This Bay Area island’s most dangerous contraband wasn’t weapons – it was poetry

Chinese "Paper Sons" Carved Secret Poems at Angel Island

Angel Island held a secret for sixty years. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake wiped out immigration records, Chinese men found a way around America’s harsh exclusion laws.

They bought fake papers claiming to be “sons” of U. S. citizens, memorized coaching books with every detail of their supposed villages, and paid $100 for each year of their age.

While stuck in the island’s detention barracks for weeks or months, these men carved over 200 poems into wooden walls. Officials kept painting over this “graffiti,” not knowing the paint would help preserve their words.

The poems might have been lost forever if park ranger Alexander Weiss hadn’t spotted them with his flashlight in 1970, just before the buildings faced demolition.

These carved walls now tell a powerful story at Angel Island Immigration Station.

The government slammed the door on Chinese workers in 1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 stopped Chinese workers from coming to America but let merchants, clergy, teachers, and students enter. Children of U.S. citizens could also come in legally.

Chinese workers built the transcontinental railroad since Gold Rush times, but when jobs got scarce in the 1870s, Americans blamed immigrant workers.

The government created this tough law, the first one aimed at a specific ethnic group.

San Francisco’s massive earthquake created an unexpected loophole

On April 18, 1906, San Francisco shook with a huge earthquake near 8. 0 on the Richter scale.

Fires burned for three days after, destroying about 500 blocks of downtown.

The flames burned down important buildings including the Hall of Records, turning all birth and citizenship papers to ash.

More than half the city’s people lost their homes, but the loss of records opened a surprising chance for Chinese immigrants.

Clever immigrants invented fake identities called “paper sons”

Right after the earthquake, thousands of quick-thinking Chinese workers claimed U. S. citizenship, saying their proof burned in the fire. Chinese-born men now said they were American citizens with the right to bring their families over.

Chinese merchants or American-born Chinese made up fake children, called “paper sons” and “paper daughters,” supposedly born in China.

They sold these made-up identities to hopeful immigrants, often charging $100 per year of the person’s age.

Officials built Angel Island station to catch immigration cheaters

A new Immigration Station opened on Angel Island on January 21, 1910, to better control who came into the country and stop contact with the mainland.

By this time, immigration officials thought many Chinese used false identities and put them through extra checks. The station watched Chinese immigrants more closely after the Exclusion Act.

At Ellis Island on the East Coast, officials turned away only 1-3% of arriving immigrants, but at Angel Island, about 18% got rejected.

Immigrants memorized entire village histories to pass intense questioning

Immigration officers asked such detailed questions that even real relatives often failed without careful planning.

Paper sons studied for months, learning every detail before throwing their study books overboard to avoid getting caught.

Brokers created detailed “coaching papers” full of information for immigrants to memorize during their trips to San Francisco.

These study books contained village layouts, house locations, family trees, and facts about all the people who lived there.

Life at Angel Island felt like prison for many detainees

People stayed at Angel Island for weeks, months, or even years, with the longest stay lasting 22 months. Detainees lived “like criminals in compartments like the cages at the zoo” according to accounts.

They stayed in cramped dorms with locked doors and needed guard escorts to go anywhere.

Immigration officers checked all letters, packages, and messages going in or out, creating an atmosphere of constant watching and isolation.

Frustrated immigrants turned wooden walls into poetry journals

Just 10 months after people began living in the men’s barracks, poems started showing up on the walls.

Men carved their thoughts into the unfinished wooden walls using ink brushes or knives to express their anger and hopes.

Most poets came from villages in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province and wrote in Cantonese.

Their poems followed classic Chinese forms with four, five, or seven characters per line and alternating rhyming lines.

Paint layers accidentally preserved the forbidden wall writings

Officials called the poetry “graffiti” and tried to erase it by painting over the walls year after year. This made many poems hard to read but actually helped save them.

The immigration staff put putty in carved versions, which actually sealed and protected the wood from damage.

Despite constant efforts to stop them, immigrants kept writing and carving for more than twenty years, leaving their mark on American history.

A fire finally closed the notorious immigration station

In August 1940, a fire burned down the main office building on Angel Island.

On November 5, 1940, officials moved the last group of about 200 immigrants, including around 150 Chinese, to a mainland facility.

The government shifted all immigrant processing to the mainland and closed Angel Island Immigration Station. The Chinese Exclusion Act stayed in place until 1943, when China became an American ally in World War II.

One curious park ranger saved the forgotten poems from bulldozers

In May 1970, park ranger Alexander Weiss found Chinese calligraphy carved into barracks walls while the site waited for demolition.

“I looked around and shined my flashlight up and I could see that the entire walls were covered with calligraphy, and that was what blew me away,” Weiss later recalled.

Though told to ignore the “graffiti,” Weiss contacted San Francisco State professor George Araki about the writings.

News of his find spread, and activists, descendants, and volunteers fought to save the detention barracks and poems.

Three scholars turned wall carvings into an award-winning book

Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung published translations in their book “Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940” in 1982.

The book won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation that same year.

Researchers have recorded and translated 154 Chinese poems and inscriptions from the detention barracks: 102 from “Island” and 52 from “Voices of Angel Island.”

In 1997, the government named the site a National Historic Landmark, and the detention barracks opened as a museum in 1983.

Visiting Angel Island Immigration Station, California

You can reach Angel Island by ferry from Tiburon ($18 round trip) or San Francisco Ferry Building ($31 round trip), which includes park admission. Walk 1.2 miles from Ayala Cove to the Immigration Station.

The detention barracks museum costs $5 for adults with guided tours at 11am, 12:30pm, and 1:45pm daily.

The Immigration Museum in the former hospital building is free and shows the history of Chinese immigrants and their carved poems.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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