The Hatchet Men: San Francisco's Chinatown in the Days of the Tong Wars

Richard Dillon's examination of Chinatown and crime (pre-1906) is a classic, a colorful thrill ride culled primarily from old San Francisco newspaper accounts. The details are a treasure trove. It must, however, be pointed out that Dillon's book, written in 1962, approached Chinatown (and the confluence of factors faced by the Chinese diaspora--poverty, clan rivalries, secret society conflicts, corruption, after-effects of China ravaged by war and turmoil, violent racism, and the criminal milieu of San Francisco that was NOT limited to Chinatown) from the standpoint of a Caucasian "tourist". The lurid details are presented. Very little of the reason for the violence is given. did a better job than most historians of his generation, but clearly had no sensitivity to the deeper cultural factors. More recent explorations of Chinese-American history, which benefit from a modern outlook and more recent information (from China itself, for instance) do a better job explaining the "why" behind the violence of old Chinatown (which Dillon for the most part does not do). Still, this is an important history, and still one of the few that have focused specifically on the subject. It deserves a spot on the shelf next to Herbert Asbury's "Barbary Coast".