The main barracks building is being restored. (Daphne Kwok, Angel Island Association)

For San Franciscan Barry Wong, a simple chain-link fence symbolizes both his distant past and present passion.

Angel Island, where Wong's ancestors first touched American soil, sits in the San Francisco Bay along with another island, Alcatraz, which is better known as a prison. But Angel Island also held captives. In addition to the Japanese prisoners housed during World War II, Angel Island served as the "Western Ellis Island," a gateway to Pacific immigration. Among the thousands who passed through Angel Island were Russians, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese. For most, Angel Island wasn't so heavenly.

Wong's paternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. with their baby son. They hoped to find opportunity in their new country—and they did, but first they had to overcome anti-Chinese immigration policies.

Wong, now a member of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF), says the fence around the station's ongoing renovation project affords him a poignant backward glimpse into his grandparents' lives.

"This is how many saw the US for the first time," Wong says. "Through a chain-link fence."

In 1999, two years after Angel Island became a National Historic Landmark, the National Trust named it one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. This year, as the National Trust celebrates 20 years of the 11 Most lists, it considers Angel Island saved because its once-crumbling buildings are being restored.

As Chinese and other Asians fled famine and rural poverty at the turn of the century, America shut and locked its door. That is, lawmakers made it very difficult to pass through it.

Footprint of the new administration building (Daphne Kwok)

Processing large numbers of unwanted immigrants created logistical problems. There was no place to keep them until they could be cleared for entry or sent back to their country of origin. Officials chose to build the station on Angel Island as a temporary holding pen for immigrants. But "temporary" on Angel Island could mean years.

While its Eastern sister Ellis Island strikes a sentimental chord in those whose ancestors immigrated from Europe, Angel Island has been neglected. For many who passed through Angel Island from 1910 to 1940, the Western immigration station bears more in common with nearby Alcatraz than Ellis.

Although the old station's buildings are crumbling, many walls hold written traces of hope and despair. Anxious, tired, and stripped of their dignities, some occupants scratched records of their confinement into the wooden walls. The poetry reflects the loneliness and frustration of being warehoused such a short distance from their goal.

A flickering lamp keeps this body company.
I am like pear blossoms which have already fallen.
Pity the bare branches during the late spring. —Angel Island poem

History Rich, Cash Poor

Senior Architect Donald Bybee, who oversees Angel Island's rehabilitation, says the poetry carved into the detention barracks' walls were overlooked and filled with putty. When workers discovered it, the remaining poetry was uncovered, recorded, and preserved. "The first part of my project included the hiring of four Chinese language scholars to translate the poems," Bybee says.

Today, the detention barracks, central heating plant, and hospital remain. The administration building's footprint remains, but the building is lost. Daphne Kwok, executive director of the AIISF, says preservation work moves slowly, but the end goal is priceless.

"This is a vital link in the history of many Americans," Kwok says.

California voters agreed with Kwok and partially funded the station restoration project with $15 million in bond funds in 2002. Congress matched the amount, but that's not nearly enough to finish the project, Kwok says. More worrisome to the AIISF are recent rumblings by state officials who threaten the project with financial cut-backs.

Dave Matthews, superintendent of Angel Island State Park, notes that while they wait for additional funding, the station continues to degenerate. "There are 85 to 90 countries represented coming through this station," Matthews says. "It's kind of a dark secret in American history."

Erika Lee, associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota and co-author of an upcoming book on Angel Island, places the number of countries represented slightly lower than Matthews, but adds that a million people were processed through the immigration station during its operation. Lee says it is important to study conditions at Angel Island because it "helps us better understand the global nature of migration during the early 20th century."

Main barracks (Lynn Eichinger, Angel Island Association)

Paper Sons

In addition to often-lengthy confinement, immigrants were subjected to interrogation and harsh living environments. Crowded together, they often subsisted on a substandard diet. Some chose to return to their home countries. Others were sent back. Still other immigrants found they could come in as the off-spring of Chinese who had already migrated—even if they were not related.

These people, mostly men, became "paper sons." They would claim to be the children of Chinese-Americans already in the U.S. But it wasn't as easy as simply flashing fake identity papers. Those who entered as paper sons underwent days of interrogation about their fictitious "families" and the area of China from which these families migrated. If they failed to answer the questions properly, they went back to China.

Bill Wong (no relation to Barry Wong), a journalist and author, says his father came to America and brought his mother and three older sisters to their new country. But his father also brought paper sons. "He went back to China, and each time he came back he said he had given birth to a son," says Bill Wong, who was born in America.

"They had a strong desire to come to this country for better opportunity and to enjoy the political freedom," he says. A trip to China to see his parents' humble beginnings made him value Angel Island even more.

"From that small, dilapidated building where my parents started their lives, they made an amazing transformation," Wong says. "To me, Angel Island plays a part of that -- to each of them, this is where their American lives began."

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