Hawaii - James Michener [397]
That night the terror began. The determined doctors summoned government officials and told them coldly: "The only way to combat this scourge is to burn every house where the plague has struck. Burn it, burn it, burn it!"
A timorous official protested: "How can we burn a house without permission of the owner? In Chinatown it'll take us weeks to find out who owns what. And even if we don't make mistakes we'll be subject to lawsuits."
"Good God!" Dr. Harvey shouted, banging the table with his fist. "You speak of lawsuits. How many people do you think may be dead by Christmas? I'll tell you. We'll be lucky if our losses are less than two thousand. Whipple here may be dead, because he touched the body. I may be dead, because I did, too. And you may be dead, because you associated with us. Now burn those goddamned buildings immediately."
The government summoned the Fire Department and asked if they had perfected any way to burn one building and not the one standing beside it. "There's always a risk," the fire fighters replied. "But it's been done."
"Is there wind tonight?"
"Nothing unusual."
"Could you burn four houses? Completely?"
"Yes, sir."
"Don't do anything. Don't say anything." Nothing happened that night.
For three agonizing days the debate continued, with the doctors appalled by the delay. In the unspeakable warrens of Chinatown they uncovered three dozen new cases and eleven deaths. Old men would suddenly complain of fevers and pains in their groin. Their faces would become blanched with pain, then fiery red with burning temperatures. Their desire for water was extraordinary, and they died trembling, a hideous smell enveloping them whenever one of their nodules broke. It was the raging, tempestuous plague, but still the finicky debate continued.
At last Drs. Harvey and Whipple announced the facts to the general public: "Honolulu is in the grip of an epidemic of bubonic plague. The death toll cannot at this time be predicted, and the most severe measures must be taken to combat the menace."
Now general panic swept the city. A cordon was thrown around Chinatown and no one inside the area was allowed to move out. Churches and schools were suspended and no groups assembled. Ships were asked to move to other harbors and life in the city ground to a slow, painful halt. It was a terrible Christmas, that last one of the nineteenth century, and there was no celebration when the new year and the new century dawned.
During Christmas week the fires started. Dr. Whipple and his team showed the firemen where deaths had occurred, and after precautions were taken, the houses were burned. Chinatown was divided roughly into the business area toward the ocean and the crowded living areas toward the mountains, and although the plague had started in the former area, it now seemed concentrated in the closely packed homes. Therefore the doctors recommended that an entire section be eliminated, and the government agreed, for by burning this swath across the city, a barrier would be cut between the two areas. The condemned area happened to include Dr. John Whipple's original mansion, now crowded by slums, and his great-grandson felt tears coming to his eyes when he saw the old family home go up in flames that he himself had set. It was a ghastly business to burn down a city that one had worked so hard to build, but the fires continued, and patrols kept back the Chinese who sought to escape the doomed areas and circulate generally throughout the city. Refugee camps were established in church grounds, with tents for those whose houses had been burned and sheds for cooking food. Mrs. Henry Hewlett supervised one camp, Mrs. Rudolph