Deadliest Tragedy in Seattle

The Wah Mee massacre was a multiple homicide on February 18, 1983, in which Kwan Fai “Willie” Mak, Wai-Chiu “Tony” Ng, and Benjamin Ng gunned down 14 people in the Wah Mee club on Maynard Alley S. just south of S. King Street in Seattle’s Chinatown.

Wah Mee was an illegal gambling club operated in a basement space in a building. Many people including wealthy restaurant owners and fellow Chinese residents often were customers in this club. This club was designed with multiple successive doors which had been used in similar Chinatown gambling clubs in the past. Mak and accomplices were able to gain access to this club easily because they were well known to this club and trusted by the people at the club. They intended to leave no witness during their robbery since club people know them well and eventually, they killed 14 people while executing their plan. However, the one person, Wai Y. Chin, a Cantonese who worked at the Wah Mee Club as a dealer making $10 per hour, managed to survive in this gruesome incident and was able to testify. In fact, Mak had been planning the robbery for weeks, and he enlisted Benjamin Ng, and later Tony Ng.

Mak and two accomplices were the immigrants from Hong Kon, each in their twenties. During a search of the apartment rented by Benjamin Ng’s girlfriend, detectives discovered a significant amount of money, two handguns, ammunition, and a rifle. The police also learned that Benjamin Ng owed thousands of dollars in gambling debt to the club where he worked. On June 15, 1984, Tony Ng was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, but he managed to hide out in Canada until October 4, 1984 when he was arrested by Canadian Mounted Police. Mak, portrayed as the mastermind, was sentenced to death, but then later it has been postponed. Eventually, the judge decided to put him under life imprisonment. Wai Y. Chin, the sole survivor of the Wah Mee Club massacre and the man responsible for the apprehension and convictions of the suspects, died of natural causes on Monday, May 3, 1993.

Unlike many other “positive” Asian American figures whom had great influence on America, this incident shocked all Americans and deformed the image of Asian Americans. This incident not only revealed dreadful Asian American violence in US, but also brought up the serious illegal gambling problem in Chinatown.