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An Oregonian article from February 5, 1919 describes a delegation of city officials to Portland's Chinatown. It says they "stalked, stumbled and at times fairly crept through the subetrranean labryrinth of Portland's Chinatown yesterday, viewing the great steel-barred doors, secret panels and carpeted stairways." The article says the tunnels were passages to gambling dens, but makes no mention of shanghaiing.

(Oregonian archives)

Before Daimler tech subsidiary Moovel moved into its new headquarters in Old Town Chinatown this month, the building's owners blocked up portals to old tunnels in the 125-year-old building's basement.

The passages apparently had connections to Portland's notorious "Shanghai tunnels" - though, after a mention in a story by The Oregonian/OregonLive, historians were quick to point out that they probably were never used for the purpose their name implies

To "Shanghai" a sailor, of course, means to force him into joining a ship's crew - perhaps by giving him too much liquor the night before, then smuggling him aboard a vessel. It's a storied tradition dating back hundreds of years.

And it went on in Portland, according to Portland historian Barney Blalock, who described the practice in his 2014 book, "The Oregon Shanghaiers" (and a 2013 blog post on the subject). But Blalock and others maintain that the tunnels were never used to Shanghai sailors.

"They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs," Blalock wrote in a blog post. "The gambling dens, brothels, and opium parlors of Chinatown were connected to separate labyrinths, with steel doors, trap doors leading to secret stairways, and tunnels for escape into far alleyways. These were security measures designed for dealing with both rival tongs and police raids."

Blalock cites an eight-day series in The Oregonian from 1933 that examined the practice of shanghaiing sailors that never mentioned tunnels. And he says that the fluctuation of the Willamette River in the years before it was dammed would have flooded the tunnels for much of the year.

In his book, Blalock dates the notion the tunnels were used to shanghai sailors to a series of apocryphal stories that appeared in The Oregonian in 1962, and the subsequent popularity of "Shanghai tunnel" tours that began in the 1970s. He says the tours were popular, but misled visitors.

"The only truth to these stories is this: yes, there were some people who were shanghaied in Portland, Oregon," Blalock writes. "However, the likelihood of any of them being shanghaied via tunnel is nil."

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699