Remains of early Chinese immigrants unearthed in LA mass grave to be reburied

Remains of Chinese immigrants to be reburied in LA

LOS ANGELES — The remains of some of the nation’s earliest Chinese settlers, whose graves were discovered five years ago during construction of a light rail line, will soon be reburied in a cemetery that once denied them entry.

A memorial wall honoring the dead was dedicated Monday at a Los Angeles cemetery, where they will be reinterred beginning next month.

“This day is a long time in coming,” Rep. Judy Chu, who represents the area in Congress, said at the ceremony at Evergreen Cemetery. “It is so significant that those early immigrants who suffered so many indignities in life will now, through interment, will not have to suffer indignities through death.”

The process comes after an exhaustive attempt by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to identify the century-old remains and locate their descendants.

It began after construction crews unearthed bones and artifacts in June 2005 while widening a road to make room for the Gold Line rail extension to east Los Angeles.

Archaeologists later found 174 burial sites, some dating as far back as the 1880s. A few had headstones with engravings in Chinese; others were unmarked; some contained artifacts such as opium pipes, teapots and jade jewelry; and some were empty.

Historians believe the site was once a potter’s field, a cemetery for the poor, that was lost to developments in the 1920s.

Many Chinese were buried there because they were not allowed to be buried among whites in the nearby Evergreen Cemetery. The discriminatory practice was part of laws enacted in 19th century California prohibiting Chinese settlers, most of them men who came the West to dig for gold and build the railroads, from becoming citizens, owning land or marrying whites.

The racist policy led to many segregated Chinese cemeteries throughout the West.

The empty graves were believed to belong to people who were disinterred and sent back to China for burial — a common practice at the time, said Yvette Rapose, community relations manager for the MTA.

The agency later found documents in a nearby crematorium listing the names of people buried in the field, their age at the time of death, their ethnic origin and cause of death, but the documents did not indicate where they were buried in the field.

Because the remains could not be linked to names on the list, the MTA sought to identify the dead by running advertisements in Chinese media, both locally and in China, announcing the discovery and asking people to contact the agency if they believe they had relatives buried in the area.

The only person who came forward was the great great niece of T.E. Buzbee, a young man believed to have run away from his Colorado home and died at age 17 in 1883, Rapose said.

The remains of Buzbee, and the other unclaimed bodies, will be reinterred in April following Ching Ming or Qingming, day for Chinese families to visit ancestors’ graves. They will be buried near the memorial wall, which features eight headstones found at the site.