Agnew sparks outcry with remarks

Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

1993

Sept. 30: Taking a step toward bringing AIDS and HIV awareness back into the spotlight, San Francisco officials yesterday announced the formation of a task force to report on new strategies to combat the AIDS epidemic. “AIDS rages on,” said task force chairwoman Sandra Hernandez, San Francisco’s county health officer and a leader in the fight against the disease for 10 years. “It is the most severe enemy that faces this country, this state and this city.” San Francisco has the highest number of AIDS cases per capita of any large U.S. city, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. An estimated one in 25 San Franciscans is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or has AIDS. The rate of new HIV infection is 2 percent to 4 percent of the city each year.

1968

— Dan Levy Sept. 25: Mayor Joseph L. Alioto yesterday accused Republican vice presidential nominee Spiro Agnew of having an uncontrolled tongue. Alioto, asked to comment on Agnew’s recent use of the terms “Polack” and “fat Jap,” charged that the Maryland governor “can’t conceal his attitude to ethnic groups.” The Democratic mayor was asked how he thought the governor refers to Italians. He smiled at the question, and then said that Agnew “probably uses the word you’re thinking of.”

Sept. 27: Some 21 Japanese-Americans — two of them heavy-set — turned up at a Republican meeting in Berkeley last night to excoriate vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew for calling a sleeping reporter “a fat Jap.” As Ray Okamura, representing the Japanese-American Citizens League, put it, “We do not consider it very funny.” Okamura and 20 other Japanese-Americans composed more than half the audience at a “Speak to Nixon-Agnew” meeting at the San Francisco Federal Savings and Loan Building in Berkeley. Nixon and Agnew were not present, but the audience was invited to speak into a tape recorder with the assurance that the candidates would eventually listen to their remarks when they got around to it. Former Senator William F. Knowland, no lightweight himself, was one of three Republican stalwarts sitting at a plastic table next to the whirring recorder. “I have never used that expression myself,” he told the audience at one point. “The damage is done and I regret it.” Richard Aoki regretted it too. “Agnew’s name is now a household word in the Japanese-American community,” he told the tape recorder. “If Nixon is elected, I suggest he refrain from sending Agnew on good-will missions — except possibly to South Africa or Rhodesia.” Among the more orthodox comments were requests from elderly ladies for Nixon to take a tougher stand on “communists in the State Department” and to disavow “the one-world theory.”

— Don Wegars

1943

Sept. 27: A sailor escaped yesterday from the brig at Yerba Buena Island and swam through the icy, tide-swift waters of the Bay to the first cantilever pier on the Bay Bridge east of the island. He climbed up the concrete base and made his way up the steel work to the truck level. State Highway Patrolmen said they found him walking along the roadway in sopping wet clothes. They said he freely admitted to them his remarkable feat in swimming from the island. They returned him to Naval authorities, who identified him as Seaman 2nd Class Everett Wagner. He had been held for being absent without leave.

1918

Sept. 24: One “profession” knocked out by the war is that of valet, according to Bodo Miller, chief clerk of the Hotel St. Francis. “Time was,” said Miller, “when we had half-a-dozen valets with their ‘marsters’ in the house, but there’s only been one here with an American citizen since the United States declared war. Several foreigners have been here with valets, but the average American has found he can pull on his own socks.”

Sept. 24: The first case of Spanish influenza discovered in San Francisco by the health authorities, who have been keeping a sharp lookout for the malady, was isolated yesterday afternoon when City Health Officer Dr. William C. Hassler ordered Edward Wagner sent to the San Francisco Hospital.

Wagner came here recently from Chicago, where the Spanish influenza has been epidemic. Dr. Hassler believes that Wagner brought the germs of the disease with him when he came here from the East. The premises at 964 Eddy Street, where Wagner was living, were placed under quarantine restrictions yesterday. The preventive quarantine, which was announced for the Yerba Buena Naval Training Station on Sunday, was yesterday extended to the Mare Island Navy Yard and Marine barracks, men being refused leave until the threatened danger from the influenza is no longer feared. One case of the Spanish influenza was discovered on the Navy yard prior to the announcement of the quarantine for Mare Island. Government officials at the Customs House are taking precautionary measures to ward off any possible attacks from Spanish influenza germs that may be brought by visitors or come in the mail.

Johnny Miller is a freelance writer.

Associated Press 1973 Spiro Agnew was accused of racism as a candidate for VP.