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Words of Hope
Angel Island was a nightmare.
Most people say us immigrants should be grateful we were even allowed into the United States, and that’s reasonable; the United States is generally a better place to be than the place I came from, where I lived in poverty and had to work from dawn to dusk on rough farms. Still, it’s debatable whether finally being able to live in the States was worth all the sadness and pain that came from being trapped in that dreadful building for months. Perhaps I would think differently if things were different, if we were treated better than animals being gathered, waiting to be transported to a new barn. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
Every experience on Angel Island was a bad one. My first memory of the general experience was the journey there; I still vividly remember the boat, the feeling of my stomach churning as the powerful waves rocked us back and forth, the stench of crowds of people that have only been washed with seawater, the terrified expressions of my family and others around us. The only thing that had kept me hopeful was the thought that once we arrived in the United States, we would finally be free of the depression that we had been trapped with in our hometown.
That hope was crushed the moment I stepped off the ship. I remember holding on to my wife’s hand with one of mine, my daughter’s hand with the other, and my iron-hard determination to not let go of either of them as we finally stepped foot on Angel Island. But that determination did nothing to stop the Americans from ripping them from my grasp, while explaining—in a language that I did not understand then—that men and women were to be separated during their stay. And so I went through the horrible experiences of Angel Island without my family by my side.
The beginning of my life at Angel Island was even worse than the journey there. Before we could even try to get settled in, we were required to complete a physical examination, where we were checked for parasitic diseases and other contagious illnesses that put the health of others at risk. The doctor had instructed us to strip off all clothing, which was humiliating. I had already felt exposed enough being in a new place surrounded by a race of people I wasn’t used to; my clothing was the last bit of protection I had, and I’m sure the other immigrants felt the same. It was torture standing exposed in a room full of people while I was poked with needles and examined repeatedly. I wasn’t sure if I had been infected with a disease of some sort while I was on the boat, so during the entire examination I feared the doctor would find something that would cause them to deport me back to China, forcing me to leave my family behind. But, much to my relief, the doctor had nodded his head and motioned for me to go back against the wall, and I spent the remainder of that time watching as the others went through the same torture I had just went through, some of them being diagnosed and sent back to the ships to endure the same dreadful journey of traveling here all over again.
One thing that became clear to me very quickly once I had arrived at Angel Island was that poems were a common thing there. There were poems everywhere; on the walls, bedposts, bathroom stalls, sometimes even on the floor. Some were written in ink, most were carved. Almost all were in Chinese, but there were some written in other Asian languages too. The words of the poems were sad, burdened with the experiences of loss and suffering. They were a bad sign; once I had read a few of them, I knew for sure that there was to be no happiness during my stay there, for there had been no happiness for the ones who had written the poems. And, a short while after I had arrived there, I began to carve my own poems. I would sit on my horribly uncomfortable cot late at night and carve words into whatever space there was left on the walls of my room, which I shared with about twelve other immigrants who had taken up the other spaces on the walls with their own poems. In my poems, I would speak of the sorrow I felt when I laid awake at night, the loneliness when I thought of my wife and daughter, the misery of living in these conditions and, every once in a while, I’d write words of hope for the newly arriving immigrants, although I possessed none.
© Kayla Minder
Most people say us immigrants should be grateful we were even allowed into the United States, and that’s reasonable; the United States is generally a better place to be than the place I came from, where I lived in poverty and had to work from dawn to dusk on rough farms. Still, it’s debatable whether finally being able to live in the States was worth all the sadness and pain that came from being trapped in that dreadful building for months. Perhaps I would think differently if things were different, if we were treated better than animals being gathered, waiting to be transported to a new barn. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
Every experience on Angel Island was a bad one. My first memory of the general experience was the journey there; I still vividly remember the boat, the feeling of my stomach churning as the powerful waves rocked us back and forth, the stench of crowds of people that have only been washed with seawater, the terrified expressions of my family and others around us. The only thing that had kept me hopeful was the thought that once we arrived in the United States, we would finally be free of the depression that we had been trapped with in our hometown.
That hope was crushed the moment I stepped off the ship. I remember holding on to my wife’s hand with one of mine, my daughter’s hand with the other, and my iron-hard determination to not let go of either of them as we finally stepped foot on Angel Island. But that determination did nothing to stop the Americans from ripping them from my grasp, while explaining—in a language that I did not understand then—that men and women were to be separated during their stay. And so I went through the horrible experiences of Angel Island without my family by my side.
The beginning of my life at Angel Island was even worse than the journey there. Before we could even try to get settled in, we were required to complete a physical examination, where we were checked for parasitic diseases and other contagious illnesses that put the health of others at risk. The doctor had instructed us to strip off all clothing, which was humiliating. I had already felt exposed enough being in a new place surrounded by a race of people I wasn’t used to; my clothing was the last bit of protection I had, and I’m sure the other immigrants felt the same. It was torture standing exposed in a room full of people while I was poked with needles and examined repeatedly. I wasn’t sure if I had been infected with a disease of some sort while I was on the boat, so during the entire examination I feared the doctor would find something that would cause them to deport me back to China, forcing me to leave my family behind. But, much to my relief, the doctor had nodded his head and motioned for me to go back against the wall, and I spent the remainder of that time watching as the others went through the same torture I had just went through, some of them being diagnosed and sent back to the ships to endure the same dreadful journey of traveling here all over again.
One thing that became clear to me very quickly once I had arrived at Angel Island was that poems were a common thing there. There were poems everywhere; on the walls, bedposts, bathroom stalls, sometimes even on the floor. Some were written in ink, most were carved. Almost all were in Chinese, but there were some written in other Asian languages too. The words of the poems were sad, burdened with the experiences of loss and suffering. They were a bad sign; once I had read a few of them, I knew for sure that there was to be no happiness during my stay there, for there had been no happiness for the ones who had written the poems. And, a short while after I had arrived there, I began to carve my own poems. I would sit on my horribly uncomfortable cot late at night and carve words into whatever space there was left on the walls of my room, which I shared with about twelve other immigrants who had taken up the other spaces on the walls with their own poems. In my poems, I would speak of the sorrow I felt when I laid awake at night, the loneliness when I thought of my wife and daughter, the misery of living in these conditions and, every once in a while, I’d write words of hope for the newly arriving immigrants, although I possessed none.
© Kayla Minder
