KO WAH LUM
1930---1940

San Francisco has been home to several small cigarette manufacturers, plus giant Liggett & Myers. John Bollman began making his Russian style cigarettes in San Francisco beginning about the time that the 1849 gold rush ended. Liggett & Myers was the last of these "City by the Bay" tobacco manufacturers, closing their Chesterfield, Imperiales, and Obak factory in the early 1950's. During the 1930's Ko Wah Lum made Fook Look Chinese Cigarettes on Jackson Street at Factory 67, 1st District, California. The front of the oriental looking Fook Look pack pictures a seven story pagoda. Ko Wah Lum also made a handsome 1939 Golden Gate Exposition commemorative pack, plus a propaganda brand. Chien Zhing (Going Forward) Cigarettes were made in 1938, and the pack pictured a silhouette of a soldier with a bayoneted rifle, a tank, and an airplane, plus Chinese characters and an English language statement about the tobacco blend. Japanese atrocities were being committed in China during the late 1930's. The "Rape of Nanking" and Shanghai's "Bloody Saturday" were probably the inspiration behind the San Francisco made Chien Zhing Cigarettes.
pack front pack back
pack front pack back
pack front pack back



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