Field Trip: Angel Island, The “Ellis Island” of the West?
Photo Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals. Photo: Ihumteam13, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: Migration and Movement Is a Human Experience
This week’s focus: Field Trip, where we highlight significant historic, archaeological, and cultural sites around the world
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is about 1700 words, an estimated 7-minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
This month, we’re examining how migration and movement is a human experience.
In a recent newsletter Migration is a Human Experience, A Brief History of Our Global Diaspora, we examined how humans were migratory or nomadic for the vast majority of our collective history. Knowing this can help us understand that migration is not new, or a specifically current event. What is relatively new, however, are the geopolitical borders, and the laws and policies that grant or deny immigration based on race, and other identity-based factors.
Last week, in our newsletter How Laws Around Immigration and Migration Impact Belonging, we unpacked a brief historical, legal construction of immigration and migration in the U.S. to better understand how laws can impact our sense of belonging — and to underscore that the path to “legal” immigration and citizenship is not as straightforward, or equal and accessible, as some may think.
Today, we’re taking a “Field Trip” to Angel Island. Have you heard of it?
Some compare Angel Island to the more well known immigration station, Ellis Island — some even call it “The Ellis Island of the West.” Was it?
Read on and make up your own mind.
What Was Ellis Island?
Many of us have likely heard of Ellis Island, the immigration station that operated in New York Harbor, from 1892 to 1954.
If asked what Ellis Island was, some of us may be able to say that it was the place where mostly European immigrants, among others, first arrived in the U.S. long ago. Black and white photographs may come to mind, of packed steamships passing the Statue of Liberty, of families dragging large trunks and suitcases, before entering a crowded Manhattan.
While there were other ports in the U.S., at the turn of the 20th century, the vast majority of immigrants came through Ellis Island. Millions would make a home in New York City, and as a result, a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, the Lower East Side, would emerge as one of the most densely populated areas on the planet at this time.
The Lower East Side History Project reports: “By 1900, the Lower East Side earned the distinction of becoming one of the most populated two-square miles on the face of the earth — with over a quarter of a million people living per square mile…To give you an idea of how dense that is, today there is an average of about 70,000 residents per square mile in Manhattan.”
Not everyone who arrived at New York harbor was processed through Ellis Island.
The immigrants who purchased a “first or second class” ticket on the ship were mostly allowed to enter the U.S. without going through Ellis Island. The rest of the passengers — those who had “steerage” tickets, often traveling in the bowels of the ship, and those who appeared sick no matter their “class” — would likely be sent to Ellis Island for “medical and legal” inspection.
According to Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., the inspection process lasted about 3 to 5 hours, and out of the more than 12 million people who entered Ellis Island, only 2% of “the arriving immigrants were excluded from entry.” How is this experience similar to and/or different from people immigrating to the United States today?
Ellis Island is a place, a topic, that has been widely acknowledged and even celebrated in our history books.
Images of and texts about Ellis Island can be found in the hands of elementary-aged students across the country.
But what have you learned about Angel Island? Is it a place that was ever spoken about out loud in your own educational experience?
What Was Angel Island?
About one short mile from Alcatraz, the small island that holds the infamous prison, Angel Island also sits in the San Francisco Bay.
While the history of Angel Island is diverse — serving as the ancestral home of the Huimen tribe of the Coast Miwok, eventually becoming Mexican territory and later being annexed by the U.S. and serving as a military base — in the early 1900s, a small immigration station was constructed on the island.
The “Angel Island Immigration Station,” operating from 1910 to 1940, would serve as the main “immigration facility” on the western coast of the U.S. It was a portal — an open or closed door — for those who crossed the Pacific Ocean, hoping to enter the shores of California.
Did Angel Island function more like an “immigration facility,” or a “detention center?” The answer likely depends on one’s race and other social identities, including gender.
Angel Island was built after the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and numerous other laws that restricted immigration, especially toward people who came from countries across Asia and the Pacific.
Over the course of three decades, as reported by Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, “approximately 500,000 immigrants from 80 countries were processed, detained, and/or interrogated at the site.” The majority of those who arrived at Angel Island traveled from China, about 175,000 people. And as we'll see, unfortunately, those who made it to the island were far from being treated the same, or equally.
Race, or nationality, and gender largely impacted what kind of experience people had as they attempted to immigrate through Angel Island.
According to this video by AIISF, “Racial and gender segregation policies were strictly enforced to keep Whites and Asians, Chinese and Japanese, and men and women separate from each other.” Based on race and gender, immigrants were assigned to different “detention barracks,” where they would wait to be interrogated by government officials.
After the initial segregation, one’s experience on the island continued to be largely connected to social identity. As AIISF states, “Race, nationality, class, and gender often determined the length of an immigrant's stay on Angel Island, which could last from two days to two years. Europeans tended to remain briefly, they enjoyed better accommodations and better food than their Asian counterparts. Chinese and other Asian immigrants, however, were crowded into barracks that even immigration inspectors deemed unsafe and unsanitary. They fed them lower quality food that the detainees described as ‘pig slop,’ and could have no visitors from the mainland.”
The interrogation process also differed by race and nationality. AISSF reports: “Immigration files show that European applicants were briefly interrogated and generally admitted into the U.S. within a day or two. But Asian applicants, particularly Chinese, faced a board of special inquiry.” Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, for someone of Chinese nationality to be allowed legal entrance to the U.S., they had to prove that they were related to someone already living in the U.S. who was not a “laborer,” but of the “merchant” class. Because of this, “Chinese [immigrants] had a much longer and much more grueling process.” To verify their family relations and identity, officials would likely conduct numerous interrogation sessions, asking Chinese immigrants specific questions about family history, their hometown, and small details about their former homes, searching for inconsistencies.
Compared to 2% at Ellis Island, about 18% of immigrants at Angel Island were “rejected.”
For those who would remain — detained at Angel Island — the interrogation process could last for weeks, months, and even years. In this light: Was Angel Island the “Ellis Island” of the West?
The Writing on the Wall
As an immigration station, Angel Island met its fate in 1940, when an electrical fire burned the administrative building to the ground, effectively closing the immigration station — though the U.S. government would also use remaining facilities as a processing station for some Japanese Americans during World War II.
After WWII, much of the site fell into disarray and was slated for demolition. However, in May of 1970, Park Ranger Alexander Weiss, entered the darkened, “off-limits” detention barracks with a flashlight in hand, and came across — to his great surprise — inscriptions that he immediately knew were “culturally and historically significant.”
What he unearthed was a collection of hundreds of poems, blanketed across the walls, the majority penned in Chinese, some “written in ink, while others were carved with a classical Cantonese technique.”
Park Ranger Weiss was ordered to ignore the “graffiti.” But he defied these orders, and instead reached out to Profesor Araki, at San Francisco State — sparking a movement to save the Immigration Station and preserve its poetry.
The content of the poems ranged, as described in this educational resource: “One can imagine that a group of young [people] with some education came across the Pacific Ocean with very high expectations of a new life... They had no idea that they would be detained on Angel Island. Given this situation, the prevailing sentiments were disappointment, anger, depression and homesickness.” Such themes included, “missing home; unfulfilled aspirations; concerning the nation and people; hopelessness and pain; hatred; life in detention; and ancient stories, legends and historical figures.”
At this point, it may be noted that the shores of California can be easily seen, in full view, from the Immigration Station on Angel Island.
A new home was within visual reach, but remained a physical illusion.
This sentiment may be represented in the following translated poem, curated by KQED: “Instead of remaining a citizen of China, I willingly became an ox. I intended to come to America to earn a living. The Western styled buildings are lofty; but I have not the luck to live in them. How was anyone to know that my dwelling place would be a prison?”
For a more detailed overview, consider this video, Discovering Angel Island: The Story Behind the Poems, produced by KQED.
While the poems can evoke emotions, they may also inspire human connection.
Collectively, they speak to how governments can pass oppressive, even dehumanizing laws, but legislation doesn’t take our humanity away. In fact, for many who experience varying degrees of discrimination — whether it’s a form of marginalization, or surviving something that could easily be described as unsurvivable — often, something within us shines and demands to be seen, to be heard.
These poems may very well represent that, the desire for others to take notice — Yes, I was here. I existed. Take a look. Find something in my story that reminds you of your own. Add it to the larger story of what makes all of us human. And maybe then, we may start to see the familiar in the face of a stranger.
Angel Island, Books For Children
If you’re interested in extending the conversation to children, consider the following picture books and novels about Angel Island (of course pre-screen titles ahead of time to ensure it works for your children or students):
Landed, by Milly Lee;
Kai’s Journey to Gold Mountain, by Katrina Saltonstall Currier
Li on Angel Island, by Veeda Bybee
The Dragon’s Child: A Story of Angel Island, by Laurence Yep and Dr. Kathleen S. Yep
Join Us for a Professional Development Workshop This Summer!
If you, and your colleagues, are looking for professional development opportunities this summer, Michael Matthews, of Authentic Education, and Monique Vogelsang of Humanizing History™ are co-leading a hands-on PD experience for classroom teachers and other school leaders.
"Inclusive Curriculum Design — Backwards Planning for Equity and Belonging."
Join us for an in-person, 3-day intensive to expand your thinking around best practices for including underrepresented voices, untold stories, and broader perspectives into your curriculum design — resulting in more inclusive and culturally expansive units.
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