There are thousands of poems

Composed in these walls.

They are all cries of complaint and sadness.

—Fragment from one of 300 poems found etched in Chinese on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station.

Ellis Island’s story has become a happy cliché: Twelve million wide-eyed immigrants journey to New York harbor, endure multiple examinations, a babble of languages, and an agonizing uncertainty about their fate. But at day’s end, nearly all go on to new lives in America.

		In fact, 98 percent of Ellis Island’s immigrants were admitted, and that tale is on display in the island’s museum. But another immigrant story with a very different ending is now being told there. It is a story of cruelty, detention, and despair at what was once misleadingly called “The Ellis Island of the West”: Northern California’s Angel Island. “Tin See Do: The Angel Island Immigration Experience,” is a modest exhibit of period photos, haunting haiku-like poems and contemporary art. The exhibit’s information panels explain that the small island in San Francisco Bay was created not to welcome Chinese immigrants, but to deter them. While Europeans, Japanese and Koreans passed through Angel Island within a day or two, the typical Chinese stay was two weeks. Many spent months, and some up to two years. About 10 percent of the Chinese immigrants were deported. Angel Island was a pretty prison, dotted with palm trees and abundant greenery, tantalizingly close to the California coast. But its guard tower, locked gates, and barbed-wire-topped fences reveal the island’s real purpose.
Between 1910, when the Angel Island station opened, and 1948, when it closed after a fire, more than 175,000 Chinese immigrants spent time on the island. This so-called immigration center grew out of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the only American immigration law ever to exclude a specific nationality. It passed because of fears that Chinese workers would steal jobs intended for America’s “White Labor,” as one racist cartoon put it. Despite the law, blood relatives of Chinese-American citizens were still permitted entry. Some Chinese immigrated as “paper relatives,” using forged documents. Trying to unmask these paper sons and daughters, Angel Island inspectors conducted grueling interviews, often lasting many days. The exhibit’s photos are revealing. In one, a young man struggles through an interrogation. In another, a dozen Chinese men wait with their shirts off as an official conducts a physical exam. I’ve seen numerous photos of Ellis detainees, but none show so many immigrants unclothed. In ways small and large, one senses that Angel Island officials wanted to strip these immigrants of their dignity. The exhibit also features Chinese-American artist Flo Oy Wong’s who memorialized Angel Island immigrants. Wong’s most interesting piece is one in which she uses suitcases and ransom-note typography to tell her mother’s “paper sister” story. But the most memorable of all are those Chinese poems, uncovered years later and so full of anguish: This place is called the island of immortals When, in fact, this mountain wilderness is a prison. Once you see the open net, why throw yourself in? It is only because of empty pockets, I can do nothing else. “Tin See Do: The Angel Island Immigration Experience,” through May 31 at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum (212-363-3200). Open daily, 9 am –5 pm. Free. For ferry schedule, call 212-269-5755.