The Danville Register from Danville, Virginia • Page 26

Gang War Thi.e Register; Donville, March 22, 1973 RICHARD E. MYER AP Newsfeatures Writer I FRANCISCO -i It risky. But Tom Tom af it. Chinatown had n.home tfnce, and he hadn't while. To he said and glass.

boys same: One, with a bulge r'his poat, pushed away armaid, bringing another 'want me to die?" and he didn't meaji cA'i hangover 'Tjpi'Tom donned his brown leather jacket. bodygua'rd, the one with theflbulging coat, went first of the Macao in North Beach, a territory where they weren't' exactly welcome, across Broadway and into Chinatown, the most dangerous territory of all. Tom Tom and his boys were the Suey Sing. And Chinatown these days was a free fire zone in a war be- tween the Wah' Ching and the Ching Yee. Police call it the Chinese War.

They say the war- riors', mostly teen-agers and al- most all under 25, have been in- volved in 13 killings over the pajs.J._:four years New'. York, which has similar gangs, police count six such killings. Los An- geles; police count one. There has. been at least one shooting of them," mutters tlie Rev.

Tso Tin president of the Six unofficial mayor of; Chinatown and the pinnacle of Chinatown's feudal a i "And they haye succeeded in frightening much of the popu- lace "The average family tells its kids, 'Don't go down to Chinatown at says Ed- die law student in. his 20s, sipping soup in a 'Chinese: restaurnat in the daytime. "And the businessmen are real- ly up tight" For all this, there are signs the young Chinese, at least in San Francisco, are having mis- givings. Kit Fong, however un- successfully, says he negotiated for four straight days recently in an honest attempt to make peace with the leaders of the Wah Ching. "These guys aren't Boy Scouts," says George Woo, a professor at California State University who knows the young Chinese well.

"But they'd like to try to b6 Boy Scouts if somebody would give them a chance." How is it, then, that these sons of P'an Ku, ruler of the world, are at each other's throats? Why are these heirs to Confucius, lover of peace, beat- ing and killing and extorting? It ail began in the 1960s, the i Number Of Young Tangled In Deadly Struggle almost all of the classes at Ga- lileo High School were taught in English. Had he there was doubt" he would have learned much. "Ninety per cent of the- stuff goes over their heads when it's taught in EngT lish," concedes Wellington Chew, city director of bilingual education. Without an education, Lak Man Tarn had trouble finding work. Through the Chinatown-North Beach Youth Service and Coordinating Center, a govern- ment-financed youth program, he got jobs as a dishwasher and a waiter.

Aside from that and teaching him a little Eng- lish, however, the Youth Serv- ice didn't help much. "When mothers and fathers both work, family structure breaks down, and the agencies are left to mend the broken bridges;" says Mason Wong, executive direc- tor. "And we just can't." Lak Man Tarn's friends were immigrants, too, and they were different in small but important ways from their American-born contemporaries. Foreign, born called the American-born ABCs "American Born Chinese." The ABCs called the foreign- with cherry bombs', their cars to set afire, a principal to stab and his office windows to break. There were, livings to earn; houses to rob and nesses to extort, sometimes by simply eating a big meal in a restaurant and walking Out, or by ignoring ticket takers at the movies.

Or by offering to hire on as look-see boys for illegal gamblers; The Wah Ching gave Tom Tom the forum he needed to express himself: To stand short and lean in his dark denims and brown leather jacket, flash his and assert his lead- "In 1967-68," he remem- bers, "we-thinking about these things: Rich guys that own res- taurants, and they hiring bus- boys, and they paying "us 65 cents per hour and 50 cents per hour. "We called a meeting in '68 at the CACA (Chinese Ameri- can Citizens Alliance), arid we said, 'We want fair money, like everybody The meeting was one of three which marked a turning point. It was a Human Rights Com- mission meeting, and it includ- ed some of the lords of the Chinatown hierarchy, including. Judge Harry Low and represen- tatives of the Six'Companies. While not a.

group of com- mercial firms, the.Companies represents Chinatown's ac- cumulated wealth. On its board sit the mandarins'of seven as- sociations (one too small to have a representing residents from a different dis- trict of the Canton delta. Or- ganized beneath it, in pyramid fashion, are the rest of China- town's 43 district associations, Its numerous tongs, and its family associations; each head- b- the mandarins who own the buildings'in Chinatown and run the businesses inside them, make Chinatown the richest, over-organized ghetto in the United States. Into the meeting marched the Wah Ching, en masse. "The crime rate in China- town is increasing and we are partly responsible," chanted Anton Wong, 19, barely 5 feet 4 iVr KM: STILL NEEDLING the powers that be, Ralph Nader is pushing a new campaign against life industry.

1 GANG WARFARE'S Ng, members of a rival gang Police refer to a once a member'bf the You Lee, a San Francisco Chinese Gang War San Francis'co now They youth holds a revered portra'it of say the warriors, mostly teenagers and almost former leader of the'Ypu all under 25; have been involved in 13 killings was; shot and killed in San Fran- over the past four years. Cisco's Chinatpwn in 197J," presumably i in Bos 7 Kennedy years, wherilhe.presi- FOBs -T- "Freaks Off the young Chi- dent refugees Boat;" nese have tried Seattle 7 the hier- jackets and: their patriarchs created many asi into the The FOBs wore: sport Jo keep the peace in States eacfi year. shirts; sport jackets that $hese young are. hopeful who. arrived on Gurri flat shoes, Son, or Mountain, as The ABCs could speak English.

they described the United States included an 18-yea'r-old boy with a dark thatch and large brown eyes, named Lak Man Tarn. He came with his family, sev- e'h persons in His father'boat. Jh China, his father'was tat each other in'ghetto friistra- had been a well-known lawyer: an architect, his mother a.iady struggling Canton; The family, joined But there was in some cases, consider- pouring, inio call in Chinatown for an archi- money and power. already one of America's, American crecien- i. Running in 20s and 30s, and Ghettos, eight-score tials, so; his mother went to -groups of 100 when their 0 1 50 Chinatown, bound- work in -a sewing shop and.

peak, they mix long- by -Nob HilL 5'the financial washed dishes extorting; jSome scorn their elders as "bar iianas," yellow on the'outside white on the inside, "Uncle sellouts to the Cauca- they accuse of repressing into gilded sniping, kidnaping, stabb- 'China they sneered. And the FOBs would fight. Lak Man.Tarn, Kit Fong. was an immigrant: He remem- bers with precision his arrival: 10 a.m., Jan: 27, 1962, on the grudges worthy of the Hat- dis arid-North 'Beach strip 1 and McCoys with a turf jthe Puerto Ricans; and they it all with'mpu gong, a. omerta that would jrnake the Godfather proud, r', the kids are doing is 'pretty close to what the per cent shared bath- in the 19th century," says a- rooms with other families, 1 San Francisco policeman.

The- na none. is apt. Gangs, like tongs, provide stability, secur- 912 persons 11 ity and brotherhood for young times' that of the rest of San immigrants Kit Fong couldn't speak Eng- lish either. He avoided school for several Then he tried classes with Chinese translators. But he found thern- unsatisfaclory.

He worked as a newspaper kitchen at United Air Lines and as a delivery boy for a bean sprout company. But none of these jobs was particularly challeng- PopuJation-density soared to ing. joints. never plentiful; was to find. And more than half of what was available was 'substandard.

Eighty per cent of. the imrriigrant families lived in three or fewer rooms. or Chinese immigrants i -a Estrange and sometimes hostile Like tongs, the gangs would I like the story to stop there with their efforts to become the. Boys Clubs of their people." i'This is not a gang," protests Kit Fong, 24. He and his broth- er, Joe, 18, run the Chung Ching Yee.

Joe was sentenced to life in prison recently on a conspiracy to murder con- "The police and the newspapers, they put dirt in our mouths," says. "They call us the 'Joe Fong But like the tongs of old whose rivalries got so strong that by 1900 newspapers were running box scores: Hop Sings, 3: Suey Sings, 2 the gangs are deadly. "If a leader say, I 'Go kill that says Tom I Tom, matter of factly, "you go i do it." i In the 1900s, authorities were so stymied by the tongs- that but the police seemed to know when and where the hatchet men would He says he and seven other Hong Kong Chinese began bur- glarizing homes and businesses. They called themselves the Bugs, referring pridefully to their small size, which enabled them to slither through Iran- Francisco. Youngsters like Lak Man Tarn "hotbedded," or slept in shifts.

Others spent hard, cold nights in communal bathtubs. The unemployment rate dou- soms, climb drains and other- bled for the rest of the city, wise gain forbidden access. And those who were able to "The eight of us liked to find jobs didn't make much wear black," Kit For.g says, money. Lak Man Tarn's father "They couldn't see us in the found his professional skill use- dark They arrested me, less. There wasn't much call in gave me charges.

Most of the the United States for a Canto- gang got caught. At Log Cabin nese lawyer who couldn't speak (reform school) that's English. where I catch my English So, like many others, he got a Kit Fong and Man Tam job in a Chinese restaurant as a bus boy; Large restaurants paid the minimum wage. Smaller ones paid $1 an hour, plus meals, minus tips. Most mothers bent over sew- ing machines in the 150 piece- work shops scattered through the back streets.

Many worked seven days a week. Some earned as little as 50 cents an hour. There was jade and teakwood on Gum Son, and there were Ming coffee tables and K'ang 1 clash. Today, the most recent cupboards. But they were in organized crime report by Cali- the shops along Grant Street, 2 fornia's attorney general lists for lhe round-eyed tourists.

Up- stairs, where the Chinese lived; were the possessions of K'u-li laborers poverty and despair. Lak Man-Tarn didn't go to school. It seemed a waste of time. He couldn't speak English, and one Chinese gang, the You-Lee, that has been defunct for more than a year and fails to note Altogether the existence of the Chung Ching Yee. The gangs, like the tongs, embarrassed their elders.

"We're ashamed found common cause against the ABCs. "The ABC had more people and they made trouble for the FOB," Lak Man Tarn remembers, his walnut eyes flashing. "They make us stick together. If you go together, you can save yourself, and that was the way Wah Ching was organized." Everybody agreed. Kit Fong says: "We don't take no more.

Fifteen of us, we created the Wah Ching. We fight the ABCs all the way." Lak Man Tam was no Mil- quetoast. "When I get mad," he says, "I'm a real mixer. Nickname is Crazy Six. I'm number six in my family." He picked up another nick- name, too: Tom Tom.

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