Angel Island: My Family’s Pilgrimage (Perfectly Imperfect 3)

Manzanar.

Just mentioning the place evokes images of tearful departures and traumatizing losses. No other locale represents more iconically the terrible injustices experienced by Japanese Americans during World War II. Hundreds of people still participate in the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, driving out to what’s now a National Historic Site in the California desert. They gather to remember what happened, and to resolve anew that it cannot be allowed to happen again.

It may not be as well known as Manzanar, but California’s Angel Island similarly has become a symbol of the struggle to overcome racism. While Manzanar is associated with the oppression of Japanese Americans, Angel Island is more closely linked to the Chinese American experience. So as an American of Chinese ancestry, I felt compelled to take my daughters on our own pilgrimage to the island.

But before I get into that, allow me to give a bit of context, especially if you’ve never heard much about Angel Island. The island sits in San Francisco Bay just a bit north of Alcatraz Island, home of the legendary prison. Ironically, Angel Island’s immigration station became a high security prison itself. An estimated three hundred thousand immigrants entered the United States through Angel Island during its years of operation (1910-1940), and during that time, citizens of many nations were detained there before continuing on. But more than any other ethnic group, Chinese people were held under lock and key for weeks, months, and even years while authorities determined whether they could enter America or not. In contrast, immigrants from Europe who passed through Angel Island were usually processed on board their ships, gaining entry into the U.S. within just hours of arriving.

The basic reason Chinese travelers were singled out? Anti-Chinese prejudice, which became widespread after the Gold Rush and during the massive expansion of the western railroads. Chinese laborers were seen by some Whites as stealing the jobs that should have been theirs. On a state level, such racist sentiment was codified into various laws, culminating in the 1879 California Constitution’s ban against employing Chinese workers. On a federal level, anti-Chinese racism culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned nearly all Chinese immigrants from coming to America (save for a very small number of merchants, teachers, and students). Those Chinese nationals who were already here were barred from becoming naturalized citizens. And eventually, when the act was amended and renewed in later years, people of Chinese ancestry were required to carry papers with them proving their residence in the United States.

But there was one significant exception to the Exclusion Act’s near-ban on Chinese immigrants. Family members of ethnic Chinese who already lived in the United States could enter the country to join them. Angel Island’s immigration station, then, was largely established to ensure that passage into America would be given only to Chinese immigrants who were legitimate relatives. But even they were subject to extensive periods of incarceration, which were marked by long and exhausting interrogations about the minutest details of family homes and neighborhoods.

To prepare our daughters for our visit, my wife found a children’s book entitled Landed, written by Milly Lee with illustrations by Yangsook Choi. Based on the true story of Ms. Lee’s father-in-law, it tells of a twelve-year-old Lee Sun Chor, who travels with his father to America. His dad, being a merchant who shuttles back and forth between China and the United States, is quickly processed through the immigration station. But Sun Chor remains on Angel Island for four weeks of waiting, interrogation, more waiting, and more interrogation. Finally, immigration officials affirm that Sun Chor’s answers to their questions match those given previously by his father, and he is “landed” – that is, given permission to leave Angel Island and join his dad in America.

My girls not only enjoyed Landed, but I believe it truly helped them to better understand their visit, even at their young age. As they get older, I’ll refer them back to their trip to Angel Island so they’ll see how the history of immigration has often repeated itself in America. After all, these days, anti-immigrant sentiment mostly targets people of Latino background. Latinos are stereotyped as the cheap laborers, probably here illegally, who steal “American” jobs as they take over whole communities with their strange customs, food, and language. Given such common prejudice, it’s no wonder that a palpable sense of anti-Hispanic racism often emanates from the comments of those who advocate today’s oppressive immigration laws.

But it was not so long ago that anti-immigrant sentiment was largely directed toward people coming here from China. Chinese people, my people, we were viewed as the cheap labor stealing “American” jobs. (Laundry service, anyone?) It was our strange customs, food, and language that were mocked by hate speech. We were the ones who were targets of racist immigration laws and the violence of those who supported those laws.

And before us Chinese, it was Irish Catholic and German immigrants who were persecuted. The history of immigration in our country has often repeated itself.

It seems that many of us Chinese Americans have rather ignored the current immigration debate in our country. “After all,” goes the unspoken logic, “it mostly seems like it’s a Latino issue, so why should we bother? It has nothing to do with us.” Of course, this overlooks the fact that the broken American immigration system ensnares many more Chinese and other Asians than we likely realize.

And that’s beside the point, anyway. We Chinese, of all people, should advocate for immigration reform. Our people have known, more so than many other ethnic groups, what it’s like to suffer within an unjust immigration system. Think about the Chinese immigrants who came here before us, as well as those who attempted to do so but were turned away. Remember the Chinese men, women, boys, and girls who lived on Angel Island for months behind barbed wire fences and under the watch of armed guards. Imagine a twelve year old gazing longingly, through a barred window like those at Alcatraz, at the Americans going about their business on the mainland and their fun on the bay.

What would they say to us, to the ones fortunate enough to enjoy the blessings of Gum Saan, the Gold Mountain?

I believe they would plead with us to remember what happened to them, and to resolve that we cannot allow it to go on, in our day, any longer.

Immigration reform legislation has already passed the United States Senate. Take action by contacting the office of your representative in the United States House. Ask him or her to do whatever s/he can to pass the entire Senate version of the bill. Be sure to thank your representative in advance for doing the right thing.

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