Past Tense

Banzai! Saturday 7 September 1907

While the police were defending a number of handsome Japanese stores in Powell street against a mob of two thousand rioters, hundreds of bricks were thrown, damaging the stores to the extent of thousands of dollars.

Seeing this, the Japanese could stand it no longer, and hundreds of them, armed with sticks, bottles, and knives, and shouting “Banzai,” rushed into the streets.

In five minutes they had cleared the streets where the trouble started, and then they followed the fugitive whites up other streets, some of the Japanese firing pistol volleys and others jabbing rioters in their face and bodies with broken bottles.

Japanese women assisted their husbands, supplying broken bottles from their homes.

When matters were at the worst, there were eight thousand rioters in the streets.

Source: “The Yellow Peril,” The Evening Post, 11 September 1907

Source: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz