Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s

Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown

Richard Dillon, one of Californiaâ€™s premier historians, tells the compelling story of San Franciscoâ€™s exotic pre-1906 Chinatown when vicious hoodlum gangs held sway. Chinatown, as demonstrated by Dillonâ€™s fast-paced narrative, became a cauldron of chaos teeming with thugs, prostitutes, gamblers, and warlords preying on scores of helpless victims. .

As the Tong Wars ripped through San Franciscoâ€™s Chinatown, the Chinese inhabitants lived under a reign of terror. Opium was abundant as were â€œslave girls,â€ women imported for the purpose of prostitution. Hatchet-wielding killers silenced any opposition.

It was a lurid and violent chapter in American historyâ€”and, in an era when the customs of an Asian people were considered foreign and frightening to begin with, the very word â€œChinatownâ€ came to suggest the mysterious, the sinister.

The truth that survived the earthquake of 1906 was both colorful and tragic. Richard Dillon exposes the plight of the Chinese â€œaverage man,â€ trapped between the Tongs that terrorized and cast their shadow over him, and a government that disastrously misunderstood him.

Richard H. Dillon has written more than 20 books about California and the West.
Country USA
Manufacturer The Write Thought
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2012-05-29
Format Kindle eBook

Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown