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Angel Island reveals history of harrowing memories
June 8, 1997
Web posted at: 4:53 p.m. EDT (2053 GMT)
SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- Dale Ching was an energetic 16-year-old when he first arrived at Angel Island, where an estimated 175,000 Asians were detained from 1910 to 1940 under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The site brings back harrowing memories -- the separation from family members, the twisted barbed-wire fences, the feeling of permanent isolation. Ching, who was a third-generation U.S. citizen, spent more than three months in the compound and never planned to return after his 1937 release.
But today he volunteers at the island, telling others what he tried to forget.
Gazing out of one of the compound's windows, Ching recalls the scene. "I'm scared and I'm worried," he says, as if it were 1937 again. "I wonder when I'm going to my father and brothers."
He hopes his volunteer efforts will help preserve the island's history so that future generations of Asian Americans will not forget their ancestors' struggle.
"I'm at that age where I won't be here too long. Who is going to tell the children about it?" he said.
Ellis Island of the West
Located in San Francisco Bay, Angel Island served as a point of entry to the United States, much like Ellis Island on the East Coast. But Angel Island also acted as a holding cell for thousands of Chinese and Asian immigrants.
According to the Angel Island homepage on the Web, the compound was built to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882, which denied entry to Chinese. The compound opened in 1910, four years after the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. Many Asian Americans were on the island because their proofs of U.S. citizenship were destroyed in the quake.
Ships would ferry immigrants to and from the island every day.
"You were hoping (to) get on that ferry and get away from here," Ching says.
The compound was closed in 1940 after a large fire swept through several buildings. The Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. The island now features a museum where scenes from the past have been re-created.
For Ching, history here should never be forgotten.
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