Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Coming Next Week! On Monday 12/2, AIISF will be launching our end of year fundraising campaign AND a new opportunity to engrave your family or organization's name on Angel Island. Stay tuned for further details! We hope you'll consider the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation as one of the nonprofits that you support this giving season. Visit www.aiisf.org/donate.

Chinese immigrants detained on Angel Island channeled their sorrow and anguish into poetry. Many immigrants carved their poems into the walls of the detention barracks. You can find this poem and others on the wall in room 105, the former Chinese men’s dormitory Read in Cantonese by Calvin Ong. Translation from "Island" by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung. Island 4: The gold and silver of America is very appealing. Jabbing an awl into the thigh in search of glory, I embarked on the journey. Not only are my one thousand pieces of gold already depleted, but My countenance is blackened. It is surely for the sake of the family. 美洲金銀實可愛 錐股求榮動程來 不第千金曾用盡 犁黑面目為家哉

January 16th, 1914 the ship Chiyo Maru landed in San Francisco. On board was Kane Watanabe. She was on her way to Salinas where she’d live with her future husband, Kunisaku Mineta. Kane had never met Kunisaku before and it wasn’t until January 20th that they we’re actually able to see each other face to face. Kane was a picture bride, a woman who was married to a man in America using a photo as a stand in. Just like today people don’t always match their photographs and it wasn’t uncommon for picture brides to find that their new husbands were much older than their photos. Luckily for Kane, Kunisaku used an accurate photograph. These women were then able to immigrate to the US despite the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 which barred Japanese laborers from entering the country. This wasn’t without barriers though. Kane and Kunisaku’s Japanese marriage wasn’t totally recognized by officials. R.E. Peabody, the chairman of Kane’s Board of Special Inquiry, noted that the couple had to be “…be married according to the laws of California…“ before she could enter the country. So on January 20th 1914 Kane and Kunisaku got married again. Kane and Kunisaku had five children. The youngest being the first Asian American to serve in a presidential cabinet, Norman Mineta.

Recently, AIISF and Angel Island State Park hosted colleageues from the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, Asian American Futures, Bay Area Discovery Museum, California Humanities, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and OF/BY/FOR ALL at the Angel Island Immigration Station. It was wonderful to reconnect and to make new connections. #AngelIsland

Angel Island's Chinese poetry is available to view for the first time with a new web-enhanced guide called the Angel Island Immigration Station Poetry Finder. www.aiisf.org/finder The AIIS Poetry Finder allows you to explore, read, listen to, and reflect on the experiences of Angel Island’s immigrants from inside the detention barracks AND at home. The project features... - Over 140 Chinese poems and their translations - Room maps showing the locations of the building's poetry - Photos of the walls with highlighted Chinese text - Audio recordings of the poems read in their regional dialect - A virtual exhibit page for at-home exploration - A QR code-enhanced experience inside the detention barracks AIISF would like to acknowledge the hard work of co-creators and State Park volunteers Sam Louie and Samuel Lee; Angel Island State Park staff; translators Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, Judy Yung, and Charles Egan; and the project's Chinese dialect readers, who made the AIIS Poetry Finder possible. AIIS Poetry Finder Release Schedule Nov. 2024: Room 105 Dec. 2024: Rooms 109 & 111 Jan. 2025: Rooms 115 & 116 Feb. 2025: Room 205 Mar. 2025: Rooms 206 & 207 Apr. 2025: Rooms 211 & 213

On December 14, 2024, Del Sol violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon curates a program that explores the long history of Korean immigration to San Francisco, from those seeking refuge from Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century to more recent immigration taking place post-1965. The program will feature San Francisco-based Korean composer Jungyoon Wie’s “Han”, which incorporates traditional Korean lullaby and an elegy that represents the complexity of han, a feeling of collective unresolved anger, grief, and regret amongst the Korean people. The concert will also feature newly-created pieces inspired by the responses of Joy from Korean-American elders of the Korean Community Center of East Bay’s Jikimee Senior Leadership Program. Tickets are available now: https://lnkd.in/gH7qQuQR

The second of our collaborative webinars with Ancestry will be happening November 13th at 6pm! This time we’ll be diving into Ancestry’s? U.S., WWII Japanese Americans Incarcerated in Confinement Sites collection. Hear from Jennifer Utley, a genealogist with Ancestry?, and Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams as they talk about the importance of this history and where to begin searching for it. Director of Education, Danielle Wetmore, will be hosting and posing questions from our audience on Zoom. If you’d like to participate in the Q+A sign up on our website here. https://lnkd.in/g_uNjUQp Link to the Ancestry collection if you'd like to follow along. https://lnkd.in/gzbX6trD

In August of 1940, a fire destroyed the administration building which accelerated the government's decision to close the Immigration Station at Angel Island. #OTD in 1940, the last group of about 200 people, about 150 of whom were Chinese, were transferred from Angel Island to temporary quarters in San Francisco. After this closure, the site was used as a World War II prisoner of war processing center by the U.S. military. After the war, the site was abandoned and deteriorated. Photo shows some of the wreckage in the aftermath of the fire in the administration building. @sfpubliclibrary

November 5th is the last day to cast your ballot in this election. If you have not yet voted, now's the time. Make a plan. There are many resources to help you get to the polls. If you need help google: “[insert your area] help to get to polls in 2024 election” Like this post if you have already voted or have a plan to!

Last week, AIISF hosted Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians, Joy Ride), Kevin Shen (Yellow Face), Mark Young (Co-Founder of Stand with Asians), and Evan Louie (Board Chair of One APIA Nevada) at Angel Island. Thank you for visiting and for helping to increase awareness about this important-to-remember chapter in US immigration. #CrazyRichAsians #angelisland