Angel Island

Living memory has a way of disappearing fast. Before you know it, those who were there are gone. Now 72 years after the Angel Island Immigration Station closed its doors, maybe a couple hundred people still remember firsthand what it was to travel by boat thousands of miles to California only to be held for days, weeks or months in guarded wooden barracks surrounded by San Francisco Bay. Those who do remember are getting on now. And they...

Living memory has a way of disappearing fast. Before you know it, those who were there are gone. Now 72 years after the Angel Island Immigration Station closed its doors, maybe a couple hundred people still remember firsthand what it was to travel by boat thousands of miles to California only to be held for days, weeks or months in guarded wooden barracks surrounded by San Francisco Bay. Those who do remember are getting on now. And they...

The state Park Department's plan to clear-cut the eucalyptus trees on Angel Island and then spray the stumps repeatedly with an herbicide (Part I, Oct. 30) strikes me as a red herring along the same lines as Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel's talk about restoring Hetch Hetchy. Yes, it would be a fine and wondrous thing to see some of our scenic lands as they were before the white man disturbed them. But at the same time that the state Park Department and the Department of the Interior are holding out these Chimeras of "the way it was," are they being equally vigilant in preserving and protecting the threatened areas that can be saved by far less extravagant measures?

One hundred years ago today, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay opened its doors. From 1910 to 1940, the "Ellis Island of the West" was the gateway into America for more than half a million immigrants from 80 countries, all seeking the opportunity, freedom and fortune of the American dream. Among them was a Chinese immigrant who carved the following poem into the barrack walls while detained on Angel Island: I clasped my hands in parting with my brothers and classmates.

At Angel Island Immigration Station, the walls really can talk. Until now, though, they haven't told the whole story of this notorious West Coast entry point in the heart of San Francisco Bay. Their first words were in Chinese, stately poems of longing and revenge carved into the wooden barracks by desperate detainees between 1910 and 1940 and discovered by accident more than a generation later. "Sadness," wrote one anonymous poet, "kills the person in the wooden building."

For an island barely a square mile in size, Angel Island has an extremely diverse history. Over the last two centuries, the island has seen use as a pirate's supply station, a Mexican land grant, an Army artillery emplacement and an immigrant detention center. Now it's a state park, attracting hikers, history buffs and "islophiles" of all persuasions. A hundred years of U.S. military occupation began on Angel Island in 1863 when the first gun batteries were installed.

Mother Nature gave the Blue Angels a run for their money as a dramatic island wildfire in the middle of San Francisco Bay capped off the annual Fleet Week celebration here. Angel Island, an uninhabited state park and the biggest land mass in the Bay, broke out in flames Sunday night just hours after the Navy jets flew off, giving nearby residents and boaters spectacular views of flames and smoke.

As their ships steamed through the Golden Gate in the early 20th century, Chinese immigrants dreamed of opportunities awaiting them on "Gold Mountain," as they called America. But instead of docking at San Francisco's fabled shores, they were shuttled onto ferries and sent to Angel Island in the middle of the bay. At the immigration station there, dreams of paradise quickly clashed with reality.

Lunch was modest: a turkey sandwich on wheat. But the view was first class. "Drop-dead gorgeous" was the way a fellow hiker described the panorama below as we picnicked on a hillside. To the left was the Bay Bridge; in front was San Francisco's skyline; to the right were the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin County towns of Sausalito, Belvedere and Tiburon. Sailboats glided with the wind on a sunny Saturday morning. We were at Angel Island State Park, a hilly retreat in San Francisco Bay.

The views were mesmerizing: A shroud of fog enveloped the Golden Gate Bridge. Waves washed onto the Berkeley shores. A sailboat tacked its way under the Bay Bridge. But I had little time to sit and absorb the scenery from Angel Island State Park. If I didn't pick up the pace, I would be stranded on this largely undeveloped island in the middle of San Francisco Bay without food or shelter until the next morning.

At Angel Island Immigration Station, the walls really can talk. Until now, though, they haven't told the whole story of this notorious West Coast entry point in the heart of San Francisco Bay. Their first words were in Chinese, stately poems of longing and revenge carved into the wooden barracks by desperate detainees between 1910 and 1940 and discovered by accident more than a generation later. "Sadness," wrote one anonymous poet, "kills the person in the wooden building."

Mother Nature gave the Blue Angels a run for their money as a dramatic island wildfire in the middle of San Francisco Bay capped off the annual Fleet Week celebration here. Angel Island, an uninhabited state park and the biggest land mass in the Bay, broke out in flames Sunday night just hours after the Navy jets flew off, giving nearby residents and boaters spectacular views of flames and smoke.

The views were mesmerizing: A shroud of fog enveloped the Golden Gate Bridge. Waves washed onto the Berkeley shores. A sailboat tacked its way under the Bay Bridge. But I had little time to sit and absorb the scenery from Angel Island State Park. If I didn't pick up the pace, I would be stranded on this largely undeveloped island in the middle of San Francisco Bay without food or shelter until the next morning.

Go island hopping in San Francisco Bay on a getaway package that includes lodging, food and ferry rides. The deal: The Angel Island package, with a starting rate of $169 per night, double occupancy, includes overnight accommodations at the Lodge at Tiburon, breakfast, parking, round-trip ferry tickets to Angel Island State Park, all-day bike rentals and lunch. The island: Angel Island, hilly and tree-covered, is the largest island in San Francisco Bay.

Cold, damp barrack walls, weathered from years of neglect, stand as a reminder of the detainment center that housed thousands of Chinese during the early 1900s on this mountainous island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

Lunch was modest: a turkey sandwich on wheat. But the view was first class. "Drop-dead gorgeous" was the way a fellow hiker described the panorama below as we picnicked on a hillside. To the left was the Bay Bridge; in front was San Francisco's skyline; to the right were the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin County towns of Sausalito, Belvedere and Tiburon. Sailboats glided with the wind on a sunny Saturday morning. We were at Angel Island State Park, a hilly retreat in San Francisco Bay.

For years, this largest of the San Francisco Bay islands, lying northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge, has offered a tree-shaded escape to thousands of city dwellers who hike or bicycle along its quiet paths. Not so this summer.

Dale Ching walks to the spot where he slept in a bunk for 3 1/2 months in 1937, a prisoner of U.S. immigration laws. He wraps his hand around the pole that held his bed and tells how the joy he felt on landing in San Francisco turned into despair as he spent night after night on the narrow bunk. "I thought, 'In a couple of days, I'll be with my dad,' " he recalls. "But they wouldn't let us even see each other."

As their ships steamed through the Golden Gate in the early 20th century, Chinese immigrants dreamed of opportunities awaiting them on "Gold Mountain," as they called America. But instead of docking at San Francisco's fabled shores, they were shuttled onto ferries and sent to Angel Island in the middle of the bay. At the immigration station there, dreams of paradise quickly clashed with reality.