March 2004 - Society for California Archaeology

19
Articles
U.S. to claim they had more
children than they actually
Figure 1
did and thereby assisting
“illegal” immigration.
Between 1888 and 1943,
congressional amendments, treaties, and
acts effectively extended the Chinese
Exclusion Act, which led to interrogations,
hearings, appeals, and extended detentions
for Asian immigrants. In 1943, when China
became a wartime ally of the United States,
the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed.
The immigration process at Angel
Island began in the San Francisco Bay, as
immigration officers boarded ships to
inspect passengers’ documents. Those with
questionable documents were ferried to
Angel Island for further examination. At
the island, “whites” were separated from
other races and the Asian population was
separated into Chinese, Japanese, and
“other.” Men and women were kept apart
and not allowed to communicate with each
other until cleared for admission. During
the first years of the station’s operation, the average waiting
period could stretch into months. After complaints by leaders
of the Chinese community in the 1920s, however, the
average waiting time reduced to approximately three weeks.
Figure 2
Site History
The AIIS was touted as the Ellis Island of the West;
however, it was also known as the Guardian of the Western
Gate, as it was overtly designed to control the flow of Chinese
into the country. The station, which officially opened in 1910,
consisted of an administration building, power house,
hospital, wharf, baggage shed, carpentry shop, recreation
areas, water tanks, a reservoir, a mule barn, a separate
detention barracks for Chinese, and three managers’ houses
and nine smaller employee houses designed by Julia Morgan
(Figure 2). The steep topography of the site required the
construction of a total of 27 retaining walls. In 1910, a tenperson
privy was constructed in the Chinese recreation area,
but was removed in 1920 after flush toilets were added to the
barracks. A guard house was constructed northwest of the
Chinese detention barracks in 1930.
The Administration Building was located close to
the wharf, forming the threshold to the AIIS (Figure
3). This building was the largest structure at the
facility and occupied the majority of the flat portion of
the site. It was an imposing, three-story building that
housed a registration room, general office, medical
examination room, Inspector and Doctor’s offices, kitchen,
separate “Chinese” and “European” dining rooms,
employee dormitories, and detention quarters for 100
European immigrants (Figure 4).
An accidental fire destroyed the Administration Building
in 1940. Between 1941 and 1946, the U.S. Army constructed
several new buildings at the site, including a 1600-person
SCA Newsletter 38(1)