The Japanese Butler

Posted on July 4, 2019 by Shayne Davidson

Sanichi Kanda waited with about 50 other young Japanese men to board a British steamship, the Sikh, which sat in the port of Yokohama, Japan on April 25, 1900. The ship had arrived a day earlier from Kobe with about 150 people, mostly young men, on board. Its final destination, the United States of America, was halfway around the world. Sanichi knew he was unlikely that he would see his parents, Junnosuke and Somi, or his homeland again. Born in Tokyo in 1880, he had $31 in his pocket and would turn 20 on May 10, three days before they landed in Tacoma, Washington.

The Port of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, in an undated photo.

A lean, handsome man, Sanichi had only attended school for six years in Japan, but he was able to speak, read and write English. After he arrived in the United States he worked for a couple of years in Seattle as a tailor, but soon he was restless. He boarded a train heading east.

After arriving in Maryland he was hired to work for Mrs. Louise Brinkmann at “Oakwood,” her enormous Queen Anne-style home in Catonsville, just west of Baltimore. Mrs. Brinkmann, who was born in New Jersey, came from a German family that had made a fortune in the sugar business. She married August Helmuth Brinkmann, a successful German-born businessman, in 1879. The couple had three sons but they separated in 1900, with Mr. Brinkmann returning to Germany. Before they parted company Mrs. Brinkmann obtained a tidy financial settlement from her husband.

“Oakwood,” Mrs. Brinkmann’s home in Catonsville, Maryland, in 1904.

Mrs. Brinkmann employed several servants at her estate, including a housekeeper and a coachman. She was a busy woman with an active social life who did a lot of charity work. She also made frequent trips out of town to visit family and friends. Unfortunately, paying the wages of her servants was not always at the top of her to-do list.

When his wages went unpaid for a time, Sanichi became impatient. He knew it was wrong to steal, but he also realized that if he complained, the authorities were unlikely to take the word of a Japanese immigrant over the word of a wealthy American lady. He took a valuable diamond ring from her home and headed to Washington, D.C., where he pawned the ring, getting $60 for it. She reported the theft to the police.

Mrs. Brinkmann behind the wheel of one of her automobiles.

Sanichi soon found job a working for Mrs. Howard Kingscote, a British woman staying temporarily in Staunton, Virginia. Like Mrs. Brinkmann, Mrs. Kingscote hailed from a good family and was separated from her husband. She was also an accomplished novelist, writing under the pen name “Lucas Cleeve,” in the bodice-ripper genre, a subject area with which she had extensive personal familiarity. Though no one in Staunton knew it at the time, she’d had to make a quick exit from her homeland of England after it was discovered that she’d seduced and then bilked several men, causing their financial ruin. Her financial troubles continued in America where eventually she’d be kicked out of more than a few hotels for non-payment of her bills.

Sanichi was no fool and it didn’t take long for him to figure out that Mrs. Kingscote was even less likely to pay him than Mrs. Brinkmann, so he left. Undaunted by his previous bad luck with employers, he placed an ad in various newspapers seeking work as a butler and valet. He might not have been caught for the theft of the ring except that he used his real name in the ads. The Baltimore police traced him through the ad and sent two detectives to his rooming house.

At first he denied taking the ring, but after some conversation with the detectives he admitted the theft and explained he’d only done it because he hadn’t been paid. They arrested him on July 7, 1905, and took him to Baltimore to face charges. He pleaded guilty to a charge of petty larceny and was sentenced to six months in the Maryland House of Correction (aka “The Cut”) on October 25, 1905.

After he was released from prison Sanichi decided he’d had enough of working as a servant to white ladies. He returned to Washington State and found work as a laborer in an oyster camp in Vaughn, a village on the Key Peninsula. There he met Daisy Lillian Tuthill, an attractive young woman from Connecticut. Daisy and her only sibling, her younger brother, Frank, had been orphaned as children. They moved to Vaughn to live with their grandmother, Augusta Fanshaw, and her husband, Charles. Frank died in 1908 when he was just 20.

Sanichi asked Daisy to marry him and she accepted. They applied for a marriage license near the end of September 1910. There was only one problem — officials in Seattle refused to grant the license because he was Asian and she was white. Next they applied for the license in Tacoma because they heard that two other mixed-race couples had received marriage licenses there. The state auditor was not pleased about the situation but he admitted there was no law against granting them the license. “We can take our time investigating the applications and they may get tired of waiting,” the auditor commented. In fact Washington was the only state in the western U.S. and one of only eight in the nation where inter-racial marriage was legal at the time. The couple waited patiently and the license was eventually granted. A justice of the peace married Sanichi and Daisy on November 5, 1910 in Mason County, Washington.

By 1915 the Kandas had three children: Eugene, George and Lillian. Sanichi continued to work as an oysterman and oyster culler in South Bay, north of Olympia. Another son, Richard, joined the family in 1929.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, after running the gauntlet to get married, Sanichi and Daisy’s story were one of happy-ever-after? Sadly that’s not the case. On November 25, 1934, their beautiful daughter, Lillian, was shot and killed on a lonely road in Thurston County, Washington, by a jealous high school sweetheart, Merritt Hunter, Jr., after she tried to break off her relationship with him. Hunter’s father told a news reporter that his son had been behaving irrationally for about a year before the murder. He said that he and his wife were unhappy about the relationship because Lillian was partly of Japanese ancestry.

News photo of Merritt Hunter in jail after he was arrested for the murder of Lillian Kanda.

Hunter was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He was paroled in 1951. Four years after he was released he shot and killed his wife, Elayne, with a .22 caliber rifle. Then he turned the gun on himself, committing suicide.

Sanichi, Daisy and their three sons were sent to Tule Lake War Relocation Center, an internment camp in northern California, on June 4, 1942, after the outbreak of World War II. The camp was constructed for incarceration of Japanese people living in America and Americans of Japanese ancestry, due to irrational fears that they might collaborate with the Japanese. Daisy was not in either category but she was sent to Tule Lake anyway. The Kanda’s sons left the camp shortly after they arrived but Sanichi and Daisy remained at the camp until October 4, 1943.

Cabins at the Tule Lake Camp, circa 1944.

After the war ended Sanichi got a job with the railroad. He outlived Daisy, who died in 1962, by one year. They are buried with three of their children and their tiny granddaughter, Karen, in Tumwater, Washington.

Featured photo: Sanichi Kanda, 1905 carte-de-visite mugshot (front and back). Collection of the author.

Many thanks to antiques dealer, Nathan Roberts, for selling me a large collection of CDV mugshot cards from Baltimore, including the card of Sanichi Kanda.

A Chinese Puzzle

Posted on October 20, 2018 by Shayne Davidson

Tangled skeins of evidence which are being closely investigated by the authorities may result in the unearthing of one of the largest gangs of white slavers in the country with headquarters in New York City and also in other cities, as the result of the arrest of Mrs. Marie Chin Wore of Chenango street, who was taken shortly after midnight by Chief Detective Loren W. Rummer and Detective Larry Abel, police officials declared today.

— Press and Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, New York), February 28, 1920

A young girl was found wandering in the vicinity of New York City’s Bowery in February 1920. She was taken to a Christian missionary society where she told authorities a disturbing story about having been forced to become the “child wife” of a much older man.

The missionary who took care of the girl after she was found, Mary E. Banta, claimed the child was born “Frances Michaelson” to Morris and Sadie Michaelson in New York City and that she was placed in a foundling home nine days after her birth in 1908. Mary also claimed that Marie Chin Wore became the girl’s foster mother 1916 and legally adopted her in 1919, changing her name to “Anna Chin Wore.”

Harry Chin Wore

In 1919 Marie arranged for Anna to marry David Lee Nong. A California-born man of Chinese ancestry, David owned a restaurant in Binghamton, New York. After the marriage, according to the 1920 census, Marie, age 32, and her Chinese husband, Harry Chin Wore, age 44, lived with Anna and David. Marie worked as a waitress in David’s restaurant and Harry ran a nearby laundry. Anna, age 16, was listed on the census as Marie and Harry’s biological daughter. Marie’s birthplace was listed as “Greece” and Anna’s as “New York.” Marie’s native language was recorded as “Greek.”

Less than two months after the marriage Anna stole enough money from David to escape to New York City.

Mary Banta took Anna back to Binghamton. Marie was arrested there and charged with abduction.

Anna had on a dress that was much too large for her in her wedding photo. News photo, collection of the author.

Marie and her lawyer in court

Marie testified in court to being an opium addict and said she was in the clutches of a gang of Chinese criminals who dealt opium and smuggled Chinese men and drugs across the border of Canada into the United States. She claimed that David Lee Nong was part of the gang and that there was an opium den in the basement of his restaurant. Rumors of “white slavery” swirled around the case. News stories proclaimed that Marie went by multiple aliases and had been imprisoned several times in the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island in New York City, but no proof of these claims was provided.

However Marie showed no signs of being addicted to opium or any other drug. Opium wasn’t found in the basement of David’s restaurant or anywhere on the premises, nor was the gang of criminals located. She appeared to be nervous but unrepentant and angry in court, at times shaking her head and sneering at Anna while she gave her testimony.

Anna testified that she was unsure of her age but had been told she was between 11 and 13 years old. She said that Marie “told me that my mother was a dirty Jew and had thrown me into an ash can, where a policeman had found me.” She recalled living in the foundling home in New York City and attending school in Manhattan before Marie removed her from the institution.

David Lee Nong’s restaurant

David, who was arrested as a material witness but wasn’t charged, testified that it was the custom in China for children to marry very young but he claimed he hadn’t known that Anna was only 11. He paid about $700 ($10,214 in 2018 dollars) to Marie and Harry to help them move to Binghamton and set Harry up in a laundry business. Nonetheless the cash was seen as a quid pro quo for his marriage to Anna.

Marie and David applied for and received a license for his marriage to Anna on November 20, 1919, but when they tried to get a judge to perform the ceremony, he refused due to Anna’s youth. Next they went to a local Baptist minister who agreed to perform the marriage after Marie lied to him, telling him that Anna was 16 and the marriage was out of necessity because she was pregnant.

Anna testified that a few weeks after the marriage, Marie took her to a hotel in Worcester, Massachusetts, and forced her to commit “a statutory offense” with a Chinese man who was unnamed.

There was no evidence that Harry Chin Wore was directly involved in the marriage plot but he was found to be in the country illegally under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. He was ordered deported to back China. Marie was offered a suspended sentence as long as she agreed to be deported to China with him. The couple was taken by the Binghamton sheriff, in June 1920, to San Francisco and put on a steamship bound for China.

As she waited to sail, Marie gave an intriguing interview to a reporter for the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin.

I was born in China and I speak Chinese even better than English, although my parents were Americans. In fact, I came to America to be educated and was graduated from the University of Maine, later graduating as a trained nurse at the Portland, Maine general hospital. We were married in Canton, China, and I have no wish to terminate that marriage by taking advantage of the fact that my husband is debarred from the United States. I can be of great service to humanity in the Far East both by sympathy and education and even feel more at home there than in the land that was formerly mine only by parental tie.

Anna was sent to New York City, with missionary Mary E. Banta as her guardian, where she would attend school under the care of the missionary society. Mary sued in the New York Supreme Court to have Anna’s marriage annulled.

David lost his restaurant due to the unsavory publicity about the case. In February 1922 he pleaded not guilty to a charge of gambling at a Binghamton cafe. He died of liver cancer on July 10, 1922 in the Binghamton city hospital. He was 42 years old.

Before condemning David’s role in the case it’s important to realize that U.S. immigration laws in the late nineteenth century resulted in there being few females in America for Chinese men to marry and mixed marriages, while not outlawed in New York, were frowned upon. The marriage age in New York, with parental consent, was 14 at the time and it’s only recently been changed to 17.

Questions about Anna’s parentage went unanswered. If what Mary Banta said was true and Morris Michaelson was her father, he was likely white and Jewish. Therefore her mother must have been Asian. That would have been an unusual pairing for the time, though not impossible. Several young men named Morris Michaelson, all of them white, lived in New York City, according to the 1910 census, but none of them had a wife named Sadie or a wife who was Asian, though she may have died shortly after the child’s birth and that could explain why the baby was placed in an institution.

The New York Extracted Birth Index lists a Frances Michaelson who was born in March 19, 1908 (the exact birthdate Mary Banta claimed was Anna’s) and there’s an Anna Michaelson, born in 1908, who was a resident of the New York Foundling Hospital and Children’s Aid Society until 1915. But there’s no way to definitively link either of those girls with Anna Chin Wore.

Could Anna have been, as one newspaper suggested, the biological daughter of Marie and a Chinese man who wasn’t her husband? Could that be why the baby was placed in an orphanage and why Marie lied about her relationship to Anna after she got the child back — to hide that fact from Harry Chin Wore?

This case is full of perplexing clues but short on verifiable facts. We’ll never know if Marie had good intentions when she arranged a marriage for Anna or if she sold her to the highest bidder.

Featured photos: March 1920 news photos of Marie Chin Wore (left) and Anna Chin Wore. Collection of the author.

East-West Triangle

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Shayne Davidson

On the night before Midi was killed, I sat in my hotel room and prayed to God. I had procured a butcher knife from the café in which I worked and, as I sharpened it on a whetstone, I prayed to Him for strength. The next morning I went to the Takaoka home and entered Midi’s bedroom. She was as sleep. I awakened her and held her hand. I said ‘Molly, what has happened? You can’t marry Bachand.’ She said ‘Ray, I guess New York has spoiled me.’ She started to get up and put on her stockings. I couldn’t control myself any longer. I struck her many times on the head with a cold chisel then slashed her across the throat with the butcher knife.

— Raymond E. Johnson, confession for the murder of Midi Takoaka

On the morning of August 11, 1936, Ray Johnson, a 39-year-old Los Angeles cook, murdered his lover, 25-year-old Midi Takaoka. The mortally wounded young woman was able to stagger outside to the lawn of her home at 1211 North Commonwealth Avenue, where she collapsed and died.

Midi Takaoka, Battle Creek Enquirer, August 15, 1936

Mizuye, known as “Midi,” was a professional dancer and singer. She was born in Ehime, Japan, in 1910 to Imahei and Kazuko Takaoka. Midi and her three siblings immigrated with their parents to California in 1918 when she was five.

Midi’s father, Imahei, described as a “fire-and-brimstone Christian minister,” was a founder of the Hollywood Japanese Independent Church. When he died of tuberculosis in 1930, aged 45, Midi’s family was left destitute. To help them survive financially, she and her two younger sisters, Mary and Myrtle, formed a vaudeville trio called the Taka Sisters.

Though the Taka sisters weren’t triplets, they billed themselves as “the only Japanese triplets on stage” and it helped them find an audience. They danced around in a routine similar to the “three little maids” from the Mikado, then threw off their kimono and danced to fast jazz. The show was risqué and, after headlining at Harry’s New York Cabaret in Chicago in 1935, the beautiful sisters became nationally known, performing in nightclubs across the United States.

The Taka Sisters, The Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1936

Midi and Ray had known each other for three years. They met at the famous Palomar Dance Hall in Los Angeles, where Ray worked as a cook. He was in love with Midi but the relationship was complicated because he was 14 years older and had a wife who refused to divorce him. Another problem was the laws against interracial marriages that existed in many states at that time.

Midi was tired of waiting for Ray to get himself free. On a trip home, after performing in New York City, she met a new man named William Bachand. While traveling west on the bus, the pair fell head over heels in love. By the time they reached St. Louis, William had proposed marriage and given Midi a ring. The day after arriving in Los Angeles, he asked Midi’s mother for her hand in marriage and apparently Kazuko agreed to the match. William gave Midi a second ring to seal the deal.

The couple went to Yuma, Arizona, on August 9^th, to try to get married, but authorities turned them away because Midi was Asian and William was white. Dejected, they returned to Los Angeles.

Rivals: Johnson and Bachand, The Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1936

Hearing about Midi’s new love, Ray became enraged. Shortly after the couple got back from Arizona, Ray attacked William, stabbing him five times with an ice pick at the Takaoka home on the night of August 10^th. Midi’s younger brother, Hallelujah, pulled Ray off and ordered him to get out. William, not seriously injured, was treated at a local hospital and released. Ray’s jealousy went unquenched, so the following morning he returned to the home, where he murdered Midi and then fled.

A guilt-stricken Ray turned himself in to the sheriff of Corona, California, three days later. He was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in November 1936. He received a life sentence for the murder, plus 10 years for the ice pick attack. He served his sentence at San Quentin prison. Despite the life sentence, he was paroled after 12 years, in 1948.

William Bachand returned to his home in Massachusetts and promptly got into trouble with the police. In March 1937 he was arrested in Leominster for stealing a bicycle and passing a bad check, all while wearing a stolen army uniform. Police uncovered his romance with the murdered woman and he admitted he lied to Midi about his background, telling her he was born in France and worked as a chauffeur for a wealthy family. He also lied about his age — he was only 18 years old when he met Midi. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to four months in the house of correction. In 1944 he was again in police trouble for larceny and check fraud. Rather than return to prison he skipped town and was also charged as a fugitive from justice.

Midi’s sisters disbanded their act after her murder and never performed again. Due to their Japanese ethnicity, the Takaoka family was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp, 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles, during Word War II.

California finally repealed its ban on interracial marriage in 1948. Arizona’s ban was not repealed until 1962.

Featured image: Raymond E. Johnson’s San Quentin mugshot, California State Archives

Captured and Exposed

Tales from the Annals of Crime

Tag Archives: interracial marriage

The Japanese Butler

A Chinese Puzzle

East-West Triangle

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