Angel Island’s Hidden History

As their ships steamed through the Golden Gate in the early 20th century, Chinese immigrants dreamed of opportunities awaiting them on “Gold Mountain,” as they called America.

But instead of docking at San Francisco’s fabled shores, they were shuttled onto ferries and sent to Angel Island in the middle of the bay. At the immigration station there, dreams of paradise quickly clashed with reality.

Many languished within a few miles of their destination for weeks, sometimes carving melancholy poems into the walls of rough barracks while their fate hung in limbo. In the station’s earliest days, the Chinese had to use a segregated entrance to the hospital.

Details of Angel Island’s difficult past--like the separate entrance and a new trove of poems--are now being uncovered by researchers examining the site and sifting through the National Archives and National Park Service records as part of a restoration project.

Their discoveries are adding texture to survivors’ stories of discrimination and grim circumstances at the immigration station, which operated from 1910 to 1940.

“It’s like an archeological dig,” said Katherine Toy, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. “The part that we’re at now is how do you go about uncovering a hidden history to dig for a deeper story.”

Toy’s group, founded by descendants of Chinese who were detained on the island, is hoping to tell a more complete story by restoring the station to the days when it was the Ellis Island of the West--the main gateway into the United States for immigrants journeying across the Pacific.

The foundation is at the beginning of an estimated $32-million, eight-year project with the California State Parks and National Park Service. A team of historians, architects and others is combing through archives and probing the barracks, hospital and heating plant for clues to the past.

About 1 million immigrants were processed on Angel Island, far fewer than the 12 million who went through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.

But unlike Ellis, where immigrants usually waited three to five hours to be processed, the average stay for Chinese immigrants on Angel Island was two to three weeks.

Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indians, Portuguese, Mexican and Russian immigrants also went through Angel Island, but the Chinese were generally kept the longest while officials determined if they were eligible to enter the United States.

Under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers were not allowed to enter the United States. Exceptions were made for wives and children of American citizens, merchants, students, diplomats and tourists.

Although relatively few who made it to Angel Island were turned away, the wait and uncertainty could be agonizing.

“The kind of interrogation, the kind of treatment, is so abusive and so inhumane that it’s just no comparison” to the Ellis Island experience, said Ling-Chi Wang, director of Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley.

Albert Wong was 11 when he made the 21-day journey from his southern China village to join his father, a U.S. citizen and owner of the Oriental Cafe in San Jose.

When Wong arrived in San Francisco in June 1934, he and about 30 other Chinese were ferried to Angel Island and put in barracks. In a room of about 100 men, Wong slept on the top mattress of a triple-decker bunk bed.

The doors were locked, armed guards patrolled the halls and chain-link fences covered the windows. Detainees were allowed out only for meals and to exercise in a dirt area surrounded by a 12-foot fence topped with barbed wire.

“Time goes very slowly because everybody is just waiting for that interrogation,” said Wong, who was detained for about five weeks. “We were treated very harsh, more like criminals than immigrants.”

Wong, now 80, remembers that the Chinese were confined to separate dining halls and sleeping quarters. Angel Island consultant Daniel Quan recently discovered evidence of further segregation in the immigration station’s early days, in a letter from the station’s architect.

“The entrance for the Chinese and Japanese to their quarters is entirely separate and distinct from the Europeans’ entrance to the hospital and their wards, practically making two distinct buildings,” architect Walter Mathews wrote in a 1906 letter to the immigration commissioner general, describing his site plan.

After the hospital was remodeled sometime between 1911 and 1912, traces of the segregated entrance were erased. A window replaced the Asian entrance; a wall and an empty room occupy the area that was filled by the Asian staircase.

A 1907 San Francisco Chronicle article discussed plans for providing water to the station, then under construction. Freshwater would be drawn from a spring and brought in by barges. Saltwater pumped from the bay “will be used for bathing purposes in the Asiatic quarters,” the article said.

“I don’t think it was lost on the immigrants that they were being treated differently,” Angel Island Park Supt. Nick Franco said. “Experiencing a saltwater shower versus a freshwater shower, I’m sure, was pretty unexpected and pretty demoralizing.”

Immigration inspectors often asked detainees minute details about their lives in China in an effort to weed out those who were trying to enter under false pretenses, then compared their answers to those given by relatives. Wong recalls that inspectors asked him how many steps led from his hillside home to the orchard where he played.

In the women’s barracks, 18-year-old Lowshee Miu waited for 21 days before she was allowed to join her husband on the mainland.

“You just stay in and sleep,” said Miu, now 90. “A couple of ladies, they were really sad. They were always crying.”

As they waited to be interrogated by immigration inspectors, Chinese men carved their sorrows on the barrack walls. One poem reads:

How was I to know I would become a

prisoner suffering in the wooden building? . . .

When my family’s circumstances stir my

emotions, a double stream of tears flow.

Saved from demolition in 1970 when a park ranger noticed the Chinese calligraphy, the worn wooden walls tell immigrants’ feelings of anger, despair and ambition.

While documenting the poems, researchers recently discovered there were dozens more than the 135 that had been translated earlier.

“Every one of those things is a separate voice,” Quan said. “If we really take the time to analyze all of those different things, there’s going to be a lot more history that comes out of there.”

They also found more voices from the past in the hospital. After a researcher found a 1910 letter complaining of immigrants’ writing on the hospital walls, state park interpreter Darci Moore ran over to the decaying building with a flashlight.

Beneath peeling plaster, amid the green algae and mold spreading across the walls, she found pencil drawings of birds and a bit of Chinese graffiti.

Its message: “When can I get out of here?”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway

Some important dates in the history of Chinese immigration and Angel Island.

1882: White workers begin blaming Chinese for a downturn in the economy. Anti-Chinese sentiment results in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which makes it illegal for Chinese laborers to enter the United States.

1910: Angel Island Immigration Station opens.

1940: Immigration station moves to the mainland after fire destroys the administration building.

1943: Chinese Exclusion Act repealed when China became America’s ally in World War II.

1942-1946: Prisoners of war processed in immigration station buildings.

1963: California State Parks takes full ownership of Angel Island.

1970: Detention barracks scheduled for demolition when a park ranger discovers carvings on the barrack walls.

1997: Immigration Station designated a National Historic Landmark.

1999: National Trust for Historic Preservation names Angel Island Immigration Station to list of 11 most endangered historic sites.

2000: California voters approve $15 million in state bond funds for preservation of the immigration station.

2001: Work begins on an eight-year restoration project.