Japanese miners confronted their American overseers at the Pacific Guano & Fertilizer min eon Laysan, Territory of Hawaii resulting in a manager Joseph Spencer, resorting to firing from two pistols after the miners rushed the overseers. Two miners were killed and three wounded. Spencer was tried on charges but was acquitted.
Laysan is one of the very tiny Hawaiian Islands that stretch out west towards Midway. It had a guano mine up until around this time, but which ceased thereafter. The island, in part due to this incident, came to the attention of the outside world. The island had unique flora and fauna, but Japanese poachers were destroying the bird population and imported rabbits the vegetation. In 1909 Theodore Roosevelt declared it a bird sanctuary. The rabbits ultimately nearly ate themselves into near extinction on the island and the last of them were killed in 1932.
The island is uninhabited and has largely recovered.
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