No Lamps Were Lit for Them: Angel Island and the Historiography of Asian American Immigration Author(s): Roger

Daniels Source: Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Fall, 1997), pp. 3-18 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Immigration & Ethnic History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27502236 . Accessed: 03/06/2011 21:07
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No Lamps Were Lit for Them:

Angel Island and the Historiography of Asian American Immigration
ROGER DANIELS

TWO Liberty

TINY,

Although Island in 1886, was

islands in New York harbor, Ellis Island and adjacent are home to the twin icons of American Island, immigration. the Statue of Liberty, erected on what was then called Bedloe's intended its by its French donors to be a monument and Emma to in the harbor

presence liberty, imposing republican trans Lazarus's poem added to its American-designed pedestal, quickly center on in 1892, of the immigrant reception formed it.1 The creation, nearby Ellis migrants.2 museum on Ellis have made of immigration creation of a magnificent even at a time of increasing nativism.3 There the association inescapable, with im underlined the statue's association Island, merely The refurbishment of the Statue for its centennial and the

is an immigration another island, which icon of a different is, however, as many sort. If the statue?"The call her?and Ellis Island are Lady" icons of welcome, of acceptance, that other island, three thou primarily to the west, is an icon of suspicion, of rejection. sand miles it the largest 740 acres make Island, whose Angel cisco Bay, was associated with immigration for only was the site of the Angel those years it 1940. During a detention Station, which was primarily facility for island in San Fran thirty years, 1910? Island Immigration Asian immigrants,

Before 1910 it had a long Chinese men and Japanese women. mostly Indian sites on the island have been dated as and varied history. Miwok record is from 1775, going back at least 3,000 years. The first written a lieutenant in the Spanish Navy, when Manuel de Ayala, used the It was he who island as a base for his survey of San Francisco Bay. Island. As the island was named the place: Isla de Los Angeles?Angel the easiest after the difficult passage of the Golden Gate, all anchorage sealers sorts of people used it in the Spanish-Mexican period: Russian on fresh stocked up of several nationalities stored furs there, whalers

This essay is a revised version of the presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the Immigration History Society, held in San Francisco, April 19, 1997.

Journal of American

Ethnic History

/ Fall 1997

water

and firewood, and later, American

and smugglers used it to avoid Spanish, Mexican, customs officials. For a short time there was a cattle lighthouses. used by the American was estab

ranch on the island, and it has had three different to 1962?the For a century?1863 island was military. II civilian World Base But An Army internees post, were eventually named

Fort McDowell,

lished there during the Civil War. During World War I andWorld War
held on it, as were prisoners of war during in its final military use, there was a Nike Missile II, and, on the island between 1954 and 1962. When the missile base was War

dismantled

the entire island became the state park that exists today. Station that is of concern here. The need for it is the Immigration an immigration in San Francisco?and for a national facility immigra

a direct result of anti-Chinese the tion bureaucracy?was legislation, were Act of 1882.4 These Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion restrictive pieces of American legislation; immigration the legal history of immigration turned. the hinge on which the immigration of Chinese With the passage of the exclusion labor act, ers was outlawed for ten years; this was renewed for another ten years in the latter was 1892, and the law was made with the immigration warehouse "permanent" were early held in Theodore Roosevelt's wooden the first effective

administration. Beginning in the 1870s Chinese immigrants in difficulty

two-story and located regulations leased from in a ramshackle the Pacific Mail Company Steamship on the San Francisco waterfront. Itwas

at the end of a wharf

about 100 feet square, held called "the shed." The building, commonly on the to 200 people at a time, with men on the first floor and women up a historian for the California Department second. Dorene Askin, of Parks a con described it as "crowded and unsanitary," while and Recreation, re for the Department of Commerce and Labor temporary inspector that itwas a "death trap."5 ported officials in San Fran Just after the turn of the century, immigration of arranging for new quarters on or near the inWashington, D.C., opted instead for a pur on Angel the Island. In 1904 Congress instructed facility pose-built to investigate and Labor, Victor H. Metcalf, and of Commerce Secretary station there. At the end of the year, report on a plan for an immigration a plan (and cost estimates drawn up by of $250,000) Metcalf presented cisco were waterfront when in the process officials an Oakland opened. consisted J. Mathews.6 1910 the facility was architect, Walter By It was located on the island's north shore at China Cove and of a number building, of wooden hospital, detention barracks, buildings?the a wharf. Soon and powerhouse?and

administration

Daniels

after

twelve

tanks were supposedly Ellis Island tion was brick.

a laundry, a stable, a carpenter cottages, shop, and water a ferry boat. The architect added and the station acquired so that the analogy between Island as a model, used Ellis sta Island existed even before the immigration and Angel the architect learned by if anything, It is not clear what,

built.

visiting Ellis: he chose to build in wood and Ellis Island was largely
location was pleasant and scenic, although quite damp. The took forty-five minutes. from San Francisco ferry trip officials local immigration In the very year that the station opened to complain of the facility. The buildings about the inadequacy began The district wrote the man in charge of the San Francisco were, immigration in on 19 December and vermin 1910, dangerous firetraps, unsanitary, the lack of an adequate janitorial staff kept the place fested. In addition, "was and is an outrage on civiliza filthy." The hospital "wretchedly were buttressed tion."7 These by a report from the Public complaints water Health Service Surgeon, who also noted the contaminated supply the gross infested kitchen facilities. He calculated and fly and cockroach room with enough air space for ten per one dormitory overcrowding: sons was equipped with fifty-four sometimes bunks, all of which were of Immigration Anthony years later Commissioner-General "the re recommended and formally made similar complaints situated on the of the station ... to fireproof, moval sanitary buildings States."9 Despite mainland upon property already owned by the United the these and subsequent protests nothing was done about either moving used.8 Five Caminetti it significantly until a disastrous but happily nonfa facility or improving the administration tal fire destroyed building and many of the records on Island detainees? 1940 the last Angel 1940. On 5 November 12 August a few Filipinos and 35 Cen 125 Chinese men and 19 Chinese women, tral European refugees?were Island Immigration the Angel the intolerable conditions would ferried to the mainland allowed Station was have been ended. One wonders and the history of whether

to go on for so long the number connected of

if the facility had held mostly Europeans. at this time, to be precise about It is not possible, Island. Some workers who passed through Angel people

with

is but this figure it at 500,000 the state park have estimated persons, too high. My own current guess is that perhaps much 100,000 persons, spent some time on the island. I assume that most of the mostly Asians, States the United nearly 60,000 Chinese who are recorded as entering 1910 and 1940 passed through Angel between Island, as did most of the nearly 10,000 Chinese who were deported in those years. Although one

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Ethnic History

/ Fall 1997

sometimes who but

from the literature that most impression to enter were denied admission, this was not attempted came the rate of rejection was very high. Some 50,000 gets the

Chinese the case, in, while

rate of about one in six, many perhaps 9,000 were barred, a rejection rate for Ellis Island. To put these numbers times larger than the into Island years, Chinese who never consti during the Angel perspective, tuted as much as 1 percent of the nation's than foreign born, were more 4 percent of those deported. other nationalities, Asian and Eu

Although the bulk of the literature about the island speaks chiefly if
not exclusively about Chinese, many also passed through. The meal ropean, were wooden and Asian notions food, two mess tables. halls: The one was other?called used, The used arrangements testify by Asian men, who ate from bare the "oil cloth dining room" because to this. There

its tables were

covered?was

separate of the time but also to the different bread and with cooks. American

women.

in separate seatings, by Europeans seatings testified not only to the racist menus less meat The Asian provided. and potatoes, was pre

served without

pared by Chinese Perhaps 6,000 so-called picture Gentlemen's cut off married were until people all

were Japanese women, most of them the who came to the United States as a result of the brides, of 1907-1908 act of 1924 until the immigration Agreement These were women who had been Japanese immigration. of the Asians some they had never seen, although In addition, a significant number of Japanese in Japan were held on the island from schooling be verified. Added to these were small number The some Koreans, of European archives Russian, to men

by proxy, often rejoining husbands.

Americans

returning their status could from

immigrants, of the immigrant and Jamaican little

a relatively India, other Asians, and a few from the Caribbean. station include

photographic Serbian,

spent immigrants. Most immigrants time on the island. The Japanese women, the largest relatively group, were usually cleared in a matter of days: only single non-Chinese a husband failed

pictures of Turkish, of the non-Chinese

to appear, or when there were medical problems, were these women of time or sent back. kept for any appreciable length The Chinese majority were of four categories. Apart from diplomatic were never held on the island?the only Chinese who personnel?who were admissible to the United States in the Angel Island era were mer when chants could United and their families, students, legitimate claim American citizenship. Would-be States in the exclusion era, travelers, and persons who to the Chinese immigrants like oppressed groups everywhere,

Daniels

a wide array of resistance developed them called "laws harsh as tigers." Charles with McClain the help to American cessfully

to combat strategies From the mid-1870s

what

one of

and Lucy Salyer have shown of their attorneys, demonstrated institutions

nary degree.10 As McClain Contrary

by utilizing and Laurene Wu McClain

on, as both us, Chinese immigrants, an ability to adapt suc the courts to an extraordi have written:

to the popular image of the Chinese in the United States as ... the court cases ... demonstrate that while the Chinese passive were indeed victims, they were not passive. Angered by the discrimina victims tory laws enacted to humiliate and exclude them, the Chinese decided to such litigants were take their grievances to the American courts. While more interested in getting results than in establishing legal prin probably ciples, their cases did profoundly affect the course of American jurispru of due-process dence, contributing in a significant way to the molding and equal-protection jurisprudence under the Fourteenth Amendment. in a of Chinese litigants to confront the government The willingness cases gave rise to sharper delineations of limits on govern succession of In defining mental authority and the rights of citizens and noncitizens. these limits and rights, they contributed far more to the ideals of democ racy and republicanism upon which their adopted country was based than did their antagonists.11 Another statistics sented form of resistance records. themselves A was invented after the San Francisco earth

quake and fire of 18-19 April 1906, destroyed most of the city's vital
number of Chinese significant as native-born American citizens. repre successfully The advantage of

such a claim was that a citizen could not only travel to China making father there were also American and return, but any children he might of those their mothers were not. Many citizens and admissible, although rela not only their own offspring but other male travelers brought in, tives, while some sold the "slots" to pass themselves grants managed The persons merchants. American were known in the Chinese there were to the highest off as close bidder. relatives Other immi of Chinese

thus admitted, American community

also, as Judy Yung has noted, though that some 90 percent of the officials were convinced ters.12 Immigration were fraudulent, claims of citizenship Chinese and, given the number of States before of child-bearing Chinese women 1906, age in the United is also a great deal of oral may well have been correct.13 There they testimony about individual paper sons in recent works about the Chinese

under false names, as paper sons, al some paper daugh

Journal of American

Ethnic History

/ Fall 1997

American fession viving

those written after the so-called "con community, especially of the Eisenhower administration14 enabled some sur program" sons to regularize their status.15 When Maxine paper Hong War points

in her marvelous novel, The Woman Kingston, autobiographical rior (1976), speaks of "ghost names," one of her many reference is to the paper son phenomenon. All Chinese to detailed Angel

seeking admission through San Francisco were subjected scrutiny and delay, and almost all of them were detained on Even elite Chinese

student visas, whose arriving with both statute law and Sino-American guaranteed by right a few years before Angel treaties, endured long delays.16 For example, was sub Island opened, one of the now-famous Soong sisters, Ai-ling, to enter was to two weeks in Georgia, confinement even though when she was she came traveling with a number For of to attend Wesleyan two white Ameri tech interrogative derivative claiming

Island.

jected

College can missionaries.17 The niques American

sively of their origin.18 These village on for weeks and months?the go

immigrants. both "father" and "son" would inten be grilled citizenship, about even minute details of their biographies and of the putative and interrogations individual longest investigations confinement

immigration to deal with

service Chinese

developed

those

could is said

to have been two years?and, in some instances investigators working out of the Hong Kong consulate would vil actually visit a Guangdong of the paper sons lage in an attempt to break down a cover story. Many came with crib sheets?in some cases books of more than a hundred pages?which tried to isolate mainland. Oral times messages Chinese cooks. were of before landing. The INS supposed to be disposed entrant from any support system on the the prospective some tradition describes how the isolation was breached: were in capsules enclosed in the food by the hidden of course, the bribery that has plagued the immi was sometimes its inception also existed?and dis

And, gration service from covered?at Island. To Angel

sure fail the immigration hearing meant entrant had exclusion and return to China or wherever the unsuccessful come from. In those years the detainees had no right of appeal to the
courts.

the Chinese women at who were held on the island were as wives or American of merchants citizens. From tempting 1906 through 1924 a yearly average of 150 alien Chinese wives were Most of to enter admitted; for six years after the 1924 to citizenship"?no "aliens ineligible act?which barred all immigration alien Chinese wives were admit

Daniels

ted.19 A wives From as

1930

statute

relaxed

long as the marriage then until Pearl Harbor

the entrance of such the ban by allowing 1924. had taken place before 26 May women were admitted about 60 such

annually.

In 1970, thirty years after Angel Island had been abandoned by the
noticed a large number INS, a California park ranger, Alexander Weiss, characters carved into the walls of what had been the deten of Chinese he realized that tion barracks, and, although he could not read Chinese, were of historical to interest his superiors, he significance. Failing they State Uni got in touch with Professor George Araki of San Francisco versity, who helped generate interest five among the local Asian Americans. resulted, years pressure Community from the California dollar appropriation later, in a quarter of a million for the preservation legislature

of the buildings.
The Island on the walls, the now famous Angel of course, were calligraphy lan Their rediscovery?there had been some Chinese poems.

guage versions published by former inmates but they had attracted little
a flurry of interest and publication. The most impor attention?sparked in 1980 by tant work to emerge was a book called Island, first published Him Mark Lai, and two of Chinese America, the doyen of the historians to the En In addition scholars, Genny Lim and Judy Yung.20 younger glish and Chinese the volume texts of the 135 extant contains excerpts of pictures. These poems are all by men. There some by women, were apparently in the but if so, they were destroyed 1940 fire. All of the poems are sad, and some are also angry. An angry poem reads: collection
... I hastened to cross the American ocean.

tions, a wonderful

annota poems, with English and from a number of oral histories

How was
reason?

I to know that the western

barbarians had lost their hearts, and

With a hundred kinds of oppressive laws, they mistreat us Chinese. It is still not enough after being interrogated and investigated several times; We also have to have our chests examined while naked. Our countrymen suffer this treatment
All because our country's power cannot yet expand.

If there comes a day when China will be united, Iwill surely cut out the heart and bowels of the western The foregoing should explode any notion that Angel

barbarian.21 Island was, as is

10

Journal of American

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/ Fall 1997

a useful It is, however, Island of the West.22 stated, the Ellis inwhich the American treated government symbol of the invidious ways between 1875 and 1965. Similar treatment Asian invidious immigrants often can be seen in the ways in which from Asia. historians have written?and not written?about rhythms That historiography immigrants than those which govern American Instead of history generally. about federalists and whigs, and proponents of paradigms progressives of Asian America the historiography be divided into consensus, may four phases or periods: a period of scorn, lasting into the 1920s; a period of benign neglect, has different

and lasting into the 1950s; and two contemporary one of increasing but limited awareness, and one of overlapping phases, Asian American the historiography in history, which have characterized recent decades.23 I will people historians and comment upon can history. For the era of scorn the chief exemplar must be Hubert Howe Bancroft the premier historian of California. In the seventh volume (1832-1918) of California sense": (1890) he wrote that the Chinese were some representative these periods with the current state and status of Asian Ameri

of his History "alien in every

The color of their skins, the repulsiveness of their features, their undersize of figure, their incomprehensible language, strange customs and heathen
religion ... conspired to set them apart.24

In his memoirs, in 1912, Bancroft laid out his notion of the published of Asians in American life: they should be what post-war proper place Germans called gastarbeiter, guest workers. he insisted, speaking about both Chinese and the Asiatic," "for our low-grade work, and when it is finished we want him Japanese, to go home and stay there until we want him again." As long as they felt that Asian workers were superior to any stayed in that role, Bancroft were not "lazy and licentious" of the alternatives. like the Negro in They whom animal overbalances As for those from "the the mental." of Europe" the Chinese were not "anarchistic cesspools dirty and re like the Italian, [nor] thieving and vermiparous like the Slav, or vengeful like the Celt and Teuton," and, he was sure, impudent and intermeddling or "breed a few million women not make would love to American they for American yellow piccaninnies citizenship."25 "the of of course, Bancroft, the early twentieth was a political but the progressives reactionary, were not significantly different when century it "We want

Daniels

11

came

to Chinese

and other Asians.

Professor

Woodrow

History of the American People, popular five-volume casian laborers could not compete with the Chinese

in his Wilson, insisted that "Cau ... who, with their

skin and debasing to them hardly fellow habits of life, seemed yellow men at all, but evil spirits rather."26 The progressive era socialist, Morris Samuel Gompers, denounced Chinese and Japanese Hillquit, echoing immigrants Perlman, as "an sophisticated could write horde of alien inflowing the Wisconsin-school scholar, that: scabs."27 labor In 1922, economist a more Selig

The anti-Chinese agitation in California, culminating as it did in the Ex clusion Law passed by Congress in 1882, was doubtless the most impor tant single factor in the history of American labor, for without it the entire labor and the labor move country might have been overrun by Mongolian ment might To be have become a conflict of races instead of one of classes.28 in the era of an axe scorn, some "pro-Asian or to grind, be it mercantile even what seemed or sometimes

writers," business

sure, most

even there were, often those with

interests, religious conversion, to be a good Gilded Age solution to the servant problem. But there were the most also a few friendly scholars, important of whom was Mary whose Chinese Roberts Coolidge, Immigration (1909) was the first his torical treatment of Chinese in America. who Coolidge establishment reform intellectual

espoused The daughter of a college professor?her second husband was related to and an earned two degrees from Cornell the thirtieth president?she in private schools and at 1896 Ph.D. from Stanford. She taught history a at Stanford and sociology and Mills She was College. Wellesley, Unitarian, a Republican, and a member of the American Indian Defense terms on the California her public included State service Association; and as a trustee of the Pacific Colony for the Feeble Board of Education or co-authored to Chinese In addition she wrote minded. Immigration, and social work. Her nine other books on Indians, the woman question, work Chinese hewers The was as much movement of wood an attack on the immigrant leaders of the anti as itwas a defense of the Chinese, whom she saw as of water essential to middle-class America. history as a professional the two founding fathers

was an (1860-1945) a multitude of causes.

and drawers

did little discipline im of professional Lee Hansen, that and Marcus history, George Stephenson migration in a book immigrants. Edith Abbott, history was the story of European rise of immigration to change the picture. For

12

Journal of American

Ethnic History

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in 1924, expressed the prevailing professional that "the study of European should nicely, asserting immigration not be complicated it with the very differ for the student by confusing ent problems of Chinese and Japanese immigration."29 She thus failed to of documents attitude compiled include Chinese describes, space in her "select exclusion was documents" effected. statutes by which any of the fifteen it is a rare textbook which (Even today Act.) that it was of "but a brief and

accurately,

the 1882 Exclusion insisted

Carl Wittke,
to Asian strange America."30 sual mode

in his 1940 survey, We Who Built America, did devote

account to the great migrations consen in an optimistic,

but immigration, in the general interlude

Similarly, Oscar Handlin, writing in 1957 about "American Minorities that Today," recognized "the Japanese and the Indians ... had their share of grievances" and that that a remedy was within "the postwar period brought no confidence

seven years later, his student, G?nther Barth discovered sight."31 And, were not immigrants at all, but sojourners who, in that the Chinese their troubles on themselves.32 essence, brought to probe the long had already begun sure, some historians on the but they did so by focusing discrimination, history of anti-Asian line of inquiry was pio This rather than on the excluded. excluders To be on the 1939 monograph painstaking by Elmer C. Sandmeyer's later laborers in this vineyard included Roger anti-Chinese movement; Stuart Creighton Miller, Alexander Saxton, and Peter Irons, to Daniels, neered scholars writing books only a few.33 In fact, of the Euro-American the 1960s, only the sociologist about Asian Americans Stanford through M. Lyman paid much attention to the Asian Americans themselves.34 were in the professoriate prior to Only a very few Asian Americans the authors. Earliest was the 1980s, but there had been a few pioneer the who had a chair at Stanford because Yamoto Ichihashi, immigrant, in the subsidized 1932 work, Japanese it. His government Japanese United Ichihashi created States, was was a work at great pains his position but also as and apologetics, scholarship to conceal not only the subsidy which nature of the Japanese the manipulative in the lives of its subjects living in America.35 of both name

intervention government's The first major scholarly work was the sociologist Rose Hum

(1960), which, of America an important and insightful In 1967, Betty Lee Sung, who advance.36 not earn her doctorate sixteen years, in sociology for another would a popular history, Mountain Gold: The Story of the Chinese of published

created by a native-born Asian American in the United States Lee's, The Chinese marred by many factual errors, was although

Daniels

13

in America, which gave, for the first time, an accurate the Chinese American breadth of experience.37 The and development 1980s has been of Asian American

picture

of

the

studies programs in the a growing preponderance of accompanied by Americans the leading authorities in the still relatively new among The prominence and authority of such scholars as Sucheng Chan, and Ronald all trained Okihiro, Takaki, for younger academics. vided role-models acceptance Association of in traditional

1970s Asian field. Gary

Symptomatic the field, it is now possible for an American Historical as a specialization. to check off Asian American member

pro disciplines, of the growing

one can also check African American, and Minor Chicano, (Incidently, but NOT of more significance, there are now immigration.) ity, Perhaps Asian American studies series at three university presses? ongoing two other presses, Washington and Illinois, and Stanford?and Temple, Asian American books The burgeoning California, publish regularly. historical literature is being produced, Asian American for the most Asian American of them third or fourth scholars, many part, by young generation Republic Americans, although there are also a growing number of

scholarswho have had their initial training inAsia, primarily the People's
of China, and have earned Ph.D.s at American institutions. even a glance at mainstream demonstrates that And, yet, scholarship Iwill give three examples the neglect of Asian Americans continues. of two from general textbooks, and one from our own jour what I mean, nal. In a 1991 textbook since 1945, William constitute fundamental not mention text. A footnote race covering United H. Chafe emphasizes reference points American States history that "gender, for understanding," in some individual for the period class and race but he does

even one Asian

this by noting supposedly justifies covers a wide this book range of ethnic backgrounds, egory of on Afro-Americans in highlighting the importance focuses specifically or of race in American immigration society."38 He also fails to discuss changes Power: 1995 text, Liberty, Equality, six historians write: "We have tried A History of the American People, not to ghettoize of women, Indians, [sic] the concerns and achievements These are and other minorities." African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, For example, in James M. fulfilled. but rarely intentions, good on "Reconstruction, there is no dis McPherson's 1863-1877," chapter the deliberate in Asian American cussion of a crucial episode history, exclusion of "Asians" from the eligible classes in the expanded version in immigration law. to their in the preface Similarly,

500 pages of that "while the cat

14

Journal of American

Ethnic History

/ Fall 1997

of the naturalization necessary.39

statute whose

revision

the 14th Amendment were

made

This made Asians the only racial group who "aliens to citizenship." ineligible for my final example, in a paper first presented at the 17th And, of Historical in Madrid Sciences and then pub International Congress lished in an Italian journal and in the Journal Ethnic His of American distinguished quite scholars of American under immigration, the rubric of "The writing Invention an of

essay perceptive not only to ignore Asian Americans Ethnicity," managed but also did not cite even one work that focused on Asian nature. count

tory, five otherwise

in their text, in Americans

their seventy-six almost all of which were of a bibliographical footnotes, Each of these distinguished scholars is, of course, well aware of in American the presence then can one ac of Asians society.40 How

deliberate for such a glaring and seemingly omission? The answer I think, at least two-fold. is, In the first place, the entire historiographical tradition of American which less than eighty years old?has, tradition is until immigration?a on Europeans. almost exclusively The first concentrated very recently, two generations excluded Asians gration almost historians of as we have seen, generally historians, immigration from the immigrant canon. Most immi contemporary and racism, but tend, reject both nativism explicitly assume until that, for most of the American "European" were interchangeable. past, the

to reflexively, terms "immigrant" and In the second place, were born descendants As late as 1940

and their American quite recently Asians a minuscule but portion of the total population. there were only about a quarter million Asian Ameri

of 1 percent (.0019) of the mainland cans, or less than two-tenths popu and Asian seemed permanently halted by restric lation,41 immigration tive immigration and other students of our immi laws. Thus, historians as an aberra off Asian grant past became used to writing immigration tion. In addition, many, of the historians of immigration perhaps most, wrote about their own ethnic groups, and, even today, all but a handful are Euro-Americans to of historians of immigration with a propensity identify Perhaps she identifies puts it best when a persistent motif in American culture, the notion that Asian Americans are "perpetual immigrants" or "foreigners within."42 to the 1990 census, close to two-thirds of the nearly seven According were million Asian Americans than half of the and more immigrants immigrants had arrived in the previous decade. Almost none of these the immigrant the literary past with Europe. scholar Lisa Lowe

Daniels

15

immigrants Americans, they have dants

Island. Yet, for millions of Asian through Angel a symbol of what Island is their predecessors and Angel as Ellis Island has been a symbol for descen experienced, just and Irish immigrants who came before Ellis existed, to be a symbol for immigrants, including Asian Ameri arrived since it closed as an immigrant reception center. never replace it. But Ellis Island as the universal in the vast for Angel be found symbol of surely a place must somewhere iconogra Island.

had come

of German

and it continues cans, who have Island will Angel

immigration, phy of the American

nor should

experience

NOTES
1. Rudolph J. Vecoli, "The Lady and the Huddled Masses: The Statue of Lib erty as a Symbol of Immigration," in The Statue of Liberty Revisited ed., Wilton S. Dillon and Neil G. Kotier (Washington, D.C., 1994); pp. 34-69. See also other essays in that volume and John Higham, "The Transformation of the Statue of Liberty," in his Send These toMe: Immigrants in Urban America rev. ed., (Balti
more, 1984), pp. 71-80.

2. George V. Svejda, Castle Garden as an Immigrant Depot, 1855-1890 (Wash ington, D.C., 1968) and Thomas M. Pitkin, Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island (New York, 1975). 3. F. Ross Holland, Idealists, Scoundrels, and the Lady: An Insider's View of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Project (Urbana, 111.,1993). 4. For the Page Law and female Chinese immigration before 1882 see two articles by George A. Peffer, "Forbidden Families: Emigration Experiences of Chi nese Women under the Page Law," Journal of American Ethnic History 6 (Fall 1986): 28-46 and "From Under the Sojourner's Shadow: A Historiographical Study of Chinese Female Immigration to America, 1852-1882," ibid., 11 (Spring 1992):
41-67.

5. Dorene Askin, "Historical Report: Angel Island Immigration Station," mimeo, California Department of Parks and Recreation, Sacramento, 3 June 1977, p. 1. This report and other unattributed copies of archival documents are courtesy of Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley, Chief Historian, National Park Service. Other vital help has
come from Marian Smith, Historian, Immigration and Naturalization Service. Tele

gram, Fred Watts, Jr., to Department of Commerce and Labor, 3 June 1909, RG 85, Box 92, Folder 52270/21, entry 9, National Archives. 6. Much of the construction history is recounted in U.S. Department of Com
merce and Labor. Bureau of of Immigration Commissioner General Immigration 30 December and Annual and Naturalization, of Report ended Labor for Year the Fiscal 1904 as cited in Askin, "Historical to Commissioner Commissioner of the 30 Re

June
House port." 7.

1910, (Washington, D.C.

of Representatives, Luther C. Steward, [?],

1910), pp. 132 ff. Victor H. Metcalf

to Speaker,

Acting Passed

Commissioner, Assistant

San

Francisco, to Acting

General of Immigration, 19December

8. M.W. Glavine

1910, 22 pp.
Surgeon

Immigration, Angel Island, 21 November 1910, 8 pp. 9. Caminetti, "Memorandum for the Secretary," 15 July 1915, 8 pp. 10. Charles McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Dis

16 Journal of American

Ethnic History

/ Fall 1997

crimination inNineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, Calif., 1994); and Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill, N.C. 1995). I have commented on these and other relevant works of legal scholarship in "Ah Sin and His Lawyers," Reviews in American History, 23 (1995): 472-7. 11. Charles J.McClain and Laurene Wu McClain, "The Chinese Contribution to the Development of American Law," in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chi nese Community inAmerica, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 21-22. 12. Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 3, 106. 13. Immigration officials constantly complained about the immigrants' agility in evading the law and kept careful counts. The district director in San Francisco
wrote that:

Covering a period of eight years, record information shows that 6,559 Chi nese returning from China claimed on reentry to have 17,440 sons and 1,258 daughters of which numbers 13,448 sons and 1,115 daughters were shown to be in China. Edwin Haff to Commissioner,
Archives.

INS, 27 January 1934, in RG 85, Box 382, National

14. Act of 11 September 1957. 15. The first of these was Victor and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ ':A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (New York, 1973). 16. Commissioner-General Daniel J. Keefe set out policy for examining Asians at San Francisco in an August 1910 memo: I. To be examined on the boat: a. officials; b. exempts holding section 6 certificates; c. natives holding return certificates under Rule 39; d. alleged wives and children holding
return certificates under Rule 39; e. domiciled merchants (or teachers or

students) with return papers; f. alleged wives and children of merchants holding return certificates; g. Japanese holding passports. II. To be inspected at Angel Island:
a. returning domiciled natives whether alleged laborers "raw" whether or holding return without certificates return or not; b. c. returning certificates;

alleged wives and children of natives; d. all others. RG 85, Box 170, Folder 52691/24, National Archives. 17. JohnW. Foster, "The Chinese Boycott," Atlantic Monthly,
27.

97 (1906):

118

18. A committee of "white" San Francisco merchants, including shipping mag nates Robert Dollar andWilliam Matson, investigated conditions on Angel island in
August, 1910, and reported and or that the examinations were . . unreasonable, the eightmaiden to answer an impossibility.. was the questions correctly of a merchant is asked his grandmother's the names has not been

ten-year-old on both father's and mother's side, .. .Then a block or two distant. the father, who . . . to corroborate is asked which is simply years, name

son

of people living at home for

impossible.

Committee of San Francisco Merchants, "Report on Angel 170, Folder 52961/24-B, National Archives.
19. Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar S. Straus

Island," RG 85, Box

to Secretary of

explained

Daniels

17

State Elihu Root "that the theory upon which the Department has proceeded is that a Chinese woman married to an American citizen, although still a Chinese person politically as well as racially, ought to be allowed to join her husband in the United
States, Archives. out of deference to his right to her companionship."

Straus to Root, 24 February

1908, RG 85, Box

164, Folder 52903/42, National

20. Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim and Judy Yung, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (1980; reprint ed., Seattle, 1991). Other significant publications on the island include: L. Ling-Chi Wang, "The Yee Version of Poems from the Chinese Immigration Station," Asian American Review (1976): pp. 117-26; Connie Young Yu, "Rediscovered Voices: Chinese Immigrants and Angel Island," Amerasia Journal, 4; 2 (1977): 123-39; Judy Yung, "A Bowlful of Tears. Chinese Women Immigrants on Angel Island," Frontiers, 2 (1977): 52 55; Him Mark Lai, "Island of Immortals: Chinese Immigrants and the Angel Island 57 (1978): 88-103; and Charles Immigration Station," California History, Wollenberg, "Immigration through the Port of San Francisco," and Hilary Conroy, "A Comment," Forgotten Doors: The Other Ports of Entry in the United States, ed. M. Mark Stolarik (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 143-55,156-60. 21. Lai et al., Island, Poem # 46, p. 162.
22. This is not a new observation. Moses Rischin, in his perceptive essay,

"Immigration, Migration, and Minorities in California: A Reassessment," Pacific Historical Review, 41 (1972): 71-90, makes this point well at pp. 78-89, and in 1988 Charles Wollenberg wrote, inForgotten Doors, at p. 149: Angel Island was ... not the Ellis Island of theWest, a receiving point for
most west coast immigrants of all nationalities.... it was a peculiar product

of the Chinese Exclusion Act, whose restrict Chinese immigration.

primary purpose was

to control and

23. For an earlier historiographical description see Roger Daniels, "American Historians and East Asian Immigrants," in The Asian American: The Historical
Experience ed. Norris Hundley, Jr. (Santa Barbara, 1976), pp. 1-25. For the most

recent such essay see Sucheng Chan, "Asian American Historiography," Pacific Historical Review, 65 (1996):363-99. 24. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 7, 1860-1890 (San Fran cisco, 1890), p. 336 {Works, vol. 24). 25. Bancroft, Retrospection, Political and Personal, (New York, 1912), pp. 345-74. For a fuller view, see JohnW. Caughey, Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historian of the West (Berkeley, Calif, 1946). 26. Woodrow Wilson, History of theAmerican People (New York, 1901), p. 185. 27. As cited in IraKipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912 (New York, 1952), p. 279. 28. Selig Perlman, A History of Trade Unionism in the United States (New
York, 1922), p. 62. Dan La Botz called this quotation to my attention.

29. 30. York, 31.

138.

Edith Abbott, Immigration: Select Documents (Chicago, 1924), p. ix. Carl F. Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (New 1940), p. 468. Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (New York, 1957), p.

32. G?nther Barth, Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States, 1850-1870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). Barth's identically titled dissertation was accepted in 1962.

18 Journal of American

Ethnic History

/ Fall 1997

in California, 2nd. ed. 33. Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement (Urbana, 111., 1939, 1973); Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley, Calif, 1969); and Alexander
Saxton, The Peter Indispensable Irons, Justice Enemy: Labor The and the Anti-Chinese the Japanese Movement Internment in Cali Cases

fornia
34.

(Berkeley, Calif.,

1971).
at War. Story of

(New York, 1983). 35. Yamoto Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States: A Critical Study of the Problems of the Japanese Immigrants and Their Children (Stanford, Calif., 1932). For a recent brief biography and a collection of his writings, see Gordon H. Chang, Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and his Internment Writings, 1942-1945 (Stanford, 1997). 36. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong, 1960). 37. Betty Lee Sung, Mountain of Gold: The Story of the Chinese in America (New York, 1967). 38. William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II (New York, 1991), p. vi. Similarly, in a bibliographical essay of thirteen pages, his paragraph on oppressed groups includes two books on American Indians and five
on Mexican Americans, but none on Asian in another Americans place, James or two works M. on other on the of the newer It does groups. immigrant Americans. of the Japanese 39. John M. Murrin, include, Paul E. incarceration

Johnson,

McPherson,

Gary

Gerstle,

Emily S. Rosenberg, and Norman L. Rosenberg, Liberty, Equality, Power: A His tory of the American People (New York, 1995). 40. Kathleen Neils Conzen, David A. Gerber, Ewa Morawska, George E. Pozzetta, Rudolph J. Vecoli, "The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the USA," Altreitalie: International Review of Studies on the Peoples of Italian Origin in the World, 3 (1990): 37-63. Pozzetta, for example, has published articles on both Chinese and Japanese in Florida, and Morawska's encyclopedic historiographical essay, "The Sociology and Historiography of Immigration," in Immigration Recon sidered: History, Sociology and Politics (New York, 1990), pp. 187-238, contains
many almost references perverse. to works on Asian example, Americans. Vecoli's The essay, refusal to notice Asians seems From In n. 2, for "European Americans:

Immigrants to Ethnics" is cited as covering "historical writings on immigration" [my italics] while my companion essay in the same volume, "The Asian American William H. Cartwright and Richard L. Watson, Experience," is ignored. Both are in Jr., The Reinterpretation of American History and Culture (Washington, D.C., 1973). 41. Persons living in Hawaii are not included in U.S. population figures until after the grant of statehood in 1959. In 1940 there were nearly 250,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants living in Hawaii where they were about 60 per
cent N.C. of the population.

42. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

1996), pp. 1-36.

(Durham,