Tong Wars of Chinatown, San Francisco
The Tong Wars of Chinatown, San Francisco, were a series of violent disputes among Chinese criminal organizations known as tongs, primarily occurring from the late 19th century into the 1920s. Initially, many tongs functioned as social and charitable groups, providing education, protection, and community support for Chinese immigrants facing discrimination and hardship in urban America. However, as some tongs became entangled in illegal activities like drug trafficking, extortion, and prostitution, conflicts arose over control of these enterprises.
These struggles often revolved around property rights and territory disputes, leading to significant violence, particularly among notable tongs such as the Suey Sing, Bing Kong, and Hop Sing. The 1920s saw a peak in these conflicts, coinciding with a sharp increase in the Chinese homicide rate. Despite the flourishing of organized crime during this period, law enforcement efforts, led by figures like Inspector Jack Manion, began to effectively curtail the violence and illicit activities associated with the tongs.
By the end of the 1920s, the combination of legal interventions and changing community dynamics resulted in the decline of the Tong Wars, although many tongs transformed into more community-oriented associations, reflecting a shift towards greater Americanization within Chinatown. This history illustrates the complex interplay between organized crime, community support, and the evolving identity of Chinese Americans in San Francisco.
Tong Wars of Chinatown, San Francisco
The Event: Conflicts between Chinese criminal organizations
Date: 1920s
Place: San Francisco, California
The Tong Wars of Chinatown, San Francisco, were violent conflicts between Chinese criminal organizations known as tongs. While many tongs of the 1920s were political or charitable organizations, a number were involved in such criminal activities as extortion, prostitution, and the drug trade. By the late 1920s, various efforts by San Francisco law enforcement had largely put an end to the Tong Wars.
The tongs of San Francisco’s Chinatown were organizations that offered education, protection, and social services to Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans. Such organizations were first established in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, following a surge in Chinese immigration due to poor economic conditions in China and the promise of job opportunities in the United States. Many of these immigrants settled in cities such as San Francisco, where they faced the typical challenges of urban life as well as racial discrimination. As the U.S. government increasingly restricted immigration from Asia, it became more difficult for Chinese immigrants living in the United States to create or reunite their families.
Tongs allowed immigrants to band together for the good of the community and exercise political and economic influence. While much of the tongs’ political activity concerned Chinatowns and the cities in which they were located, some tongs became involved in Chinese politics as well, establishing ties to the Tiandihui, a secret society that sought to restore the Ming Dynasty to power in China. Over time, some tongs became involved in criminal enterprises such as gambling, prostitution, extortion, and the slave and drug trades. These illegal activities led to an ongoing series of conflicts known as the Tong Wars. While most Tong Wars occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such conflicts continued to shape San Francisco’s Chinatown during the 1920s.
Major Conflicts
Like many gangs of the 1920s, the criminal tongs sought to gain control over various illegal enterprises and retain control in the face of opposition from rival groups and law enforcement. Tongs were particularly known for managing the importation and sale of drugs such as opium and supervising the transportation of wives, prostitutes, and slaves from China. Competition in these areas became the focus of a number of Tong Wars. Conflicts were frequently based on property rights, with multiple tongs asserting ownership over a person or cargo, or territory disputes regarding the right to operate a brothel or gambling establishment or to extort protection money from local businesses.
The San Francisco Tong Wars of the early twentieth century featured battles between groups such as the Suey Sing tong and the Bing Kong tong. These tongs remained active during the 1920s, and other major tongs of the period included Hop Sing, Suey Dong, Sen Suey Ying, and Jun Ying. The Hop Sing and Suey Sing tongs fought a particularly brutal war in 1921, during which the Chinese homicide rate experienced a sharp increase.
The End of the Tong Wars
While the decade overall was one in which organized crime flourished, the violence and influence of the tongs declined during the 1920s, due in part to various law enforcement efforts. In addition to putting an end to prostitution and the slave and drug trades in Chinatown, law enforcement in San Francisco sought to end the violence that had resulted in numerous murders and other violent acts throughout the previous decades. A squad dedicated to policing Chinatown had been established decades before, and in 1921, Inspector Jack Manion was appointed its head. Manion used several methods to discourage tong violence, such as arresting low-level criminals and threatening leaders of the organizations with deportation. In addition, Manion encouraged mediation of disputes and used such negotiations as opportunities to gather information about tong leadership. Chinese homicide rates in San Francisco declined sharply during the 1920s, largely due to such intervention. The criminal tongs also struggled with cultural and demographic changes during the 1920s, as younger generations of Chinese Americans frequently had priorities and outlooks on life in the United States that clashed with those of older leaders. By the end of the decade, efforts to stop the slave and drug trades had diminished the power of the criminal tongs, and lesser crimes such as illegal gambling typically did not inspire major conflicts.
Impact
While conflicts between various Chinese criminal organizations continued throughout the following decades, the Tong Wars of Chinatown, San Francisco, had effectively ceased by the end of the 1920s. Many tongs of the era continued to operate as social and political organizations dedicated to helping the Chinese American and immigrant community, and a number such organizations were later renamed to included the word “association” rather than “tong,” reflecting the increasing Americanization of Chinatowns.
Bibliography
Chen, Yong. Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002. A history of Chinese American and immigrant life in San Francisco, including discussion of the events of the 1920s.
Chin, Ko-lin. Chinese Subculture and Criminality: Non-Traditional Crime Groups in America. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. A broad survey of Chinese criminal organizations, including tongs.
Dillon, Richard H. Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Reprint. Fairfield, Calif.: James Stevenson, 2005. An account of the development of the San Francisco tongs.
Huston, Peter. Tongs, Gangs, and Triads: Chinese Crime Groups in North America. Reprint. San Jose, Calif.: Authors Choice Press, 2001. A summary of Chinese criminal organizations in North America.
Mullen, Kevin J. Dangerous Strangers: Minority Newcomers and Criminal Violence in the Urban West, 1850–2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. A study of immigrant criminal violence in San Francisco, featuring a chapter on Chinese immigrants that discusses the Tong Wars.