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
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27502236
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No Lamps Were Lit for Them:
Angel Island and the Historiography
of Asian American
Immigration
ROGER DANIELS
TWO
Liberty
islands in New York harbor, Ellis
Island and
adjacent
are
to
home
the
twin
icons
of
American
Island,
immigration.
the Statue of Liberty, erected on what was then called Bedloe's
TINY,
Although
Island in 1886, was
intended
its
by its French
donors
to be a monument
in the harbor
to
and Emma
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
with
im
underlined
the statue's association
Island, merely
The refurbishment
of the Statue for its centennial
and the
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,
is an immigration
another island, which
icon of a different
is, however,
as
sort. If the statue?"The
call
her?and
Ellis Island are
many
Lady"
icons
of
that
of welcome,
other island, three thou
acceptance,
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
those years it
the site of the Angel
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
was
It
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
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
the easiest
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.
4
Journal of American
and smugglers
used it to avoid Spanish, Mexican,
customs officials.
For a short time there was a cattle
water
and firewood,
and later, American
ranch on the island, and it has had three different
to 1962?the
For a century?1863
island was
An Army
military.
/ Fall 1997
Ethnic History
post,
eventually
named
lighthouses.
used by the American
Fort McDowell,
was
estab
lished there during the Civil War. During World War I andWorld War
World
Base
were
held on it, as were prisoners
of war during
a
was
its
final
Nike Missile
in
there
use,
II, and,
military
on the island between
1954 and 1962. When
the missile
base was
II civilian
internees
War
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
dismantled
But
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
the first effective
restrictive
pieces of American
legislation;
immigration
the legal history of immigration
turned.
the hinge on which
the
of
With
the passage of the exclusion
Chinese
labor
act,
immigration
ers was outlawed
for ten years; this was renewed for another ten years in
the latter was
1892, and the law was made
"permanent"
early
in Theodore
Roosevelt's
administration. Beginning in the 1870s Chinese immigrants in difficulty
with
the
immigration
warehouse
two-story
and located
regulations
leased from
at the end of a wharf
were
held
in a ramshackle
wooden
the Pacific Mail
Company
Steamship
on the San Francisco waterfront.
Itwas
about 100 feet square, held
called "the shed." The building,
commonly
men
on the
a
on
at
to
with
the
first
floor and women
200
time,
up
people
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
was
a
it
that
"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
In
the
Island.
1904 Congress
instructed
Angel
facility
pose-built
to
H.
and
and
of
Commerce
Victor
Labor,
Metcalf,
investigate
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
in the process
officials
when
waterfront
J. Mathews.6
1910 the facility was
architect, Walter
By
It was
located on the island's north shore at China Cove and
an Oakland
opened.
consisted
of a number
administration
building,
of wooden
hospital,
detention
barracks,
buildings?the
a wharf.
Soon
and powerhouse?and
5
Daniels
after
twelve
tanks were
supposedly
Ellis Island
tion was
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
San
Francisco
took
from
forty-five minutes.
ferry trip
officials
local immigration
In the very year that the station opened
The
to
of
the
about
the
buildings
facility.
inadequacy
complain
began
brick.
The
district wrote
the man in charge of the San Francisco
were,
immigration
in
on 19 December
vermin
and
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
ten per
one
air
for
with
space
enough
dormitory
overcrowding:
were
sons was equipped with fifty-four
which
all
of
sometimes
bunks,
of Immigration Anthony
years later Commissioner-General
"the re
recommended
and formally
made
similar complaints
on the
situated
of the station ... to fireproof,
moval
sanitary buildings
the
United
States."9
mainland
upon property already owned by
Despite
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
ferried
to the mainland
Station was
would
have been
and the history of
whether
ended. One wonders
allowed
to go on for so long
if the facility had held mostly Europeans.
at this time, to be precise
about
It is not possible,
Some
workers
Island.
who
passed through Angel
people
the number
connected
of
with
is
but this figure
it at 500,000
the state park have estimated
persons,
own
current
too
is
that
much
100,000 persons,
guess
perhaps
high. My
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
Journal of American
6
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
sometimes
who
but
Ethnic History
the
gets
/ Fall 1997
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
never
the
Island
Chinese
who
consti
years,
during
Angel
perspective,
tuted as much as 1 percent of the nation's
than
foreign born, were more
4 percent
of those deported.
Although the bulk of the literature about the island speaks chiefly if
not exclusively
about Chinese, many
also
ropean,
passed through. The meal
two mess
were
tables.
wooden
The
its tables were
and Asian
other?called
covered?was
women.
pared by Chinese
Perhaps 6,000
so-called picture
cut off
married
and with
menus
less meat
The Asian
provided.
and potatoes, was pre
cooks.
were Japanese women, most of them the
came
to the United
who
States as a result of the
brides,
of 1907-1908
act of 1924
until the immigration
Agreement
were
women
These
who
had been
Japanese
immigration.
Gentlemen's
all
of the Asians
returning
their status could
from
to men
some
they had never seen, although
In addition, a significant
number of Japanese
in Japan were held on the island
from schooling
by proxy, often
rejoining husbands.
Americans
people
arrangements
testify
by Asian men, who ate from bare
the "oil cloth dining room" because
in separate seatings, by Europeans
seatings testified not only to the racist
bread
American
and Eu
used,
The
served without
food,
until
used
Asian
to this. There
separate
of the time but also to the different
notions
were
one was
halls:
other nationalities,
be verified.
Added
a relatively
India, other Asians,
and a few from the Caribbean.
immigrants,
of the immigrant
station
include
to these were
small number
The
some Koreans,
of European
photographic
pictures of Turkish,
of the non-Chinese
Serbian,
archives
Russian,
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
and Jamaican
little
to appear, or when
there were medical
problems,
or
were these women
sent
back.
of
time
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
a husband
failed
travelers, and persons who
to the
Chinese
immigrants
like oppressed
groups everywhere,
and their families,
students, legitimate
claim American
citizenship. Would-be
States
in the exclusion
era,
Daniels
7
a wide
array of resistance
developed
them called "laws harsh as tigers."
McClain
Charles
with
to combat
strategies
From the mid-1870s
and Lucy Salyer have shown
of their attorneys,
demonstrated
the help
to American
cessfully
institutions
one of
on, as both
us, Chinese
immigrants,
an ability to adapt suc
the courts to an extraordi
by utilizing
and Laurene Wu McClain
nary degree.10 As McClain
what
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
Contrary
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
in
than
in
results
interested
establishing legal prin
probably
getting
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
on
cases
succession of
gave rise to sharper delineations of limits
govern
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
form of resistance
Another
was
invented
after the San Francisco
earth
quake and fire of 18-19 April 1906, destroyed most of the city's vital
sented
A
records.
statistics
themselves
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
own
rela
not
but
male
other
their
travelers brought
in,
offspring
only
some
tives, while
sold
the "slots"
to pass themselves
grants managed
The persons
merchants.
American
were
known
in the Chinese
to the highest
off as close
bidder.
relatives
thus admitted,
American
community
there were
Other
immi
of Chinese
under false names,
as paper sons, al
some paper daugh
also, as Judy Yung has noted,
though
were convinced
that some 90 percent of the
officials
ters.12 Immigration
were
claims of citizenship
Chinese
and, given the number of
fraudulent,
States before
of child-bearing
Chinese women
1906,
age in the United
a
of
oral
deal
is
also
There
been
well
have
correct.13
great
may
they
testimony
about
individual
paper
sons
in recent works
about
the Chinese
Journal of American
8
American
fession
viving
Ethnic History
/ Fall 1997
those written after the so-called
"con
community,
especially
some
sur
the
of
Eisenhower
administration14
enabled
program"
sons
to
their status.15 When
Maxine
paper
regularize
Hong
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
War
points
seeking admission
through San Francisco were subjected
scrutiny and delay, and almost all of them were detained on
Chinese
to detailed
Island.
Even
elite
student visas, whose
arriving with
statute
both
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,
Angel
Chinese
to enter was
to two weeks
jected
in Georgia,
College
can missionaries.17
The
niques
American
confinement
even
immigration
to deal with
though
service
when
she was
she came
a number
developed
Chinese
to attend Wesleyan
two white Ameri
traveling with
For
of
those
tech
interrogative
derivative
claiming
immigrants.
both "father" and "son" would
inten
be grilled
citizenship,
about even minute details of their biographies
and of the putative
sively
of their origin.18 These
village
on
for
weeks
and months?the
go
and
interrogations
individual
longest
investigations
confinement
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
pages?which
tried to isolate
mainland.
Oral
times messages
Chinese
cooks.
sheets?in
some
cases
books
of more
than a hundred
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
or
of merchants
wives
American
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
9
Daniels
ted.19 A
statute
1930
the entrance of such
the ban by allowing
1924.
had taken place before 26 May
women
were
admitted
about 60 such
relaxed
long as the marriage
then until Pearl Harbor
as
wives
From
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
to
his
historical
interest
of
significance.
Failing
they
superiors, he
State Uni
got in touch with Professor George Araki of San Francisco
versity,
who
helped
generate
interest
among
five
resulted,
years
pressure
Community
from the California
dollar appropriation
the local Asian
Americans.
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
some Chinese
lan
Their
had
been
poems.
rediscovery?there
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
and Chinese
glish
the volume
tions,
a wonderful
annota
poems, with English
and
from a number of oral histories
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
to cross
I hastened
How was
ocean.
the American
I to know that the western
barbarians had lost their hearts, and
reason?
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
Journal of American
10
Ethnic History
/ 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
Similar
treatment
Asian
1965.
invidious
immigrants
often
can be
seen
in the ways
in which
historians
have
from Asia.
written?about
not
written?and
has different
That historiography
immigrants
than those which govern American
Instead of
history generally.
about
federalists
and
and
of
paradigms
whigs,
proponents
progressives
of
the
Asian
be
divided
into
America
consensus,
may
historiography
four phases or periods: a period of scorn, lasting into the 1920s; a period
rhythms
and
lasting into the 1950s; and two contemporary
one
one
of
but
limited
of
and
awareness,
increasing
overlapping
phases,
which
Asian American
have
characterized
the
in
history,
historiography
of benign
recent
neglect,
decades.23
I will
people
some representative
these periods with
the current state and status of Asian Ameri
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)
historians
of his History
"alien in every
of California
sense":
(1890)
he wrote
that
the Chinese
were
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
American
of
in
be what post-war
Asians
life:
should
proper place
they
Germans
called gastarbeiter,
workers.
guest
"We want
he insisted, speaking about both Chinese
and
the Asiatic,"
our
we
want
"for
and
when
it
is
him
finished
work,
low-grade
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
animal overbalances
As for those from "the
the mental."
were
not
of
the
Chinese
"anarchistic
cesspools
Europe"
dirty and re
like
the
and
like
the Slav, or
Italian, [nor] thieving
vengeful
vermiparous
was sure,
and
like
the
Celt
and
he
Teuton," and,
intermeddling
impudent
or
women
a
to
not
would
make
love
American
"breed
few
million
they
for American
yellow piccaninnies
citizenship."25
whom
of
"the
of course,
Bancroft,
the early twentieth
was
a political
but the progressives
reactionary,
were
not
different when
century
significantly
it
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
as "an
horde of alien
inflowing
the
Wisconsin-school
scholar,
immigrants
sophisticated
could write
scabs."27
labor
In 1922,
economist
a more
Selig
that:
Perlman,
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
even
there were,
often those with
sure,
most
writers,"
business
a conflict of races instead of one of classes.28
have become
in the era of
scorn, some "pro-Asian
or
to grind, be it mercantile
even
or sometimes
what seemed
an axe
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
treatment
torical
of Chinese
reform
establishment
in America.
intellectual
Coolidge
who
was an
(1860-1945)
a multitude
of causes.
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
and
and
Mills
She was
Stanford
sociology
College.
Wellesley,
a Republican,
Unitarian,
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,
work. Her
and
social
nine other books on Indians, the woman
question,
work
was
as much
Chinese
movement
hewers
of wood
an attack on the immigrant
leaders of the anti
as itwas a defense of the Chinese, whom
she saw as
and drawers
of water
essential
to middle-class
history as a professional
the two founding
fathers
America.
did little
discipline
im
of professional
Marcus
Lee
that
and
Hansen,
history, George
Stephenson
migration
in a book
immigrants. Edith Abbott,
history was the story of European
rise of immigration
to change the picture. For
The
Journal of American
12
Ethnic History
/ Fall 1997
in 1924, expressed
the prevailing
professional
that
"the
of
should
nicely, asserting
study
immigration
European
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
compiled
attitude
in her "select
include
Chinese
describes,
accurately,
Carl Wittke,
space
documents"
was
exclusion
effected.
statutes by which
any of the fifteen
a
rare
it
is
textbook which
(Even today
the 1882 Exclusion
Act.)
in his 1940 survey, We Who Built America, did devote
to Asian
but
immigration,
in
the
interlude
general
strange
America."30
insisted
account
that it was
of
"but a brief
and
to
the great migrations
consen
in an optimistic,
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
sual mode
seven years later, his student, G?nther Barth discovered
sight."31 And,
were
not immigrants
at all, but sojourners who,
in
that the Chinese
on
troubles
their
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
in
later
laborers
this
included
anti-Chinese
movement;
Roger
vineyard
Stuart Creighton Miller, Alexander
Saxton, and Peter Irons, to
Daniels,
neered
name
scholars writing books
only a few.33 In fact, of the Euro-American
the
the
about Asian Americans
Stanford
1960s, only
sociologist
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
a
at
the
who
Stanford
because
Yamoto
had
chair
Ichihashi,
immigrant,
in
the
subsidized
His
1932
it.
work, Japanese
government
Japanese
United
Ichihashi
created
States,
was
was
a work
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
at great pains
his position
but also
intervention
government's
The first major scholarly work
was the sociologist
Rose Hum
created by a native-born Asian American
in the United States
Lee's, The Chinese
factual errors, was
marred
many
although
by
(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
The
Gold:
Mountain
Story of the Chinese
of
popular history,
published
Daniels
13
in America,
which
gave, for the first time, an accurate
the
Chinese American
breadth of
experience.37
The
of Asian
of
picture
American
studies programs
in the
a
of
accompanied
by
growing preponderance
new
Americans
the
in
authorities
still
the
among
leading
relatively
The prominence
and authority of such scholars as Sucheng Chan,
and
development
1980s has been
and Ronald
all trained
Okihiro,
Takaki,
for younger academics.
vided role-models
acceptance
Association
in traditional
the
1970s
Asian
field.
Gary
pro
disciplines,
of the growing
Symptomatic
the field,
it is now possible
for an American
Historical
as a specialization.
to check off Asian American
member
of
one can also check African American,
and Minor
Chicano,
(Incidently,
more
are now
but
NOT
of
there
immigration.)
ity,
Perhaps
significance,
at
Asian
American
series
three
studies
presses?
ongoing
university
two other presses, Washington
and
Illinois, and Stanford?and
Temple,
Asian
American
books
The
California,
publish
regularly.
burgeoning
historical
literature
is being produced,
Asian American
for the most
scholars, many of them third or fourth
part, by young Asian American
generation
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.
a
even
demonstrates
that
And, yet,
glance at mainstream
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,
Republic
nal.
In a 1991
since 1945, William
constitute
fundamental
not mention
text. A
covering United
H. Chafe emphasizes
textbook
reference
even one Asian
points
American
States
history
that "gender,
for understanding,"
in some
individual
for the period
class and race
but he does
500 pages of
that "while the cat
footnote
this by noting
supposedly
justifies
a
covers
wide
this book
range of ethnic backgrounds,
egory of
on
in
the
focuses
Afro-Americans
specifically
highlighting
importance
or
of race in American
immigration
society."38 He also fails to discuss
race
in immigration
law.
to their
in
the preface
Similarly,
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
are
These
and
other
minorities."
African Americans,
Asians,
Hispanics,
For example,
in James M.
fulfilled.
but rarely
intentions,
good
on
there
is no dis
McPherson's
1863-1877,"
"Reconstruction,
chapter
a
the deliberate
in Asian American
crucial episode
cussion of
history,
exclusion
of "Asians"
from
the eligible
classes
in the expanded
version
Journal of American
14
of the naturalization
statute whose
revision
Ethnic History
/ Fall 1997
the 14th Amendment
made
were
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
Sciences
Madrid
and
International
then pub
Congress
an
lished in
Italian journal and in the Journal
Ethnic His
of American
necessary.39
tory, five
otherwise
distinguished
scholars
of American
under
immigration,
the rubric of "The
essay
perceptive
not only to ignore Asian Americans
Ethnicity,"
managed
but also did not cite even one work that focused on Asian
quite
an
writing
Invention
of
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
nature.
deliberate
for such a glaring and seemingly
omission?
The answer
at
I
least
two-fold.
think,
is,
In the first place,
the entire historiographical
tradition of American
which
less
tradition
is
than eighty years old?has,
until
immigration?a
on Europeans.
almost exclusively
The first
concentrated
very recently,
count
two generations
excluded Asians
gration
almost
historians
as we have seen, generally
historians,
immigration
from the immigrant canon. Most
immi
contemporary
and racism, but tend,
reject both nativism
explicitly
of
to
reflexively,
terms "immigrant"
and
In the second place,
were
born descendants
As
late as
1940
assume
that, for most of the American
"European" were interchangeable.
past,
the
until
and their American
quite recently Asians
a
but
minuscule
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
of
historians
perhaps most,
immigration
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
the immigrant
the literary
past with Europe.
scholar Lisa Lowe
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
Perhaps
immigrants
had
arrived
in the previous
decade.
Almost
none
of
these
Daniels
15
immigrants
Americans,
they have
dants
had come
Island. Yet, for millions
of Asian
through Angel
a
Island is
their predecessors
and
Angel
symbol of what
as
a
Ellis
Island
has
been
for
descen
experienced,
just
symbol
of German
and it continues
cans, who have
Island will
Angel
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
nor should
immigration,
phy of the American
experience
as the universal
Island
Ellis
somewhere
surely
a place must
be found
of
symbol
in the vast
for Angel
iconogra
Island.
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,
Service.
and Naturalization
Immigration
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
June
House
port."
7.
Bureau
Labor.
Commissioner
General
of
of
1910, (Washington, D.C.
C.
1910), pp. 132 ff. Victor H. Metcalf
Steward,
Acting
Glavine
[?],
Passed
1904
Commissioner,
General of Immigration, 19December
8. M.W.
and
30 December
of Representatives,
Luther
Annual
and Naturalization,
of
Report
ended
Labor for
Year
the Fiscal
Immigration
Immigration
as
cited
San
in Askin,
Francisco,
the
30
to Speaker,
"Historical
Re
to Commissioner
1910, 22 pp.
Assistant
Surgeon
to Acting
Commissioner
of
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,
INS, 27 January 1934, in RG 85, Box 382, National
Archives.
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.
merchants
domiciled
(or
or
teachers
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
whether
"raw"
or
return
holding
returning
certificates
return
without
or not;
certificates;
b.
c.
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,
97 (1906):
118
27.
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
unreasonable,
the eight-
that
reported
and
the examinations
to answer
or
were
an impossibility..
was
the questions
correctly
of a merchant
is asked
his grandmother's
ten-year-old
on both father's
and mother's
side,
.. .Then
a block
or two distant.
the father, who
. . .which
to corroborate
is asked
is simply
years,
maiden
name
the names
has
of Commerce
and Labor
Oscar
S. Straus
not
of people
living
at home
for
been
impossible.
Committee of San Francisco Merchants, "Report on Angel
170, Folder 52961/24-B, National Archives.
19. Secretary
. .
son
Island," RG 85, Box
explained
to Secretary
of
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
out
States,
to his
of deference
right
Straus to Root, 24 February
to her
companionship."
1908, RG 85, Box
164, Folder 52903/42, National
Archives.
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
it was
of all nationalities....
of the Chinese Exclusion Act, whose
restrict Chinese immigration.
a peculiar
primary purpose was
product
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
p. 62. Dan
La Botz
called
this quotation
to my
attention.
York,
1922),
29.
30.
York,
31.
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.
138.
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
/ Fall 1997
Ethnic History
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
The
Saxton,
Indispensable
(Berkeley, Calif.,
fornia
Peter
34.
Irons,
Enemy:
Labor
and
The
Story
Movement
the Anti-Chinese
in Cali
1971).
at War.
Justice
of
Internment
the Japanese
Cases
(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,
It does
groups.
immigrant
Americans.
of the Japanese
39.
John
M.
Murrin,
none
but
include,
Paul
E.
on Asian
Americans
in another
place,
Johnson,
James
or
on
M.
other
on
two works
of
the
McPherson,
the
newer
incarceration
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
references
many
almost
perverse.
to works
on Asian
In n. 2, for
example,
Americans.
Vecoli's
The
essay,
refusal
to notice
"European
Asians
Americans:
seems
From
Immigrants to Ethnics" is cited as covering "historical writings on immigration"
[my italics] while my companion essay in the same volume, "The Asian American
Experience," is ignored. Both are inWilliam H. Cartwright and Richard L. Watson,
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
of
the population.
42. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics
N.C.
1996),
pp.
1-36.
(Durham,