As the 140th anniversary of Humboldt County’s expulsion of Chinese residents approaches, the Eureka Chinatown Project has taken a significant step toward creating a monument to commemorate the dark chapter of local history.
Started in 2021 through the DreamMaker program of the Ink People Center for the Arts, Humboldt Asians and Pacific Islanders’ (HAPI) Eureka Chinatown Project has reached fundraising goals for the monument, with the hope it will be completed this year.
Amy Uyeki, a member of HAPI’s steering committee and co-lead for the Eureka Chinatown Project, says that HAPI has raised between $200,000 and $250,000 from donations and grants, adding residents and the city of Eureka have been incredibly supportive, with some individuals donating up to $70,000.
The monument’s proposed location is on the corner of First and E streets, just a few blocks away from what used to be the center of Eureka’s Chinatown. Chinatown disappeared after the Chinese living within the area were suddenly forced to leave within a 24-hour period in February of 1885.
Anti-Chinese sentiment had already been growing, both nationally and in Eureka, in early 1885, prompting the Humboldt Times on Feb. 5, 1885, to declare Eureka’s Chinatown a blight on the community and call for expulsion of its residents “by any means necessary,” when City Councilman David Kendall was fatally struck by a stray bullet during a shootout on Feb. 6. An angry mob quickly gathered and blamed the Chinese community, erecting gallows at the edge of town, before Eureka leaders voted to expel all Chinese residents from the community, giving them 24-hours to leave. On Feb. 8 hundreds were loaded on a steamship bound for San Francisco. Expulsion would remain law in Eureka — and subsequently Humboldt County — for more than 50 years.
The Eureka Chinatown Project monument, which will be crafted by artist John King, will feature a “river timeline” with nine markers along an art pathway, each symbolizing the change in Chinese immigrant population within Eureka. The markers will have a Chinese character engraved onto each of them to symbolize the timeline.
The words “hope,” “gold mountain” and “Chinatown” on the first three markers represent the rise of Chinese immigrants within Eureka in the 1800s and the creation of Eureka’s Chinatown. “Expulsion,” “resistance” and “resilience” will be carved on the next three markers to symbolize the forced removal of Chinese immigrants with the Chinese Exclusion Act, as well as resident’s opposition to the law.
Uyeki says 56 original residents of Eureka’s Chinatown, with the help of San Francisco’s Chinese consul, the Consul Bee, sued the city in the wake of the expulsion in what became known as the Wing Hing Suit.
“It was the first reparation suit of its kind in California,” Uyeki says. “It was really sort of an amazing thing that these people were able to use the legal processes to try and get reparations for their loss of property but, unfortunately, because they were not allowed to become citizens, they were denied a lot of the same rights.”
The case was later dismissed without clear explanation, signaling to other communities that courts would not stand in the way of similar expulsions.
The monument’s last three markers will have “rise,” “community” and “hope” engraved on them to represent the new generation of Chinese and Asian American residents returning to Humboldt County, and hopes for growth in the future.
A moon gate will also be added as part of the monument, as this traditional architectural feature of many Chinese gardens represents the “passage of one realm to another,” according to Uyeki. She also adds that the moon gate was also a connection to Charlie Moon, a Chinese man who remained within the county through the expulsion after his employer at Bair Ranch in Redwood Creek reportedly refused to turn him over to a mob of white men who came to get him.
Moon later married to Minnie Tom, a member of the Chilula Redwood Creek Tribe, and lived the remainder of his life in Humboldt, having eight children.
“There are stories of Chinese people who intermarried with the tribes. Charlie Moon’s story, he’s kind of representative of that,” Sheri Woo, a HAPI steering committee member, says.
The monument will also feature boards with a poem written by local poet and monument committee member Daryl Ngee Chinn called “The Water Book of Questions.”
A conceptual drawing of the monument by landscape architect Jessical Hall feature gingko and magnolia trees.
“The ginkgo tree has several meanings, but it’s really important in Asian cultures, and it speaks to remembrance,” Uyeki says. “The trait of the ginkgo tree, when it loses its leaves, it loses them all at once. It’s like one day they’re there and the next day they’re all down. It seemed symbolic of the expulsion also because in the spring, the leaves come back again.”
Asian Americans make up 3.1 percent of the population in Humboldt County, according to the 2023 U.S. Census, having steadily increased since the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943.
Despite the growing population, Woo says she does not want to see another Chinatown.
“In a way, I would hope not, because the reason you want to come together in a single spot is for safety, unity,” Woo says. “I would really like to think that, ‘No, we don’t need that as much anymore, that need to be segregated together for safety.'”
Woo says she hopes the monument is completed this year but does not want to make any promises.
Woo says she hopes the project will go to bid with contractors in March, though Uyeki says she doesn’t want to confirm an official timeline, noting there could be roadblocks. But once the monument is complete, the group has other plans.
“We do want to pivot to Arcata,” Woo says, noting the city used to be home to two Chinese communities, one near what is now Sushi Tao to the north, and one by the North Coast Co-op.
Woo says the group is also doing historical tours with Cal Poly Humboldt, College of the Redwoods and local high schools, and has also secured a grant to create a children’s book.
“We’d love to get this story into the high school and school curriculum to really make this story kind of like a common knowledge thing,” Woo says.
To that end, Woo says HAPI has also been conducting walking tours in Old Town Eureka to share the history of anti-Chinese hate and the expulsion that occurred in the city, hoping that recognizing the history will keep it from repeating.
“We don’t want to repeat stuff like this for any race,” she says.
Anne To (she/her) is a California Local News Fellow placed with North Coast Journal, Inc. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 312, or anne@northcoastjournal.com. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.
This article appears in The Humboldt County Fair is at a Crossroads.