His legal status was listed as "son of native," indicating he was a United States citizen, yet he -- and others like him -- were taken to the Angel Island Immigration Station to determine whether he was "excludable" under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The act barred the legal entry of Chinese laborers, a manifestation of virulently anti-Chinese sentiments in the 1870s stirred by white labor leaders who scapegoated Chinese workers during difficult economic times, an attitude heartily endorsed by the political and economic establishment in California and, ultimately, Washington, D.C. Indeed, my father had no choice in the matter. From 1910 to 1940, all Chinese people who crossed the Pacific Ocean and sought legal entry into the United States had to be processed through Angel Island.

It appears my father was held at the immigration station for almost three weeks before his landing was approved on June 15. Clarence E. Ebey, whose title was "Chinese Inspector," wrote a memo dated June 10, 1912, to the Chinese Inspector in Charge. It said, in part, "The testimony throughout is exceptionally consistent, virtually the only discrepancy being the following: The alleged father testified that Gee Chung Wing lives in the 1st house, 3rd row of his village; that he is married to a wife with bound feet; that they have one boy, Gee Hock, about 10 years old. The applicant [Gee Seow Hong] stated that this house was occupied by Gee You Kim, whose wife has natural feet, and that they have one boy, Gee Chung Wing, about 30 years, who is married but has no children. This discrepancy, it seems to me, is very evidently caused by a lapse of memory. The testimony of the alleged father and the alleged brother compares favorably with that given at previous hearings. I believe that the case is a bona fide one and that the applicant should be landed."

The kinds of issues and questions raised in these interviews, as indicated by Ebey's memo, were extraordinarily inane and mundane -- "How many houses in your row?" "Who lives in the 2nd house, 1st row?" "Do you have to cross any bridge or water going to that market?" Questions asked of my father and of his alleged relatives who sponsored his proposed legal entry to the United States were asked of most Chinese applicants. The purpose of such questions was to test the veracity of an applicant's story. If my father had given many answers different from those of his alleged father and brother, immigration officials would then have grounds to deport him.

It is important to understand the power structure at that time. In his book The Chinese of America, Jack Chen writes "The immigration officers there (on Angel Island) were given the following instructions: 'Upon Chinese persons claiming the right of admission to, or residence within, the United States, to establish such right affirmatively and satisfactorily...in every doubtful case, the benefit of the doubt shall be given to the United States government.' In other words, presumed guilty of fraud, the exact nature of which was often unspecified, the immigrant had to prove himself innocent while being held in detention on the islet island without bail. With such guidance, it was predictable how the facility would be run. Examinations and interrogations were traumatic events. They usually lasted two or three days but could stretch out interminably. To establish the identity of immigrants, they were asked questions relating to the minutest details of private life and were acutely embarrassing, especially to Chinese women."

My father died in 1961, when I was 20 years old. We had never discussed his stay at Angel Island nor that of my mother and three older sisters in November 1933 when they sought legal entry into the United States. So I can only imagine their thoughts when faced with a grand inquisitor asking petty questions about neighbors in China. I can only imagine their feelings of fear and humiliation, the way they felt less than equal, less than worthy of being members of American society.

Such were the trials of thousands of Chinese seeking a piece of the American Dream in the years the Exclusion Act was in effect. (The act was repealed in 1943, when China was an ally of the United States in the war against Japan, Germany and Italy.) And for 30 years, Angel Island was the unfriendly venue where bureaucratic enforcement of the Exclusion Act took place, the first American place these Chinese experienced. Angel Island might seem an unlikely location for such official calumny. The 740-acre island, now a state park, is a gorgeous jut of rock just southwest of Tiburon in beautiful Marin County. Its hiking and biking trails are approximately five miles in circumference and it has unmatched views of Marin County, the majestic San Francisco skyline and the East Bay. Considering its relative isolation, however, it makes sense that the U.S. government -- which first began using the island for military purposes in 1863 -- decided to build a facility to screen Chinese immigrants. Before the immigration station was built on Angel Island, the government processed Chinese immigrants in a ramshackle two-story wooden shed on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's wharf in San Francisco. Government historians and officials described that facility as "crowded and unsanitary" and a "death trap." After it was built, the Angel Island Immigration Station wasn't much better. Historian Roger Daniels, who specializes in the Asian American experience, wrote an article about the Angel Island Immigration Station for the Fall 1997 issue of Journal of American Ethnic History. According to Daniels, the buildings were unlivable and overcrowded. He states: "The buildings were...dangerous firetraps, unsanitary, and vermin infested...one dormitory room with enough air space for ten persons was equipped with fifty-four bunks, all of which were sometimes used."

Daniels and other historians cannot be certain about the numbers of immigrants processed in the 30-year history of the Angel Island Immigration Station. Stephen A. Haller, a historian with the National Park Service's Golden Gate National Recreation Area, says, "Statistics are tough to get. I don't believe we have a thoroughly documented analysis of the immigration station's operations, of how many immigrants were processed, of rejections by ethnicity, that kind of thing." Daniels writes, "It is not possible, at this time, to be precise about the number of people who passed through Angel Island. Some workers connected with the state park have estimated it at 500,000 persons, but this figure is much too high. My own current guess is that perhaps 100,000 persons, mostly Asians, spent some time on the island."

The rejection rate of Chinese who sought legal entry through Angel Island is also a matter of speculation. Daniels notes that approximately 50,000 Chinese won approval to be admitted between 1910 and 1940. He estimates that "perhaps 9,000" were not allowed in, a rejection rate "many times larger than the rate for Ellis Island," the New York harbor immigration facility that processed hundreds of thousands of newcomers from Europe. "To put these numbers into perspective," Daniels states, "during the Angel Island years, Chinese who never constituted as much as 1 percent of the nation's foreign born, were more than 4 percent of those deported."

While the Chinese were most numerous, other newcomers went through Angel Island. The immigration station also processed several thousand Japanese "picture brides," women who married men they had never seen; and smaller numbers of Koreans, Asian Indians, Filipinos, and Europeans. However, a big dividing line existed between the amount of time it took to clear different types of immigrants. "Most of the non-Chinese immigrants spent relatively little time on the island," Daniels writes. These short stays were prompted by the immigration station's primary role of enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Act. A non-fatal fire that destroyed the administration building and many records on August 12, 1940, hastened the end of the immigration station.

Those 30 years of significant Chinese American and Asian American history might have gotten lost in a haze had it not been for the courage and dedication of state park rangers and Asian American activists and scholars who have fought for the dilapidated station's preservation and restoration as a national historic landmark. The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation -- founded by the late Paul Chow and currently led by Felicia Lowe, Dan Quan, Phil Choy, Him Mark Lai, among others -- is at the forefront of efforts to elevate the immigration station site as a national immigration museum as sort of a bookend to the lavishly restored Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

The contemporary Asian American experience is quite diverse. Many Chinese Americans, let alone other Asian Americans and Americans in general, know little of the historic importance of the Angel Island Immigration Station. It is a symbol of both institutional racism against people of Asian descent, especially Chinese, and of the indomitable spirit of all oppressed people. It is the place where my parents and three older sisters began their new lives and later overcame the shame of being treated as less than human when all they wanted was to embrace the American Dream.

William Wong is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose collection of essays, Yellow Journalist, will be published by Temple University Press in the autumn of 2000.

Text ©2000 William Wong, “Angel Island Immigration Station.”