Angel Island

The minute that I boarded the ferry, it started to move away from the pier at San Francisco. It’s 9:25 in the morning. I felt relieved and was amazed by how punctual the ferry company sticks to their schedule. The skyline of San Francisco turned smaller and smaller to the point that it could almost fit within my palm. I walked to the opposite direction on the ferry and tried to spot the destination of my adventure today, Angel Island. 

The ferry passed the Alcatraz, and the next thing came into sight was Angel Island. The island looked quite lush in July with many trees and a couple of buildings here and there. I wondered, a century ago, what was on those Chinese immigrants’ minds when they saw Angel Island greeting them as their entrance point to the United States after crossing the Pacific Ocean. 

Unlike Ellis Island serving as the gate on the East Coast that welcomed immigrants from Europe, back in 1910 when the Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect, Angel Island was the place where the immigration officers interrogated the immigrants who mostly came from China and other Asian countries. 

Nowadays Angel Island is a State Park full of nature and history and can be reached by ferries which come and go quite a few times in a day. Through a short hike from the harbor, tourists can visit both the Angel Island Immigration Station and also the Angel Island Immigration Museum. According to some backpackers, Angel Island has also been a popular campsite which requires  reservation at least a few months in advance. 

When the ferry was about to arrive at Angel Island, a woman around my mom’s age asked if I could take a picture for her. She looked friendly with a lot of energy and we started chatting. Her name is Debbie. She was born in Hong Kong but moved to the San Francisco area when she was five. She was going to meet up with her senior group later for a day trip on the island. Debbie was intrigued when I told her that I was on a solo trip to learn more about Chinese American history on Angel Island today. She went on to share that her dad was born in Chinatown in Oakland and her uncle, her mom's brother, was actually detained on Angel Island in the past. 

Now I was way more intrigued by Debbie than she was by me. We spent 7 hours that day together and Debbie never really met up with her senior group. 

After landing at Angel Island, Debbie and I hiked for 20 minutes and reached the Angel Island Immigration Station. This was the exact place where Debbie’s uncle spent some time of his life waiting for the admission to set foot on the mainland of the United States. The regular wait time for a Chinese immigrant at that time was 3 weeks. While some lucky people could move on more quickly and only stayed in the detention center for a few days, some others had to stay for months, and some, according to the record, even for two years. 

The station is an old two-story building. Stepping inside I felt like I was back in time. Some bunk beds were displayed to show what the living situation was like, which was pretty crowded. There were separate dormitories for the males and females based on their different nationalities. Debbie and I took some pictures and walked through other rooms including a kitchen and dining areas and a recreation room with some chess and a ping pong table inside. 

I would not say the living conditions there looked the best, and possibly with some fire code violations and hygiene issues. But to be honest, I suspect the living environment of where those immigrants came from was any better, if not worse. The difficulty that I found, however, was the mental challenge. You thought you ran away from political instability or scarce living resources.  You got your hopes up to start a new leaf, just to realize you might not have even been able to get admitted into this new land of dreams. 

On a display table, Debbie saw some piles of really old paper that might be some documents and some other booklets. I came over to check them out with curiosity. There were stories after stories of people who had spent time staying there, where they came from and what their lives were like after leaving the station. There were also old documents of custom paper, and paper with a list of questions that the immigration officers used to interrogate these newcomers. “How many chickens did you have back home?” “How many windows were there at your house?” Debbie tried to quiz me on some questions from the list and I found myself failing the quiz miserably. Although Debbie said her uncle hasn’t really shared with her about his experience on Angel Island, I tried to imagine how nervous the uncle must have felt when being grilled with these questions, and worried that if he memorized anything incorrectly, he would have been denied entry and unable to unite with his family. 

 

Debbie and I found something else interesting. On some of the walls, there were carvings of poems in Chinese characters. These characters were carved very neatly with handwriting that resembled printing. The poems were well written and rhymed cleverly. I thought, “there must have been some well-educated people that stayed in this station.” I read through the lines and felt their despair, hopelessness, and loneliness. I tried to look for some hope between the lines. And I believe there must have been hope that supported those 300,000 individuals from roughly 80 different countries to get through their detainment period on Angel Island. 

This Immigration Station on Angel Island had stood as the gatekeeper until 1940 when a fire burned down the administration building and the station was moved back to San Francisco. After more than 80 years now, I am grateful that I only have to wait in a line at the airport for maybe half an hour to talk to an immigration officer for a rather short questioning session after a 12-hour long flight from Taiwan to the United States.  

Still, I can relate to those immigrants from a century ago, their longing for freedom and homesickness. I thought about those three years when I could not go back to visit my family in Taiwan due to some complicated visa situations and plus the pandemic. I thought about the hundreds of hours that I spent filing documents online and preparing for interviews at the American Institute in Taiwan almost every year to renew my visa. I thought about the uncertainty I still feel not knowing how long I will stay here and if I should make this place my home. I feel for the anxiety my non-American friends felt when they got laid off from work and had to either find a new job that will sponsor their visa in 60 days or sell everything and uproot their lives to go back to their home country. 

Why did people come, and why did people leave? What happened after they came and if they had to leave? On the ferry back to San Francisco, I reflected on the day and had more questions than this morning. The skyline of San Francisco came into sight again and this time I was moving towards it. It looked breathtaking. I wondered again, a century ago, what was on those Chinese immigrants’ minds when they could finally leave Angel Island and were about to step on this land of their American dreams. On the deck of the ferry, I felt their hopes and fears about what their future held. And in the meantime, the excitement and nervousness of how my own journey is going to unfold.