As Warrior season two kicks off, the real history of Chinese in San Francisco and the long, difficult relationship between rival migrants and police
- Based on a concept by Bruce Lee, Warrior is heavily fictionalised but does reflect historical tensions between the Chinese, Irish and police in San Francisco
- The city’s Chinatown has seen crime taper off since a Gang Task Force was established in the late 1970s, but the community is not immune to it
In the opening scene of the television series Warrior, based on a concept by Bruce Lee, thousands of Chinese labourers disembark from their ship after “crossing the salt” to San Francisco in the late 1880s to the welcoming chant of “Chinks go home.”
Later that night, two Chinese coolies are murdered by unemployed Irishmen whom the governor’s assistant refers to as “labour thugs”.
In an attempt to calm the storm that’s brewing in his city, San Francisco’s mayor asks the local police department to establish a five-man Chinatown Squad.
“It’s pageantry, Bill, just put on a good show,” says San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) chief Russell Flanagan to officer Bill O’Hara, played by English actor Kieran Bew, who is promoted to sergeant to lead the squad.
The kind of street shooting, robberies and kidnapping seen in the ’80s and ’90s are not so common today. [Now] it’s all about low-risk and high-reward crime
Although heavily fictionalised, Warrior does hold a mirror to a long and difficult relationship between rival migrants and law enforcement at a time when the Irish resented the Chinese, who were willing to work for less and regarded to be taking Irish jobs.
