Japanese women arrive at Angel Island early last century. Some 70,000 Japanese were detained there.
Photo: Courtesy / CA State Parks Collection
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, January 21, 2010
More... Today is the 100th anniversary of the U.S. immigration station on Angel Island - a place of hope and despair, and a landmark symbolizing the rich history of immigration in this country.
The anniversary will be noted by looking both back and forward, by recalling the complex history of the immigration station and with a 10 a.m. ceremony at the San Francisco Civic Center naturalizing 100 citizens from 44 countries.
Today's commemoration is fitting, because the immigration station on the island was designed to admit new immigrants and to keep others - mainly Chinese and other Asians - out.
There will be talks by old men and women who became Americans only after an ordeal on the island, and there will be a proud moment when 100 younger men and women take an oath to become the country's newest citizens.
"Angel Island is a symbol of both inclusion and exclusion," said Judy Yung, a retired professor of American studies who is writing a book on the immigration station.
"It's a story of persistence to overcome obstacles to becoming part of this country," said Eddie Wong, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. "It is the classic American immigrant story."
The Asian gateway
More than 500,000 people passed through Angel Island between 1910 and 1940, about a third of them Asian. It was the Asian gateway to the United States - the Ellis Island of the West. Now, many generations later, the several million people who are their descendants have left their mark on this country.
"It is an important part of our story," Yung said.
It is also a story of institutionalized racism. For 61 years, until they were repealed in 1943, federal laws, notably the Chinese Exclusion Act, greatly limited Asian immigration to the United States.
The laws were enforced at the immigration station on Angel Island, a bucolic and beautiful place where thousands of Chinese and other immigrants were detained - sometimes for as long as a year - while immigration officers determined whether they could be admitted into the country.
The laws were particularly tough on Chinese immigrants, allowing only certain classes of them to be admitted - scholars, clergy, merchants and the children of American citizens among them. They were intended to make sure that working Chinese men and women would be kept out. Over 100,000 Asians were admitted despite the restrictions.
Competition unwanted
It was part of an anti-Asian immigrant movement that swept the Pacific Coast in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Stirred up by fears of economic competition from Asian workers, politicians and the news media warned of a "Yellow Peril." James D. Phelan, a former mayor of San Francisco, ran a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate by promising to "Keep California White." For years, the 1882 exclusion acts were renewed and expanded so that most Asian immigrants were affected.
As a result, about 100,000 Chinese were detained for questioning on Angel Island. About 70,000 Japanese were held there for varying periods, Yung said. About 8,000 South Asians, mostly from India, were stopped at the island. Roughly half of the Indians were refused admission.
It wasn't just Asians who had problems with immigration officials on Angel Island. Roughly 7,000 Russians passed through the station, most of them stateless political refugees who had fled Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and who had headed to the United States through Manchuria and China. They had to prove they were not criminals or likely to be deadbeats.
The island's history
The immigration station was closed after a fire in 1940. Angel Island is now a state park, and the immigration station buildings have been restored. Many of them have poems written on the walls by immigrants kept there.
The Angel Island station got its start when the government decided to replace facilities on the San Francisco waterfront used to screen passengers arriving from Asia.
In those days, most white and first-class ship passengers were allowed into the country after a cursory examination by immigration officers, but Chinese and other Asian passengers traveling steerage class were kept aboard idle ships or in a building at First and Brannan streets called the "immigration shed." The shed was owned by the Pacific Mail Line and was located on its dock.
The government opened an immigration station on Angel Island on Jan. 21, 1910, and would-be immigrants were taken there from San Francisco by small steamers. It was like Ellis Island in New York, but with a major difference.
"Ellis Island was more of a welcoming gateway to European immigrants, and we always celebrated the immigration story of that island," Yung said. "But the majority of people coming from Asia were not welcomed."
'Paper sons'
Some of the people who passed through Angel Island had false papers, claiming in many cases to be sons and daughters of Chinese American citizens, a ticket for admission under the era's restrictive laws. These so-called "paper sons" had spent considerable time studying the background of their supposed ancestors, and the job of the immigration officers was to ferret out these "paper sons" through extensive interrogation sessions. If they were caught, they were shipped back to China; if they succeeded they were admitted to the America they could see shimmering across the bay.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of immigrants got through the process using false papers. "Once they were admitted, they worked to raise families and be successful and make a contribution to our country," Yung said.
The experience has left a unique legacy in many Chinese American families. Yung's own family was one of them. "I'm a descendant of a paper son," she said.
When immigration laws were relaxed in the 1950s and '60s, the government offered amnesty to people who had used false papers. Many accepted, "but there are many more paper sons and daughters who did not confess," said Yung. Many of them, she said, did not trust the U.S. government, particularly in the era before the United States normalized relations with what many conservatives called "Red China."
Today's centennial ceremony will include presentation of the Outstanding American by Choice award from the Citizenship and Immigration Services to Dr. Samuel So, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and an expert on hepatitis and liver cancer. So was born in Hong Kong and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1998.
Immigrant gateways to America
Ellis Island
The first federal immigration station, an island in New York Harbor, opened Jan. 1, 1892, and closed in 1954.
Approximately 12 million immigrants were processed there, most of them Europeans. Most were detained for two to three hours and treated courteously. About 40 percent of all Americans can trace at least one ancestor who was processed at Ellis Island.
Source: National Park Service
Angel Island
The first West Coast immigration station, an island in San Francisco Bay, opened Jan. 21, 1910, and closed after a fire in 1940.
Approximately 500,000 immigrants went through Angel Island; 300,000 of them were detained. Of these, more than 100,000 were Chinese. Detention ranged from overnight to a few who were held for a more than a year.
Source: California State Park Service, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/21/MN231BKGQH.DTL
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