Angel Island: A Story of Chinese Immigration (Video Transcript)

Angel Island: A Story of Chinese Immigration (Video Transcript)

Finally tonight, another way to make art out of history. Spencer Michaels reports.

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From 1910 until 1943, Chinese immigrants to America approached Angel Island in San Francisco Bay with fear and hope. They hoped the US immigration station on the island would not be their last stop in the country they called Gold Mountain, America. Flo Oy Wong, a Chinese-American artist, and Felicia Lowe, a documentary maker, take the short ferry ride to Angel Island often these days. Both are the daughters of at least one parent who came into the US illegally. Through art and film, they are bringing new attention to an old, and until now, obscure story. A story that happened in the place sometimes called the Ellis Island of the West.

This is the place where the US government, under an 1882 law called the Chinese Exclusion Act, tried to keep Chinese laborers and their families out of the country. send them back to China.

When I learned about Angel Island–

Lowe has documented both the pain of that rejection and the lies the immigrants had to tell to gain admittance to their chosen land.

–But it’s a place that moves you, not only because the walls talk. And tell you stories. But because of the spirit and energy of this place.

Does it still move you?

Absolutely. Every time I come here, I have such deep feelings about the people who were here, especially knowing that my father was one of those people.

Felicia Lowe, who is raising funds and awareness to have the old immigration station restored, has documented on film Angel Island’s history. The story begins with Chinese coming to America to work in the California gold fields. And to build the railroads in the mid 1800’s. About a 100,000 Chinese lived in America in 1880.

When the economy went bad, anti-Chinese feeling became virulent, and congress voted to exclude all new Chinese immigrants, except certain categories. Merchants, teachers, and minor children of citizens. For the most part, wives of Chinese men already here, even if the men were citizens, could not enter legally, since US policy was to prevent families from settling here.

Judy Young teaches Asian American history at the University of California and has written about Angel Island’s legacy. She calls the Chinese Exclusion Act blatant racism.

The Chinese were seen as being not only racially inferior, but they were seen as being political despotic. They were seen as being heathens. They were seen as being immoral, unethical, didn’t treat their women right. They were just seen as being very un-American and undeserving of being American.

Despite being mostly unwelcome and illegal, Chinese kept arriving, though in smaller numbers. Starting in 1910, these new immigrants landed first at Angel Island to face immigration officers and possible deportation. It was an intimidating place. Barbed wire, guards, locked doors, and unfamiliar food.

Families were often split apart. Stays of two weeks to six months were common. And the culmination of it all was an interrogation by officials. Lowe found the transcript of her father’s interrogation.

You had to answer a series of questions to confirm that you were the person you said you were on the paper. In looking at these transcripts, it’s frightening. Did your father tell you what he had done in this country? When is the first time you were ever absent from [? kaygoc ?] village overnight or longer? How many children did your father’s first wife bear him?

In order to try to qualify for entry, many of the immigrants assumed new identities. Wives became paper sisters who were supposedly married to merchants, since the US allowed merchants, and only merchants, to have families. Therefore, the children became nieces and nephews of their real parents to pass the test. They studied coaching books prepared by relatives that told them about the person they were now claiming to be.

Like Lowe’s father, they became so-called paper sons.

My name is Flo Oy Wong. Now, Wong is my married name. But I also have a fake name.

Flo Wong often tells school groups how her family had to change their identities to get into the country. She has turned that saga into an art show, called Shhh, which is on display in the old immigration station barracks. Rice sacks stitched to American flags with stenciled names, real and fake, on the work. Each panel tells of a family member or friend who secretly changed his or her name, and then held that secret, sometimes ’til death.

After I tell you my mom’s secret, I want you to go to that part of the room, and share the secret with different people.

Flo Wong’s family arrived from China in 1933, after her father, who had lived for a while in the US, decided his family would do better in America than in China. Her sister Li Keng Wong, was seven at the time they made the long journey. But she remembers her father’s admonitions.

He said well, we better pack. We’re ready to leave. But he reminded us, remember, mama is not going as my wife. Mama is going to the United States as my sister. And the United States would not allow me to bring your mother in as my wife. So therefore, we’re going to tell a lie.

Li Keng Wong, who later became a teacher, was interrogated with her two sisters. They lied to the officers and passed. And then kept the secret.

I never did want to say anything because I was embarrassed. I was still afraid throughout all the years going to school that the immigration officials would find out.

The Chinese Exclusion Law was repealed in 1943, yet even today Li Keng Wong can’t ignore what happened nearly 70 years ago.