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THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021
Cemetery garden to honor Chinese workers
By JAIMIE DING
The Oregonian
On a Sunday afternoon,
the Lone Fir Cemetery in
Portland is serene. A hand-
ful of people stroll along
the black asphalt paths that
divide blocks of burial land.
A man sitting beneath a tow-
ering red cedar leans back
against the thick trunk, head-
phones on. Fresh roses blan-
ket recent gravestones.
But the southwest cor-
ner has no trees, nor grave-
stones or roses. The land was
known as the Old Chinese
Burial Ground — now Block
14 — and was used to tem-
porarily bury early Chinese
immigrant workers until their
remains could be sent to their
hometowns.
For some, however, it
became their fi nal resting
place, but a forgotten one
devoid of markers, remem-
brances or respect. At one
point, the burial ground
was paved over, its history
neglected, replaced by a
county maintenance building.
But not everyone forgot.
Activists have fought for
more than a decade to reverse
the injustices to those still
buried there and remember
their history, even as those
eff orts were pushed to the
side.
Now, Metro has dedi-
cated $4 million to building
a cultural heritage garden on
Block 14 to honor the dead
whose names and stories had
been lost.
“Finally, the contributions
and the sacrifi ces of these
early Chinese immigrants
(and) their story can be told,”
said Marcus Lee of the Chi-
nese Consolidated Benevolent
Association, “and hopefully
that will bring them peace and
the honor and the recognition
that they deserve.”
A patchwork history
They were described as
“anomalies.” In September
2004, tests using ground-pen-
etrating radar found nine
anomalies beneath a park-
ing lot that had been built at
2115 S.E. Morrison St. —
the southeast corner of Lone
Fir Cemetery. They had the
depth, shape and arrange-
ment of overlooked graves,
The Oregonian then reported.
Community groups were
ecstatic. They had always
known early Chinese workers
were likely buried beneath
the building.
The workers arrived in
the United States in the late
1800s, leaving their fami-
lies behind in China to build
infrastructure here. The men
buried at Block 14 helped
build Oregon’s railway sys-
tem and the Willamette River
seawall — while being taken
advantage of fi nancially for
their work. The Chinese
Exclusion Act in 1882 struck
another blow, preventing
laborers from ever becom-
ing U.S. citizens or returning
home to their families.
And, of course, stories
were told of the winds blow-
ing and grass moving eerily
at night, shadows fl itting over
the pavement.
In 2005, Multnomah
County hired Portland-based
Archaeological
Investiga-
Jaimie Ding/The Oregonian
Block 14 of the Lone Fir Cemetery in southeast Portland will be the home of a cultural heritage memorial garden dedicated to
those buried there who were forgotten.
tions Northwest to perform
some careful excavation. At
fi rst, they only unearthed cas-
ket handles, shards of Chi-
nese pottery and fragments of
grave markers with Chinese
writing, said principal archae-
ologist Jo Reese. The county
almost stopped the dig after
two days.
But
then-Multnomah
County Commissioner Maria
Rojo de Steff ey, a week after
the dig began, asked for one
more day of excavation.
On that day, crews discov-
ered human remains.
Reese still remembers the
moment they unearthed frag-
ments of arm and hand bones
likely belonging to an adoles-
cent. Then, they found two
coffi ns with intact remains
before reburying them. No
more digging needed to be
done after that — they had
confi rmed what the commu-
nity had suspected all along.
“(The project) has been
one that continues to be …
one of the most important
projects that we have done,”
Reese said.
The history of Block 14 is
scattered between county and
cemetery records, assembled
back into one piece over the
years from reporting by The
Oregonian and organizations
like the Lone Fir Cemetery
Foundation and the Chinese
Consolidated
Benevolent
Association.
The land was originally
acquired by the City & Sub-
urban Railway in 1891 to
bury Chinese workers. Many
workers had made arrange-
ments for their remains to be
sent home to China to be bur-
ied with their ancestors.
“They had gone abroad
in search of making a living,
to fi nd jobs, to fi nd work so
they could send their wages
back home to their fami-
lies in China,” Lee said. “It
was always their intention, at
some point, to return home.”
Asylum patients from
the Oregon Hospital for the
Insane — the state’s fi rst
psychiatric hospital — were
also buried there. Historians
and mental health advocates
believe about 200 patients
were buried along Lone Fir’s
Old Chinese Burial Ground,
on the eastern border of
Block 14.
In the 1940s, the benevo-
lent association worked with
the county to return remains
buried in the plot to China.
They exhumed what they
believed to be the last 265
graves in 1948, The Orego-
nian reported.
Multnomah
County,
which owned the land, built
the Morrison Building and a
parking lot for county vehi-
cles over the former gravesite.
Activists raise alarm
In 2004, the county was
preparing to sell the build-
ing and lot. It had closed the
building two years before
because it was too expen-
sive to upgrade to earthquake
codes, and asbestos made
demolition costly.
On the other side of the
Willamette River, Rebecca
Liu ventured into the dusty
basement of the benevolent
association’s historic building
in Portland’s Old Town Chi-
natown. She had gone down
there plenty of times before,
fi nding old artifacts and cal-
ligraphy paper but nothing
particularly groundbreaking.
etery, East Side, Portland,
Oregon.”
Liu had stumbled upon
a meticulous record of the
Chinese workers buried and
removed from Block 14 from
1917 to 1928.
Over the years, local Chi-
nese leaders had exhumed
remains and returned them to
China for reburial. But they
forbade the removal of at
least 15 children, and county
records from 1948 show
work crews did not remove
any children’s remains, The
Oregonian reported in 2004.
“Chinese leaders made
a decision that these chil-
dren’s graves were not to
be touched,” said Liu, who
was a Chinese teacher with
the benevolent association
at the time and translated
the records for The Orego-
nian. “They would not have
approved digging these bod-
ies up — ever.”
Liu found 15 entries for
children, all including the
notation in Chinese, “Never
touch.” “It means, ‘Do not
‘BECAUSE WE KNEW WHEN
CHINESE PEOPLE WERE COMING
HERE, THEY ENDURED A LOT OF
SETBACKS AND HARDSHIPS. NOW
IT’S THE SAME … AND WE WILL
FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR
SACRIFICE.’
Rebecca Liu
tery, searched Oregon His-
torical Society records and
found entries confi rming chil-
dren had been buried in the
Chinese section.
Walth also reviewed Lone
Fir logs that showed entries
for 51 Chinese children bur-
ied there from 1891 to 1928.
The records did not say
whether their remains were
ever exhumed.
Cemetery records show
1,131 people identifi ed as
Chinese were buried there
during that time period until
the county took control of
Lone Fir. Rather than includ-
ing names like the other buri-
als at the cemetery, the log
books simply listed a slur.
Line after line, thousands
of these early Chinese were
recorded like this.
The records also showed
benevolent association lead-
ers had little say in convert-
ing the graveyard to the coun-
ty’s own use in 1947.
The records Walth and
the groups helped uncover
forced the county to conduct
the ground survey and subse-
quent archaeological analy-
sis that indicated people were
likely still buried in Block
14. The Morrison Building
was demolished soon after in
August 2008. The next year,
the county passed the land
to Metro, the area’s regional
government, which owns and
manages Lone Fir to this day.
“If the county offi cials had
their way … on that site today
would be a condominium and
a Starbucks,” Walth said.
A decade of waiting
Brent Walth, now a Uni-
versity of Oregon assistant
professor, was reporting on
the issue for The Oregonian.
He had heard rumors of peo-
ple still buried at Block 14
and suspected the Chinese
benevolent association had
the burial records.
He remembers asking
Liu to look for the records
just one more time. “We will
search the place top to bottom
together,” he said.
He didn’t need to. In the
basement, she found two
thick, leather ledgers fi lled
with columns written in Chi-
nese calligraphy. Each col-
umn listed a name, date of
death and a Chinese village.
In English, the header read:
“Record of Chinese Cem-
dig up; do not bring to the
surface,’” Liu said. The burial
records for two young women
were marked the same way.
It’s unclear why, but the
reason may have been that
the tradition of returning
remains to China was mostly
extended to men, or the fam-
ily members could not aff ord
to move the remains, she said.
“I don’t want to blame
the county for this,” Liu said.
“There could have simply
been a communication prob-
lem back then. But the Chi-
nese looking after the ceme-
tery said ‘never touch’ these
graves. They would have not
changed their minds.”
In October 2004, Chris-
tina Walsh, then-president of
Friends of Lone Fir Ceme-
The Morrison building
and parking lot were care-
fully removed, the work
monitored by the archaeolog-
ical fi rm to ensure the ground
was not disturbed further. But
one question remained: What
would happen to Block 14?
In 2007, Metro brought
together community mem-
bers from the Chinese
benevolent association, the
cemetery foundation, neigh-
borhood groups and mental
health community. The next
year, they announced plans
for a garden — a memo-
rial to the forgotten individ-
uals who had been buried
there. Plans were made, and
Portland-based Lango Han-
sen Landscape Architects
was hired to create a design.
The only thing missing was
funding.
No money was dedicated
for the project, according
to John Laursen, president
of the Lone Fir Cemetery
Foundation.
The recession hit in 2008.
Staff turned over. Fundrais-
ing eff orts brought in some
money but not enough. The
project languished for 11
years.
But then, voters approved
the 2019 parks and nature
bond.
The $475 million bond
would improve existing
parks, protect and restore
land, and make nature more
accessible to all. The memo-
rial garden was included as a
“potential project,” but com-
munity members worried
the project would “fall to the
back of the line” and miss out
on the money, Laursen said.
In January, community
groups again began pressing
the Metro Council to uphold
its commitment to the proj-
ect. Laursen wrote a letter to
the council signed by lead-
ers from the Oregon Chinese
Coalition, Portland Business
Alliance, Chinese Americans
Citizens Alliance, Japanese
American Museum of Ore-
gon, Mental Health Associa-
tion and others.
“Block 14 at Lone Fir
Cemetery is a physical man-
ifestation of Oregon’s deeply
racist history,” Laursen wrote.
Hongcheng Zhao, presi-
dent of the Oregon Chinese
Coalition, mobilized local
Chinese American youth —
many of whom were learning
about their own history for
the fi rst time.
“We never really learned
about (Chinese workers) in
school,” said Eleanor Song,
a Stoller Middle School stu-
dent in Washington County.
“There’s a lot I didn’t know.”
Song, 13, along with doz-
ens of other middle and high
school students, wrote letters
to the Metro Council.
“Preserving our history is
really important because we
have to learn from history
so we don’t make mistakes,”
Song told The Oregonian.
In March, 16 years after
the two intact remains were
excavated from Block 14, the
Metro Council announced it
would dedicate $4 million to
the garden project.
The news was bittersweet
for Liu, whose discovery of
those burial ledgers in 2004
was the turning point for
stopping the sale of Block 14.
“Because we knew when
Chinese people were com-
ing here, they endured a lot
of setbacks and hardships,”
Liu, now 72, said in Chinese
during a recent interview.
“Now it’s the same … and we
will fi nally acknowledge their
sacrifi ce.”
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