Minister Dudley to the Secretary of State.
Lima, Peru, May 17, 1905.
Sir: A Chinaman, giving his name as Chung Dai Yau, called yesterday at this legation and requested a passport. It appearing that he had arrived in Peru from Panama the day before, and was without any acquaintance to attest a formal application therefor, he was told that it could not be issued to him.
He was the bearer of a passport issued in due form under the territorial seal to Chung Dai Yau on February 5, 1903, by Sanford B. Dole, governor of the Territory of Hawaii; and he showed me also a copy of a certificate of his birth, certified on the same date at Honolulu, as correct by Alexander G. Hawes, jr., secretary to the governor. The birth certificate recited that Chung Dai Yau was born on July 14, 1879, of Chinese parents, in the district of Kona on the island of Oahu, in the Territory of Hawaii. The appearance of the young man before me tallied with the description of the passport, and his handwriting, when he wrote his name in my presence, was found to correspond satisfactorily to the signature, Chung Dai Yau, attached to the passport.
He also submitted to my inspection two testimonials as to his character; one signed by J. T. De Bolt, judge circuit court, 1st circuit, Territory of Hawaii, and the other by James L. Holt, deputy assessor 1st division, Island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. In the first it is stated that the bearer had been Judge De Bolt’s Chinese clerk and interpreter before the judge went upon the bench; and in the second that the bearer was in the employ of the tax department at Honolulu during 1900 and 1901, as a Chinese interpreter and clerk, and that he was a citizen of the United States by virtue of having been born in Hawaii.
The request he made of me for passport was to enable him to land at Ancon, on the Canal Zone, or to be admitted into the United States or any American territory to which he might go.
It appears from his statement that he left Honolulu to better his fortunes in May or June of 1903. Consul-General McWade’s visé on the passport shows that its bearer was in Canton July 8, 1903, and an indorsement thereon by W. E. Days, inspector of immigration, that he landed at Manila December 22, 1903. After various vicissitudes in those parts, he proceeded to Salinas Cruz, Mexico, where he also met with disappointment, but was advised that his knowledge of English and Chinese would assure him lucrative employment at the Isthmus. He therefore took the Pacific Mail steamship City of Para, at San José de Guatemala and sailed for Ancon where he arrived the 12th or 13th of last month and where his present troubles began. The [Page 736] ship having come alongside the wharf at La Boca, he was preparing to disembark with the other passengers, when, in view of his obvious Chinese lineage, he was forbidden to do so by the purser of the ship and was prevented by a policeman at the end of the gang plank on the wharf. According to Yau’s statement to me he produced the passport and the certificate of birth hereinabove referred to and they were submitted to some one on the shore; but whether to the proper American authority or to some one else, he was not able to inform me. At the end of several days, however, the papers were returned to him in a Pacific Mail envelope with the notification that as the passport had expired he could not be allowed to land. In consequence he has found his way down the coast to Peru, arriving at Lima without funds, and desirous of leaving for the Canal Zone or for the United States as soon as his finances again admit of his traveling. Though improper at present to issue him a passport, it seems quite clear that he is a citizen not merely of Hawaii but of the United States under section 4 of the act of April 30, 1900, entitled “An act to provide a government for the Territory of Hawaii.” If so, our Chinese exclusion law has no application to him, and I infer that he has the same right to enter the United States, or any territory or possession of the United States, or any place under their control, as any other American citizen. It is, however, impossible to distinguish by the outward semblance between individuals of the Chinese race who are citizens of the United States and those of them who are not; and I have the honor to inquire what evidence of personal identification and the fact of American citizenship would be exacted of one in the predicament of Chung Dai Yau to admit him into the United States, the Canal Zone, or one of our insular possessions; and whether he would be permitted to land pending the time necessary to secure from Hawaii such supplemental evidence, if any, as might be required.
I have, etc.,