At 5:13 A.M. on April 18, 1906, an earthquake struck San Francisco. “My cousin and I were asleep in the basement of the store on Washington Street,” recalled Hugh Leung, a high school student at the time. “He woke me and I felt the trembling and saw pieces of plaster falling down like water. I thought I was on the ocean. I quickly dressed and ran into the street. The building across from our place collapsed.” In panic, thousands of Chinese rushed into Portsmouth Square, a large open space in San Francisco Chinatown. A fire operator on the scene remembers, “It seemed not more than several minutes after the shock before the square was literally packed with hundreds of Chinese, of all ages, sexes and condition of apparel, jabbering and gesticulating in excited terror.”

The Chung Sai Yat Po newspaper described the ordeal of the residents : “They carried their bundles, walking away but at the same time looking back as they did so, brooding or weeping softly.” While the wealthier Chinese, terrified of white violence, fled the city, the poor stayed behind, for want of funds. Haunted by memories of persecution by whites, some were too frightened to seek food and shelter from city relief stations. Others were robbed by the soldiers brought in to maintain order in the city, and still others were ordered by these soldiers to perform physical labor. Uncertain about where to resettle the Chinese, city officials shuffled them from one camp to another, each move drawing howls of protest from whites who feared that the Chinese would stay in their neighborhoods permanently.

Finally the authorities ordered the Chinese to the far corner of the Presidio, and white looters had a field day. Thousands of men, women, and children descended on the charred remains of what was left of Chinatown, hauling away sacks of melted bronze, pitchers and teapots, artworks, and other valuable items. Looting was prevalent everywhere in the city, but because the Chinese were not permitted to return to protect their belongings, thieves rifled the vaults and safes of Chinese-owned banks, homes, and businesses.

Army officials stood by with “shoot to kill” orders to prevent the wholesale pillage of the city, but they refused to enforce discipline in Chinatown, arguing they could not tell the difference between genuine thieves and innocent curiosity seekers, a patently ridiculous claim. Contemporaneous accounts suggest that the looters included some of the most prominent citizens in the Bay Area, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported that they included “high railroad officials,” “society people in Oakland and San Francisco, and reputable businessmen.” The plunderers also included members of the military. On April 21, the Chinese consul general in San Francisco protested to the governor that “the National Guard [is] stripping everything of value in Chinatown.”

(Chang 145-146)