Sunday, April 02,
A.P. Giannini & "Bank of Italy" Forgotten in 100 yr Commemoration of 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Debate
There were some Heroes and a great many Villians involved in the San Francisco Earthquake.
As you read more frequent articles as the April 18–21 dates approach, I fear that one of the "Iconic" Heroic figures of that devestating event A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy, that later acquired the Bank of America, will be overlooked, as he was in this current article in the Los Angeles Times. [A following Report will profile A.P.Giannini].
Various groups will "use" the event to their own purposes and agenda while the truth will be distorted beyond recognition.
For instance, the Chinese Community is attempting to focus ALL attention on any injustices done to THEM, whereas there was little regard for ANY members of the "have not" class, and the greatest injustices done to the Chinese were done because their community sat on real estate that was coveted by "the haves".
It reminds me very much the attention that the Japanese community focuses exclusively on themselves regarding the "Alien Act" of 1941,NEVER mentioning that it effected 600,000 Itallians, 300,000 Germans and only 100,000 Japanese!!!!!!
In 1906 the San Francisco Earthquake measuring around 8.0 and lasting more than a full minute smashed into the city of San Francisco, overturning lamps and cracking gas lines. The fires that spread over the next three days reduced almost the entire city to smoldering piles of stone. The devastation of April 18–21, 1906, is hard to believe today: 508 square blocks were destroyed; 28,188 structures burned. It remains the largest peacetime urban conflagration in history, and modern estimates suggest that some 3,000 people lost their lives.
Hundreds of thousands were rendered homeless, and virtually the entire city was destroyed in the worst calamity in the history of the West Coast. But San Franciscans were eager to dust themselves off and start anew. Within 10 years, the "Phoenix City," as it called itself, had rebuilt, prouder and more ostentatious than before, in time to host the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, one of the great showpieces of a proud age.
More than anything, the can-do spirit of San Francisco — what that age was proud to call being "indomitable" — was the spirit of enterprising individualism, which has in many ways been rejected by today's culture of entitlement and victim. San Franciscans of 1906 saw that they had lived through an awful catastrophe, but they would not let it get the best of them.
San Franciscans rallied around ideals best exemplified by A.P. Giannini, the Italian immigrant who founded the Bank of America, and who set up shop on a park bench amid the wreckage of Union Square, lending small amounts to devastated workers, with No Collateral required, only on their signature, since that is about all they had to offer, so they could rebuild their lives.
On the other hand, government agencies spent their money and attention on bossism and political favors instead of on public safety concerns. The political structures proved just as rickety as the physical structures, and when the disaster came, the city fractured on racial lines while bureaucrats responded with a mixture of blundering and brutality. San Francisco's corrupt and incompetent mayor, Eugene Schmitz, gave the order to execute looters summarily, although the chaos made it impossible to tell looters from innocent civilians rescuing their own property. Nobody knows how many perished at the hands of trigger-happy soldiers who, led by the ruthlessly inept General Frederick Funston, assumed martial law — even though it was never declared.
Clumsy as he was at maintaining order, Funston was an even worse firefighter. He sent troops racing through the city to blow up buildings with dynamite and gunpowder to make firebreaks — but the soldiers didn't know how to use explosives, and the city's only demolition expert was drunk. Pulverized buildings only made more kindling, and flying gunpowder only started more fires. Civilians who tried to remain in their homes were dragged out at gunpoint, although those few who were allowed to make a stand were able to save their homes. Meanwhile, firemen rushed from fire to fire, finding most of the water pipes broken and most of the emergency cisterns dilapidated and empty. They were forced to use sand, and even sewage, to fight the flames. (There was enough wine in the city's warehouses to quench the fires, but nobody seems to have thought of it.) At one point, a tugboat in the harbor pumped water through a linkage of firehoses stretching over a mile in length, to help fight ! fires deep within the city.
The ships offered one of the few scenes of unambiguous heroism. Lieutenant Frederick "Frisky" Freeman, in command of the fire tug Leslie, directed the efforts to save the city's waterfront, which would prove essential to receiving relief supplies in the days to come. Freeman, oftentimes dodging General Funston's meddlesome commands, managed to save almost the entire Embarcadero from destruction.
Along with the rebuilding came reforms to the city's profoundly corrupt politics. For years, Mayor Schmitz had been ruled by political boss Abraham Reuf, who, from his office as city attorney, served as a middleman for bribing the state legislature, and commanded labor unrest whenever it would produce a profit. Just before the earthquake, former mayor James D. Phelan had started the process of ending Reuf's control over the city, and when the dust settled, he and sugar magnate Rudolph Spreckles financed an investigation that culminated in convictions and jail time for Schmitz and Reuf.
FISSURES ERUPT OVER S.F. EARTHQUAKE OBSERVANCES
The city struggles to mark one of its defining stories, which saw both heroism and cruelty.
Los Angeles Times
By Lee Romney and John M. Glionna,
Times
Staff Writers
April 2, 2006
SAN
FRANCISCO — The
year was 1906. The city was demolished by an earthquake. Then ravaged by fire.
San Francisco quickly rebuilt and trumpeted
itself as a world-class city gracefully risen from the ashes. What would be
remembered through the years were the positives: the heroism, the generosity of
neighboring cities, the gorgeous architecture that replaced what was lost.
Hidden in
the city's rewritten history were darker realities.
In the chaos, San Franciscans lashed out at the underclass — beating and
shooting Chinese immigrants, in part to keep them from rebuilding Chinatown.
Officials covered up the death count — now thought to have surpassed
3,000 — doctored photographs to minimize the appearance of damage and
removed earthquake faults from maps.
And the upper class illegally took over city government.
A century later, civic leaders are struggling to commemorate one of San Francisco's defining stories, but one
saddled with much loss of life and conflicting interpretations. Complicating
the tribute even more is the certainty that another catastrophic earthquake
looms in the future.
"I feel sorry for the organizers," said Tim Hodson, director of the
Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento. "How do you decide
to commemorate a human tragedy that could repeat itself any time! ?"
Fault lines emerged early.
One historian has insisted that the events should be marked with solemnity, in
honor of the thousands of dead the city only recently officially acknowledged. San Francisco's Chinese community is emphasizing
the era's historical atrocities.
As in 1906, business interests are stressing a debatable, feel-good story line
that highlights the city's continuing comeback as a global competitor.
And with memories of Hurricane Katrina still raw, donors are focusing on
seismic preparedness, shunning ideas based on celebrations.
Mayor Gavin Newsom, 38, offered his own idea: a party with local rock hero
Carlos Santana. It was scuttled when donors worried that a concert would be in
poor taste.
A smattering of events has taken shape around a judiciously balanced theme
— "Commemorate, Educate and Celebrate" — including an
earthquake expo and the city's belated embrace of a memorial gathering held
annually at a downtown fo! untain.
Newsom acknowledged that the 1906 earthquake was an "awkward" event
to mark.
"Do you sit there with a candlelight vigil and say, 'My God, how dare the
city do what it did back then, with the corruption of city officials or the
mistreatment of its Chinese American residents?' " he said.
"Do you sit there and tell people, 'Why are we all here? The next
earthquake is going to come, and most of us are not going to make it.' Or do
you focus on the city's comeback and rebuilding?"
Striking just after 5
a.m., the April 18
quake and the ensuing three-day firestorm leveled most of San Francisco: 29,000 buildings, including 37
banks, two opera houses and rooming houses packed with immigrants.
What followed were scenes of heroism and cruelty.
Rescuers risked their lives to pull victims from collapsed buildings, and
residents patiently endured months in shabby tent cities. But city officials
also tried unsuccessfully to move Chinatown from! its central location to a remote outpost.
An immediate campaign began to sanitize events: City officials called the
disaster "The Great Fire," excising the word "earthquake."
Headlines boasted of the recovery, and for years the official number of
disaster dead was set at 478 — a figure widely accepted even though no
list was ever compiled.
The rebuilding was rapid and extravagant, including a gilded City Hall, and a
reinvented San
Francisco unveiled
the result in 1915 with its Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
Reality was
lost in the retelling. Philip Fradkin, author of "The Great Earthquake and
Firestorms of 1906," said predisaster San Francisco was a gritty, industrial city. Officials used the
catastrophe to cultivate a more precious identity as a "fun-loving"
cultural and economic mecca.
"It was never true, and certainly is not true today," Fradkin said.
"It's a very provincial, inward-looking city. It lost its position after
the 1906 earthquake, and since that time has promoted the image of what it has
never been. It's become a tourist city. It's no longer a real city."
In fairness, historians say, California
by nature prefers the future to the past.
"It's part of the mythology, which is: The place didn't exist before I got
here," Hodson, of the Center for California Studies, said. "Back
home, you were Norma Jean. In California,
it's Marilyn Monroe."
Hodson said many California cities ignore disasters in their
past. Others reinvent: Santa
Barbara! used its
1925 quake, which flattened much of downtown, to remake itself — hiring Hollywood set directors to come up with a
colonial style that bore no relationship to the destroyed architecture.
Cities that do commemorate disasters often do so gingerly.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 has been remembered mostly through the
uninspiring National Fire Prevention Week.
In Galveston, Texas, civic leaders worried about how to mark the hurricane and
flood in 1900 that killed more than 6,000.
Business interests "said that to be so identified with hurricanes was
awful. We shouldn't even mention it," said Linda Macdonald, who helped
organize the centennial.
Until the earthquake's 100th anniversary approached, San Francisco had done little to commemorate the
historic event.
For decades, a small gathering of survivors has observed the day at Lotta's
Fountain, an ornate downtown landmark that in 1906 served as a message board
for the dispossessed.
Historian Gladys Hansen was even turned down by the city when she wanted
to erect a memorial to victims; she had to turn to a cemetery in nearby Colma.
(At Hansen's urging, supervisors recently passed a resolution acknowledging
that the death toll exceeded 3,000.)
But the centennial was a marker the city could not ignore. Newsom created a
committee two years ago to organize what he promised would be a world-class
observance. But only in the last few months did any plans begin to take form.
"In September or October, I put my ear to the railroad track and didn't
hear any trains coming," said city Fire Capt. James Lee, who is active in
the department's historical society. The group is sponsoring an expo featuring
1906 memorabilia, as well as earthquake and fire safety information.
As the main event, the city has now officially embraced the Lotta's Fountain
gathering, and tens of thousands are expected, along with 18 survivors. A
moment of silence will ! mark the quake and will be shattered at 5:13 a.m. when fire stations sound their sirens and churches
ring their bells.
Also planned are a parade, firefighters costume ball and a $500-a-plate dinner
to benefit the San
Francisco Museum and Historical Society and the
Chinese Historical Society of America.
Current and planned independent events are plentiful. Among them are photo
exhibits, a massive gelatin model of the city, a specially commissioned
symphony and a ballet set to the sound of seismic movement from the Hayward fault.
Despite the initial criticism, the city's centennial organization, called San
Francisco Rising, is not shying away from all negative imagery. It supports the
Chinese historical society, which will remind residents of some of San Francisco's darkest moments through a oneman
theater production and exhibit.
"We're not going to tell a happy story," said historical society
Executive Director Sue Lee. "It's a very complicated story! ."
The city also will be the site of three conferences for seismic professionals.
Safety and preparedness education will occur in schools throughout the year.
And Wells Fargo — the city's largest private employer and one rooted here
since before the quake — has taken a lesson from Hurricane Katrina and is
sponsoring a program to photograph children for identification purposes in the
event of a disaster.
The city has officially acknowledged the eventual reality of the Big One, but
many residents still prefer to ignore it.
"I hope it happens while I'm in the office; we're prepared," said San Francisco native Tami Espino, 48, who has
neglected to assemble her own earthquake preparedness kit.
"If it happens at home, I'm a dead duck."
The ANNOTICO Reports are Archived at:
Italy at St Louis: www.italystl.com
Italia Mia: www.italiamia.com (Community)