Hundreds gather for Pacific Grove’s reading of an apology for the burning of the Chinese village in 1906.

A historic moment in Pacific Grove’s history was written on Saturday, May 14 and it was witnessed by over 300 people who gathered to participate in it. The city apologized for the burning of a Chinese village at Point Alones 116 years ago. The village of about 500 – at the time, the largest Chinese community in the U.S. – was located next to where Hopkins Marine Station is today. That property is the destination of the roughly one-mile Walk of Remembrance, which goes from the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History to the site of the former village; this was the 11th annual Walk of Remembrance but stood apart from previous years.

The apology comes after a lengthy investigation by the city’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force that included dozens of interviews with direct descendants.

It also comes two months after the Feast of Lanterns, a long-held faux-Chinese themed pageant, was canceled. This yearly event was widely criticized by Asian and non-Asian community members alike for its cultural appropriation and racism.

The turnout was the largest crowd since Gerry Low-Sabado started this annual walk. Low-Sabado was a Chinese American and fifth-generation descendant of villagers who lost their homes in the suspicious fire of 1906. Low-Sabado, who for years pursued a campaign to bring awareness to the true history of Pacific Grove’s Chinese community, died in September of 2021, after battling cancer.

For Randy Sabado, Low-Sabado’s husband, it was an especially emotional moment, which he sees as solidifying her legacy. “Her mantra was change with kindness,” Sabado says. “She persevered over 10 years of trying to make changes.” Sabado says real change comes from within, and he saw that happening when former participants in the Feast of Lanterns came forward to apologize for their involvement in the event.

The lengthy apology includes a record of anti-Asian acts through U.S. history, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, and more recent events, including a rise in hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent since the Covid-19 pandemic started. It also includes an acknowledgment of its purpose: “An apology for grievous injustice cannot really erase the past, but admission of the historic wrongdoing committed can aid us in healing the pain of the past and solving the critical problems of discrimination and racism facing Pacific Grove and the broader United States today.”

The apology was written by Kim Bui, a member of the Pacific Grove Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force, and read aloud at the Walk of Remembrance by City Councilmember Chaps Poduri. (Bui was the first Vietnamese American director of a library in the U.S., having led the Monterey Public Library before retiring in 2017.)

“I thought that perhaps the city of Pacific Grove wasn’t ready for an apology,” Sabado says. “The moral of the story to me is that one person can make a difference. If you’re compassionate, and if you’re persuasive, if you keep at it, if you try to do things with kindness.”