Here to Yonder
Langston Hughes

Colored Lived There Once

This morning's radio news advised me that out in Asia, high-ranking Japanese officers and officials, anticipating an American siege, are moving out of the fine hotels and apartment houses in Manila, capital of the Philippines.

When the British shortly lay siege to Hong Kong, and we Allies soon attack Singapore in full force, I can visualize high-ranking Japanese officers and officials moving out of the fine hotels in Hong Kong and Singapore, too. They will leave the deluxe apartment houses of the European Quarters there and hie themselves hence. Such an exodus will likewise take place in Java, leaving palacial Dutch apartments and hotels empty of Japanese families.

But the natives of Java, and natives of China, and the native Malayans, and the native Filipinos are never going to forget that in those fine hotels built for and formerly occupied only by white people, for three or four years during World War II, there colored people lived. These colored people -- Japanese and wealthy natives -- lived there because the Japanese had taken Manila and Hong Kong and Singapore, away from the white people by force.

Naturally, the Americans and the British are going to take their former possessions back. But when they do, those great cities of the East will never be the same again. The brownskin natives will look at those tall European-style buildings and say, "Colored people lived there once." And in their minds they will think, "We have a right to live there again."