politicians, by the press.

The legislators want him to leave,

lobbying the federal government

for his transfer out of the city.

By now, Dr. Kinyoun had been
smacked down in the courts.

He was defending his hypothesis,
his diagnosis,

his standing in the
Marine Hospital Service.

So he's literally
a man under fire, besieged.

♪

KINYOUN [dramatized]: It appears to me
that commercial interests of San Francisco

are more dear to the inhabitants

than the preservation of human life.

I am at war with everybody out here.

Joseph Kinyoun.

California's Governor Gage spun
a fantastic conspiracy theory.

He said that Dr. Kinyoun
and the federal doctors

had actually created a fake plague

by injecting corpses with plague bacteria

that they had secretly imported.

That it was all made up.

And he planted the seed of doubt
in people's mind.

This was too much for
Dr. Kinyoun.

And in despair and anger,

he wired his boss,

Surgeon General Walter Wyman, and said,

"Please defend me from
this slander against myself

and the Marine Hospital
Service."

NARRATOR: But Wyman
chose to remain silent.

Kinyoun was left defenseless,
and utterly alone.

In despair, he wrote to a colleague.

[typewriter keys clacking]

KINYOUN [dramatized]:
My exoneration rests upon

Dr. Wyman openly avowing
his responsibility

for my official actions.

This he should, if he possesses
the courage of a man.

All these years I have stood
loyally by his side...

keeping his political head
from rolling into the basket.

HOUTS JR.:
It took a lot of stamina

and guts to stay the course,
that what he believed in.

'Cause he knew it, where
everybody else doubted him.

♪

NARRATOR: Barely nine months
since his first forensic diagnosis,

Kinyoun confirmed the 22nd
known plague casualty.

Seeking vindication,
he now demanded a thorough,

outside investigation into
the truth of the matter.

Meanwhile,

word of San Francisco's troubles

continued to spread across the country.

MORENS: It became obvious
to everybody in the country

that San Francisco had an epidemic

and they weren't admitting to it.

♪

The federal government
and the state government

of California were at a standoff.

So, a deal was cut that there would be

a neutral federal commission.

Three of the most prominent
bacteriologists

in the United States would go
west to investigate

and find out whether there
really was a plague epidemic,

and whether Kinyoun was doing
the right things

or the wrong things.

[train horn blares, steam hisses]

RANDALL: Kinyoun, was
looking for that sense of validation.

He felt like he was 2,000 miles away

from anybody he'd consider
his peer who he trusted.

You know, "Finally, here are
people who care about science,

"who care about medicine.

"And now I'm going to be validated,

"and we're going to save,
you know, thousands,

if not millions, of lives."

NARRATOR: When the three-man
commission arrived in San Francisco

in late January 1901,

they felt the full urgency
of their mission.

Sensing they had to penetrate Chinatown,

they immediately hired a local
translator and go-between,

a former Six Companies
secretary named Wong Chung.

RANDALL: He was the link
between medical establishment,

San Francisco establishment,

the Chinese Six Companies,
and Chinatown itself.

♪

NARRATOR:
The move paid off.

With the help of Wong Chung,

and with Kinyoun safely on Angel Island,

the commission was quickly able to gain

what had been missing for months:

not just trust, but access.

♪

Within weeks,
they confirmed six new cases.

When Governor Henry Gage

learned of the commission's
upcoming report, he panicked.

He hastily made a trip to
Washington D.C.,

accompanied by a hand-picked army

of the most powerful men in California:

senators,

newspaper editors,

and business leaders.

♪

CHASE: When he arrived
in Washington, he visited

Surgeon General Walter Wyman,
and he proposed a quid pro quo.

He said, "We will clean up
the city of San Francisco

"if you keep the existence of plague

secret from the nation."

[engine puttering, trolley clanging]

NARRATOR:
Both sides had much to gain.

California needed the White House

to put an end to the matter

that was threatening to take
down its economy and reputation.

And McKinley needed the vote-rich state

to ensure his upcoming bid
for re-election.

All of the men now agreed:
one hand would wash the other.

[footsteps echoing]

MORENS:
And this unholy deal

was undertaken in the office

of the President of the United States...

President McKinley, in concert
with senior Republican leaders,

including those from California.

CHASE: And they struck a deal
with the surgeon general to maintain

what Dr. Walter Wyman,
surgeon general,

called a perfect seal of silence.

They would hush it up.

NARRATOR:
On March 6, 1901,

exactly one year since
Wong Chut King's death,

a local headline blared

an unexpected and scandalous scoop.

CHASE:
Reporters broke news

of this infamous pact signed by
the surgeon general

and the governor of California.

♪

And word got out about this cover-up.

♪

NARRATOR: Wyman found
himself in an uncomfortable position.

Yet he also knew that much
of the vitriol aimed at the MHS

had been greatly exacerbated
by Kinyoun's actions.

His perceived lack of diplomacy
was all anyone could talk about.

Kinyoun had to be thrown under the bus.

And so he was removed from his job

without any real explanation for why.

NARRATOR: In May 1901, Kinyoun
was ordered without thanks, fanfare,

or even notice, to pack up his
family and relocate to Detroit.

♪

He had spent two long years
trying to protect the country,

and seemingly all in vain.

REEVES:
It was such a devastating blow

because it basically ended his
scientific career in many ways.

He did not get to go back
to his beloved lab.

And I think that was devastating.

MORENS: And I think he
believed he had spent his life

doing really good things,
and he was very proud of that.

And I think to be thrown under the bus

was probably devastating to him.

Because it called into question

the goodness of all those things
he'd been doing for so long.

CHASE:
Dr. Kinyoun did the hard work

of nailing the scientific diagnosis.

He just couldn't make it stick
in the minds of the populace.

And he was hurt, he was indignant.

And being somewhat hot-tempered,
he didn't go quietly.

♪

He blasted the city,

blasted Chinatown,
blasted all the authorities.

NARRATOR: Kinyoun
had come to San Francisco

expecting to champion science
and save the country.

Instead, he had been sent away
in ignominy,

while the danger still remained.

["Hail to the Chief" playing]

NARRATOR: With Kinyoun gone,
California turned to happier business.

As their part of the secret deal
brokered months before,

state politicians welcomed
President McKinley

to a lavish, all-expenses-paid junket.

[crowd cheering]

Meanwhile, Wyman was on the hunt
for a new quarantine officer.

But after Kinyoun's humiliating ouster,

no one in the MHS community wanted

what they saw as an impossible job.

["Hail to the Chief" ends]

♪

He finally settled on a
candidate: Rupert Lee Blue,

a 32-year old physician from the MHS.

Unlike Kinyoun, Blue wasn't
a research scientist.

He lacked Kinyoun's medical
pedigree and rigorous training.

In fact, he wasn't Wyman's
first or even second choice.

CHASE:
Rupert Lee Blue,

or Pert as he was known by his nickname,

was round-faced and shy.

He was diffident.

And he really loved boxing matches.

[crowd shouting]

Not just as a spectator but also

as an amateur participant.

♪

He was preceded by rumors that
he was lazy,

as one of his colleagues
called him "inert."

"Inert Pert."

RANDALL: He was known
as kind of affable guy,

not necessarily the most accomplished.

Other people thought of him as, you know,

somebody who is barely getting by,

but it's hard to be that
critical of somebody you like,

you know, or somebody who's friendly.

[birds chirping]

NARRATOR:
The sixth of eight children,

Blue was born three years after
the end of the Civil War

to a struggling but respected family

in Marion, South Carolina.

[horse whinnying]

RANDALL: Blue came
from nothing, essentially,

and grew up in the fields.

He'd walk with his siblings,

bursting open watermelons with his fist

and eating right there in the fields.

[child shouting in distance]

He knew he was not the most favored son.

His older brother, Victor, was a war hero.

And the parents idolized Victor.

Rupert Blue kind of felt that

"If Victor's purpose in life is to harm,

perhaps my purpose in life is
to heal."

So he went into medicine.

And went to one of the first
public medical schools

in the U.S.

♪

He wrote letters to his mom saying,

"I don't think I can hack it.

I can barely survive."

And he barely graduated medical school.

♪

NARRATOR: Blue joined
the Commissioned Corps

of the Marine Hospital Service.

The MHS represented adventure
with a purpose,

the chance to see a world bigger than that

of his small-town boyhood,
and to confront diseases

he had only read about in school.

As a quarantine officer,

he tracked yellow fever in Galveston,

monitored infectious diseases
in Milwaukee,

and investigated
possible plague cases in Rome.

CHASE:
He had to work hard.

Having lost his father to illness,

he had to send money to his widowed mother

and to his teenage sisters at home.

RANDALL: So he was working
in the Marine Hospital Service,

and also taking all these other side jobs

as editor of a medical bulletin
or a newsletter

just to try to bring in more money.

[trolley clanging, people chattering]

NARRATOR: The new
posting in San Francisco,

commercial hub for the nation
and Asia, was a huge step up

from monitoring shipping fleets
on Lake Michigan.

It was a high-profile chance
for Blue to prove himself,

although it came with seemingly
insurmountable obstacles.

Chinatown feared and distrusted
the MHS and its agents.

City leaders were openly vying
for their own interests.

State officials still
refused to acknowledge

that the disease even existed.

♪

By June 1901,

there had been a total
of 34 official plague deaths,

so Blue knew he had no time to lose.

[child chattering]

CHASE:
The first thing he did,

he moved into the city and he set up a lab

right on Merchant Street,
which is Chinatown,

and he was comfortable there.

[horse hooves clomping]

RANDALL: He would
literally just walk into shops

and start talking to people

and trying to make those
kinds of friendships

and forge those social bonds.

And Kinyoun, when he went into Chinatown,

he had to have a protection
of armed officers.

Blue, he would walk down
the streets by himself.

♪

NARRATOR:
Blue also kept on Wong Chung,

the interpreter who had assisted
the federal commission.

And since he knew that Chinatown's dead

seemed to mysteriously vanish,

he talked Surgeon General Wyman
into an unusual expense.

RANDALL: He arranged for a
horse and buggy to have his own,

essentially, morgue service,

so he could find bodies

and he could inspect them
as quickly as he could.

Blue also paid the Chinese translators

the same as he did as his
white members of the staff,

which was radical at the time.

He found himself relying more and more

on his translator, Wong Chung.

Not just as a translator and interpreter,

but also as a sort of cultural liaison.

So, Wong Chung helped
Dr. Blue understand

the community's resistance to
Western medical interventions.

♪

[people chattering]

NARRATOR: With Wong
as his trusted go-between,

Blue revised the harsh protocol
of his predecessor.

He disinfected only targeted
houses, not whole streets.

He quarantined immediate family alone,

and limited lockdown to the
shortest time possible.

RANDALL: He was somebody
who was willing to listen,

which was a real skill.

He knew he wasn't the smartest.

He knew he didn't necessarily
have insights

that other people did,
but he was willing to,

to try everything.

♪

NARRATOR: But what Blue
discovered was unnerving.

In the month of July,
three Japanese prostitutes

working on the edge of Chinatown died.

Blue reeled at the thought
that the women had had contact

with literally dozens
of nameless customers.

How many were there?

Where did they go?

Blue was terrified that the disease

was poised to explode exponentially,

as he admitted to Wyman.

RUPERT BLUE [dramatized]:
It would not be an easy matter

to trace the source of this infection.

The Chinese seem to know a suspicious case

and depart, like the fleas.

Rupert Blue.

RANDALL: On the big
map right behind his desk,

he starts putting red marks

everywhere there's a known plague victim.

And that becomes this obsession
to try to prevent

more red marks from showing up on his map,

but also to try to find some
kind of connection

between these victims.

♪

NARRATOR:
For the rest of the summer,

Blue patiently continued
to explore Chinatown,

always on the lookout for more cases.

♪

On September 11, 1901,
following a tip from Wong Chung,

Blue and his men had a rare opportunity.

In the basement of a grocery store,

they found a 28-year-old man
with signs of the plague,

and took him to the Tung Wah
Dispensary for observation.

CHASE:
Well, friends of the patient

were about to get him out of
Chinatown to avoid the red tape,

the inspections, the interventions.

But Wong Chung's tip enabled
the federal doctors

to prevent this evasion.

NARRATOR: It was the first
time Blue had had the opportunity

to examine a living patient.

Until now, the Chinese had never trusted

the MHS enough to cooperate.

Blue was able to isolate the man
and question him

about his contacts to hopefully learn

how the disease was being spread.

Thanks to Wong Chung's quiet diligence,

Chinatown was starting to open up.

Cases that had formerly
been hidden or misdiagnosed

were coming to light,

leading to a wave of ten more
confirmed diagnoses.

BLUE [dramatized]:
I am working like a Trojan.

And I trust that my labors
will be rewarded.

We are still working quietly,

avoiding friction with
the state or the Chinese.

Rupert Blue.

RANDALL: He soon finds
more and more victims.

He sees living victims.

He sees more victims quickly
before they can be hidden away.

So he starts realizing
the scope of the problem.

CHASE:
So, Wong Chung

played a pivotal role, and
for this he took many risks.

♪

The state doctors who denied
the plague existence

may have tipped Chinatown gangsters

that Wong Chung was a collaborator,

a traitor to his community.

Not that long after,
someone tried to kill him.

♪

And he had to run for his life,
essentially.

[loud clattering]

CHASE: It took the
intervention of Washington,

and only then was Wong Chung secure

to go about his medical rounds
with the doctors.

[bell tolling]

NARRATOR: For 18 months,
Blue, like Kinyoun before him,

had been confounded by the
low number of fatalities,

but neither man had had the full picture.

♪

Blue began to realize

that white doctors throughout
San Francisco,

bowing to political pressure,

were deliberately misdiagnosing cases

in order to minimize actual numbers.

BLUE [dramatized]:
Scant courtesy, singular apathy,

and, in the end, interference,

have characterized the state health board

at a time of grave public peril.

Eradication of the disease

would be entirely out of the question,

and the danger of an
indefinite stay is enhanced.

Rupert Blue.

♪

NARRATOR:
By the fall of 1902,

the number of officially
diagnosed cases had tripled.

♪

At the annual meeting of state
and local health boards

in New Haven, Connecticut,

San Francisco was all everyone
talked about.

California officials continued
to deny that the plague existed,

in direct contradiction to the
MHS and national papers.

CHASE: Other state boards of
health started issuing censure votes

and statements of condemnation
against the state of California,

against Governor Gage,
against the denial of plague.

And some radicals even demanded

that the Navy transfer centers
be moved north to Seattle.

[cannon fire]

Well, this was serious.

San Francisco did not want
to risk such a loss of power.

At this point,

the denial of plague became costly.

California had run out of options.

It was time to face it, and
clean it out, and stamp it out.

[distant shouting]

NARRATOR: The responsibility
of controlling the plague

rested squarely on Blue's shoulders.

CHASE:
Blue's boxing

taught him how to bob and weave,

size up his opponents,

anticipating their next move,

put an edge on his strategic approach.

NARRATOR: Now, he stared
at his map for the hundredth time.

Every single block in Chinatown
had had a confirmed case.

♪

But in the previous September,

a white washerwoman with
no connection to the district

had died of plague,
and she lived a block away.

NARRATOR: It dawned on Blue
he'd been ignoring something

that had been right in front
of him the entire time.

The mystery of why the plague

had decimated Europe
and Asia for centuries

was finally beginning to unravel.

[indistinct chatter]

CHUCK:
For us kids,

one of the great pastimes was
just fishing off

the piers, which ran almost
right up against Chinatown.

And ships that were moored to the docks,

they had these huge ropes.

You would see rats.

Rats just coming from the ships

and coming down those ropes.

And some of them would just fall
in the water.

Others were able to find their
way onto the docks.

They scurried, they were fast,
and they were quick.

[rat squeaking]

♪

RANDALL: Rats are
biological marvels in many ways

because they can survive almost anything.

And they can breed incredibly quickly.

[music playing on newsreel]

NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
And a single pair of rats,

left to reproduce unhampered,

would become 1,500 in a year.

[rats squeaking]

NARRATOR: In his lab, Blue and his
men had discovered plague germs

in dead rats that they had dissected.

He was now struck by the possibility

that rats themselves
might somehow spread the disease

as they roamed the city,

though he still had no idea how.

RANDALL:
And he realizes

the only way we're going
to save San Francisco

is if we kill as many rats as possible.

So, they focus on rat eradication.

♪

NARRATOR: Thanks
to Wong Chung's prior outreach,

the Chinese Six Companies now agreed

that all Chinatown businesses

would work with health authorities.

MAN [reading]: "People
should not be frightened.

"These physicians are very kind
and gentle.

Their main emphasis is to go
after the rats."

"Chung Sai Yat Po Daily."

CHASE: The state was
assigned to hire inspectors.

The city would lay traps

and poisoned bait for rats.

And they tried to get

all the citizens involved in
rat collection.

So they offered 10 cents a rat,

even 50 cents for a breeding female.

So, you can imagine this is quite a sum.

And people got involved in
bringing in rats.

[rat squeaking]

RANDALL:
Blue starts to look

for where are rats living.

Let's create as few nesting
spots for a rat as possible.

Wooden sidewalks provide so many
places for rats to nest.

So he rips those out and
let's have concrete sidewalks.

♪

At the same time, let's tear
down these remnants of the past,

buildings that were still up
from the gold rush era.

And let's have more modern
buildings in their place.

♪

NARRATOR:
By the spring of 1905,

Chinatown was almost completely renovated.

Blue's team was dismantled, its job done,

and he was sent to his
new posting in Virginia.

With no new cases
being reported in over a year,

as far as everyone was concerned,

the plague was finally under control.

♪

Out of the official tally of
119 confirmed cases,

104 victims were Asian,

and 15 were non-Asian.

RANDALL: I think it's fair
to say that the true death toll

is probably ten times as much,
if not more.

CHASE: It was more than likely
the accurate number of plague cases

were under-reported

because they were entirely

racially focused on Asian people.

[horse whinnying]

♪

[rumbling, crashing]

Just after 5:00 a.m.,
April 18, 1906...

The city was wracked by
a massive earthquake.

It would have been
7.9 on the Richter scale,

an extremely dangerous earthquake,

particularly in a city of unreinforced

brick and mortar buildings
that simply crumbled.

[horse whinnies]

Buildings were pancaked, floors collapsed.

The city was ablaze,

water mains were broken.

So, the water reservoirs were
not available to fight fires.

In a desperate attempt to stop
the advancing flames,

the city resorted to setting
strategic charges

to keep the fire from jumping.

[loud booms]

That helped a little bit,

but some ne'er-do-wells started
dynamiting Chinatown

indiscriminately,

destroying buildings even further.

♪

NARRATOR: More than 80%
of San Francisco was destroyed,

including virtually all of Chinatown.

CHASE: There were
3,000 people killed outright.

Nearly a quarter million injured,

hundreds of thousands homeless.

RANDALL: And you had refugees who suddenly

have to live in places like
Golden Gate Park

or other makeshift camps.

CHASE:
People were living out of tents.

People were living in a village
of earthquake cottages

built by the Red Cross.

[thunder rumbling]

NARRATOR: The Army and Red Cross
handed out crackers and canned milk.

But when word spread that no such aid

would be given to the Chinese,

the community once again turned
to its own devices.

♪

Four years earlier,

merchant Lew Hing had moved away
from San Francisco.

QUAN JR.: Lew Hing decided
to open a cannery in Oakland,

away from San Francisco.

Having been tired of being
harassed by the white media,

having had to compete against
the white canneries

that had formed a cartel

to try and drive all the
independent canneries

out of business,

and particularly targeted Lew Hing

because he had become such a
force in the cannery business.

♪

When the earthquake hit on April 18,

the Chinese in San Francisco,
they were refused

by the white relief agencies
and had no place to go.

And so many of the Chinese came
to a very small

Chinese settlement in Oakland

where my great-grandfather,
who had some vacant areas

around his cannery,

he then hired people to cook,

and was able to feed thousands
of the Chinese who came over.

♪

NARRATOR: San Francisco
was staggering to regain its footing

amidst the devastation.

[horse whinnying]

And the fallout continued to escalate.

RANDALL: You had instant
problems with sanitation.

If you didn't die from the earthquake,

or die from the fire,

you might die from diphtheria or smallpox

or all these other diseases

that could rear their head very quickly.

CHASE:
With the sewer pipes ruptured,

rats, including plague-infected ones,

were released into the city to feast

on the uncollected refuse,
and breed in the ruins.

[rat squeaking]

So once again,

there was a resurgence of rats
and rat-born plague.

♪

NARRATOR: Thirteen
months after the earthquake,

San Francisco had its first
plague death in three years.

By summer, there were six more.

Wyman immediately wired Blue,

and ordered him to return
to San Francisco.

CHASE: On this otherwise
unassuming residential street

in a Victorian house, Dr. Blue
set up his new headquarters,

and from there, he ran his command center.

[car horn blares]

RANDALL: The problem
they find very quickly

is that plague is no longer
a Chinatown problem,

it's a San Francisco problem.

♪

NARRATOR: In stark
contrast to the early days,

there was now only one Chinese casualty:

the president of
the Chinese Six Companies.

RANDALL: And that's
when Blue starts hearing

from white physicians who say,

"Perhaps I have seen plague cases before,

"and I just thought it was pneumonia.

"Or actually, maybe I knew it was plague

and I didn't want to admit it."

And this kind of solidifies for Blue

this was a disease of the environment.

SHAH: Now bubonic plague began to emerge

in all sorts of different
communities across the Bay Area.

And people began to realize that
anyone could get bubonic plague.

♪

NARRATOR:
Blue set up a special workplace

dedicated to the grisly task at hand.

CHASE:
In back of

the federal headquarters was an
annex to the building

that became known as the Rattery.

♪

And the Rattery was essentially
a coroner's lab,

a forensic lab, just for rats.

♪

RANDALL: That's where all
the rat carcasses were brought.

And it's just rat after rat
that's dissected and opened up

and examined for signs of the plague.

And they would chart, you know,

what percentage of rats are infected.

[flies buzzing]

NARRATOR: By the fall, there
were 30 new plague deaths.

Blue and his men stepped up
their campaign,

killing more than 13,000 rats a week.

[bell ringing]

Throughout, he kept trying out new ways

to determine how the disease
was spreading through the city.

♪

CHASE:
They even took it a step further

and tried to analyze migratory patterns.

They wanted to find out where
the rats originated

and where they traveled.

So, they devised a program

that came to be nicknamed
the rainbow rats,

and they got a group of healthy,
active rats

and dyed them red, green, or blue,

depending upon what district
they were from,

and turned them loose.

Then they would try to catch
them at the other end

and find out how they were spreading.

And, of course,

when the raucous local press found out,

they just had a field day.

♪

RANDALL: The newspapers
mock them for this immediately.

It almost sounds like something
out of Dr. Seuss.

And Blue shrinks very quickly
from this public mockery.

He's not used to that.

But he continues to try.

NARRATOR: Then a local
case caught Blue's eye.

CHASE: There was a
physician who had perceived

a bad smell in his house.

The doctor decided he would chop
out a hole in the wall

and get to the source
of this unpleasant odor.

And there he found two dead rats.

And immediately, two members
of the family got the plague.

♪

NARRATOR: As Blue
pondered the details of this case,

he recalled reading a recent report

from the British Plague Commission

that confirmed the results of a study

completed ten years earlier.

CHASE:
Pasteur Institute scientist

Paul Louis Simond did this experiment.

He put two rats in cages side
by side, separated by a grate.

They couldn't touch one another.

One rat was healthy, one rat was
sick with the plague.

And Simond made
the breakthrough observation

that when the plague rat died,

the fleas jumped to the side
of the healthy rat

for their next blood meal.

MAY C. CHU: Bubonic plague
is transmitted by Yersinia pestis.

The flea itself is really
the host of Yersinia pestis.

And when it seeks a blood meal
on its natural host,

it regurgitates its bacteria

and transmits plague.

And it's only when its own host dies,

the flea seeks another warm body,

a rat, or if a human comes by,
they'll jump on.

It senses that there's something
warm here.

"I don't care what it is."

And then they'll bite.

They'll try to feed, because it's hungry.

So, the cause of the transmission

between rats and human was the flea.

♪

NARRATOR:
Blue was thunderstruck

by the realization

that fleas played the primary role

in transmitting the disease.

Rats, he now understood,
were only agents of the epidemic

because of the insects in their fur.

And pieces fell into place:

the peaks of the outbreak lined up

with the flea's active season.

The baffling on-again, off-again
pattern became crystal clear.

SHAH:
So, the bubonic plague bacilla

was best conveyed by fleas
on rats biting humans.

That transmission was the most
important thing.

So, the eradication of rats
would be pretty significant.

[bells ring]

NARRATOR: As the
city continued to rebuild,

Blue knew that public support
for rat extermination was solid.

Still, without full buy-in
from the entire community,

the stream of rats
would continue unchecked.

It was time for extreme measures.

Rupert Blue the strategist

understood he needed both
a carrot and a stick.

So fleet week was approaching.

But Blue told the city, if the
city isn't a healthful place,

I will tell the admiral that
it's not safe to land his ships.

This was terrible news.

It would be like canceling Christmas,

to have the Great White Fleet barred

from entering San Francisco, and worse yet

diverted to Seattle, the rival city,

would have been terrible.

So, all the city had to take part.

♪

In 1908, the first truly grassroots,

fully public, multi-sector
health campaign was born.

Educating the populace on simple things

like the right way to dispose of garbage.

You have to seal your household
and security against rats.

They also educated greengrocers
on the right way

to store their wares

to keep the city streets clean.

And they informed essential
nature of sanitary precautions.

♪

RANDALL: They start putting
notices in everybody's mailboxes.

Like, this is what you can do to
save yourself and save the city.

CHASE:
And little by little,

hundreds and hundreds of citizens

from all walks of life,

churches,

temples, lodges,

women's clubs, business groups,

everyone got on board and did their part.

♪

NARRATOR:
San Francisco got to work.

Long-neglected sanitary
infrastructure was rebuilt.

A $4 million bond was issued
to renovate the sewer system,

and municipal garbage collection
and disposal were put in place.

By now, even the local newspapers

supported the sanitation drive

by publishing the names and addresses

of anyone who failed to comply.

In the end,

Blue managed to have more
than 20,000 houses inspected.

Untold numbers of rats were
either trapped or found dead.

But of the ones tested,

only 16 were found to be infected.

The outbreak was in retreat.

With backbreaking work,
and focused messaging,

Blue had finally rounded
the corner on the disease.

[water lapping, birds squawking]

♪

The question that had so long
tormented Kinyoun and Blue...

why hadn't the plague taken off
exponentially?

Was at last answered.

♪

CHASE: It's so interesting
that we had the germ

that was just as lethal
as during the Black Death.

The same germ that had ravaged
populations in China,

and India, what may have
saved the city in the end

from a much worse disaster

was a tiny part of an organ
inside of the little flea.

RANDALL: In places where you
had this explosion of plague,

there was a different species of rat flea.

Its anatomy was slightly different.

It would inject more of the plague bacilli

into whatever victim it bit.

In San Francisco, the flea bite
would inject a lower dose,

harder for it to become
a full-blown disease.

So, it was only this quirk of flea anatomy

that really prevented millions
of deaths in the U.S.

♪

NARRATOR: February 1908
saw the last diagnosed case

of bubonic plague.

For the first time in nearly eight years,

San Francisco could afford to celebrate.

And on May 6, 1908,

the Great White Fleet
sailed into San Francisco Bay.

["Anchors Aweigh" playing, crowd cheering]

CHASE: People stood atop
every hill and promontory

to get a look at these

magnificent golden and white ships

that were sent by Theodore Roosevelt.

People were waving flags
and partying all week.

It celebrated not only

the Great White Fleet
and naval power, but also

the rebirth of San Francisco
as a healthful city.

And it was an effort in which
everyone had taken part.

♪

NARRATOR: Chinatown
was celebrating its own victory.

Its near-total destruction
during the earthquake

had lured white speculators

eager to snap up the valuable land.

[carriages clattering]

But they hadn't counted on the
fierce opposition

of Chinese merchants and associations,

who fought them tooth and nail

to control how they wanted
the district to be used.

SHAH:
We later learn, of course,

they were quite successful in turning

the fear of Chinatown

as a labyrinth of disease and immorality

into a kind of middle-class,
consumer tourist paradise.

♪

NARRATOR:
On March 31, 1909,

Rupert Blue was honored with
a lavish ceremony

at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill.

♪

CHASE:
The dinner was rat-themed.

They had ice cream molds
in the shape of rat traps.

They drank wine punch from beakers

that were shaped like little trash cans.

It was kind of visual puns everywhere.

NARRATOR: It was a darkly
humorous nod to the rats killed,

two million in all,
roughly five times the size

of San Francisco's human population.

CHASE: And when he was
called to the dais to accept his gift

and the city's thanks,

some of Blue's old shyness came
flooding back and he said,

"It's difficult to speak
when one's heart is full."

After all his achievements,
he got rather tongue-tied.

♪

NARRATOR: It was likely Blue's
reticence arose from not just humility,

but a clear-eyed view of the
debt he owed his predecessor.

True, he had been able to clean
up San Francisco

and rid the city of its rats.

But Kinyoun was the one who insisted

that the problem even existed,
and at enormous personal cost.

RANDALL:
Blue was seen as a hero,

and he continued on an upward trajectory.

You know, he became

the fourth Surgeon General of
the United States.

He was a very forward thinker.

He was somebody who advocated

for better treatment of the mentally ill.

He advocated for a national
health insurance at a time

when that was never heard of whatsoever.

He saw where the world was going.

CHASE: Dr. Joseph Kinyoun's
ouster from San Francisco represented

a kind of failure of institutional

resistance and rivalries.

But he is remembered for bringing

state of the art methods

of diagnosing infectious
diseases to America.

He is remembered for helping found

the National Hygienic Laboratory,

the forerunner of our modern
National Institutes of Health,

for which he is posthumously recognized

as the first director of NIH.

♪

NARRATOR: The two men
brought an end to the epidemic

using vastly different approaches.

Yet, it was the efforts of not
just Kinyoun and Blue,

but the marginalized community

that still managed to stand up
for its rights,

that led to a paradigm shift

in the way America viewed public health.

[fireworks explode, crowd cheers]

SHAH: One of the things
we learned in San Francisco

is that intervention into a
disease pandemic

is a profoundly political act.

[plane engine roars]

Science is one dimension

to provide answers and to
provide solutions,

but it was still subject
to human interpretation,

human implementation.

McCLAIN: The question that came up in 1900

is what is the balance between
public necessity,

public health, and individual
rights and liberties?

And it was balanced in a terrible way.

CHASE:
Power-seeking politicians,

and misguided commercial greed
that takes precedence

over public health, all of that

delayed a solution in San Francisco.

In the end, we needed
collaboration and cooperation

by the federal,
state, and local governments,

participation by the citizenry,

understanding and acceptance of science.

♪

POWELL: Science is
implicated with the larger society.

In San Francisco, we actually
pressed science to do work

that it has no business doing.

You don't need science to tell us

that we should treat people
with dignity and love.

Science is a method of inquiry.

It knows a lot,
but there's always unknowns.

SHAH: We had some worldviews
that were coming into big conflict

about how to think about science,

about how to deal with
a public health crisis,

how to not ascribe
a racial cause for the disease,

and diverting accountability.

But also to think about,

is it possible to protect myself
from disease?

Is it possible to eradicate disease?

And those are open questions.

♪

♪

♪

♪