Russians, Departing on Transport for Mainland, Thank People of Hawaii

Honolulu Advertiser
June 23, 1923

Hollywood missed a rare chance yesterday morning for filming a "mob scene" of foreigners when the 450 Russian refugees who fled from the red terror in Siberia, marched off the transport pier and entered automobiles supplied by Honolulans for two hour ride around the city.  Sailors of the czar's old navy, officers of the old imperialistic and later revolutionary regimes, those who had once been well to do, and those who were and would be again artisans, mechanics, professional men, together with women and young people, women who typify the beauty of Russia, others with real broad faced ox-like features of the peasant class, all of whom walked down the gangway from the US Army Transport Merritt, which is conveying them from Manila to San Francisco.

Picturesque "Mob"

The were a "mob" that the movie directors would have grabbed as almost any European scene with a bunch of Russians, or those from its provinces, as the garb was distinctly that of Russia.  The sailor's and the soldiers still clung to their dinky little naval and military caps, the sailors to their bell mouth trousers, the soldiers to their boots with their trouser cuffs stuffed into them.  Soldiers and peasants wore the belted tunics, peasants even the women marched with military precision, for military life followed them from the cradle.  All were more or less drab garb, with little or no money, and no homes in Russia to depend upon with the future still hazy and relatives dead, some butchered the ruling regime in Russia.  There role as refugees has been a series of mishaps.

Morale Hard Hit  

Their morale has been hard hit and is now low so others aboard the Merritt state, and so ask, "Why shouldn't it be?  After all they have gone through, with nothing to do and knowing that they have not even a country they can call their own." 

Even pleasures, they seem to take seriously.  Although they saw from the Merritt's decks auto after auto line up on the streets, and were informed that they would be taken out on an auto ride, yet they came off the steamer with stolid faces.  There were some trepidation among many.  Some of the girls clung to their relatives, others to stalwarts young male companions of their exile.

With uncertainty ahead of them for years, their entry into the street yesterday still held some uncertainty, for there were soldiers everywhere.  They passed along through a sort of human lane, and there were soldiers everywhere.  They have seen nothing but soldiers in a more or less war-like attitude since 1914, nine long years, and often they were herded between lines of soldiers to fate they knew not what.