Ellis Island

Ellis Island is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. To get there, now as in the past, you have to take a boat. And while there is no charge to enter the museum, the boat company is not similarly generous. A seasonal ferry operates until late November from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J. Year-round, the Circle Line ferry operates from Battery Park (just west of the Staten Island Ferry) at the foot of Manhattan.

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...

"Golden Door," originally called "Nuovomondo," a film directed by Emanuele Crialese (in English and Italian, with English subtitles), arrived in U.S. theaters in June. The premise: At the turn of the 20th century, Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) immigrates to the U.S. accompanied by his mother and his two young sons, one of whom is a deaf mute. Crossing the Atlantic, the boat encounters rough waters and several passengers are injured; some die.

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.

NEW YORK -- As the ferry from Manhattan sidles up to the dock at Ellis Island, the imposing arches and grand towers of the main building make it almost impossible for visitors not to feel like they are among the huddled masses who passed through here a century ago on their way to a new life in America. But now, the National Park Service's Ellis Island museum and other institutions across the country want to do more than re-create the immigrant experience of the past. They hope to connect that history to the controversies that roil around the subject of immigration today.

From its opening video images of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island to the final shots of the Statue of Liberty, Peter Boyer's "Ellis Island: The Dream of America" is a work of rare authenticity and directness. The 45-minute piece, which embeds seven first-person narratives from the Ellis Island Oral History Project in a stream of evocative music, was performed movingly by Carl St.Clair and Orange County's Pacific Symphony on Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine.

The Academy Documentary Series, co-sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the UCLA Film Archive, continues tonight at 8 at UCLA's Melnitz Theater with a program of three films celebrating the American experience. Charles Guggenheim's beautiful and poignant 28-minute "Island of Hope, Island of Tears" (1990), a remarkable feat of research, evokes what it was like to pass through Ellis Island via amazing archival footage and stills.

About 100 million Americans have relatives who entered the United States through Ellis Island in New York. From 1892 until 1954, about 17 million immigrants passed through this gateway, and their records are preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. However, unless you know the name of the ship they came on and the date of their arrival, it may be almost impossible to locate them in this massive collection of records.

The Ellis Island Family History Center is working to make it possible for a visitor to tap a computer key and find out how much money immigrant ancestors had in their pockets when they first came to America, how well they could read and their state of health on arrival. The center is conducting the largest study ever of American immigration, said Ira A. Glazier, director of the Temple-Balch Center for Immigration Research in Philadelphia.

The island home of the Statue of Liberty welcomed visitors for the first time since terrorists leveled the nearby World Trade Center. Lady Liberty herself remained closed for security reasons. "I needed to come down here," said Ron Parker, a firefighter who was on the first ferry to Liberty Island since Sept. 11. He said he had been working at ground zero ever since the attack.

The handful of hippies enrolled at USC 40 years ago banded together for moral support. The aging individualists returned Saturday to one of the 1960s' last remaining communes, strictly for fun. The commune occupies a 114-year-old Victorian mansion on West 27th Street, a few blocks from the USC campus. These days it sticks out from other houses in the area because it doesn't have a fence in front or bars on the windows.

NEW YORK -- As the ferry from Manhattan sidles up to the dock at Ellis Island, the imposing arches and grand towers of the main building make it almost impossible for visitors not to feel like they are among the huddled masses who passed through here a century ago on their way to a new life in America. But now, the National Park Service's Ellis Island museum and other institutions across the country want to do more than re-create the immigrant experience of the past. They hope to connect that history to the controversies that roil around the subject of immigration today.

Re "Mayor urges Latinos to back Obama," July 13 In an address at the National Council of La Raza conference, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa urged Latinos to vote for Barack Obama as the best hope to reform the federal immigration policy. In his address, he invoked immigrants at Ellis Island and was thankful that there had not been a wall to keep Irish immigrants out. The mayor is either ignorant of the facts of Ellis Island immigration or just blatantly misstating them. Those who arrived through Ellis Island applied to enter the country legally, and not all who applied were admitted.

Re "Tancredo rides high on immigration," July 5 The article describes a rocky road on Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo's presidential quest. The media have attempted to portray him as having only one platform: that of illegal immigration. Certainly that is of great importance to him, but as a five-term congressman, he is well-versed on other political issues.

"Golden Door," originally called "Nuovomondo," a film directed by Emanuele Crialese (in English and Italian, with English subtitles), arrived in U.S. theaters in June. The premise: At the turn of the 20th century, Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) immigrates to the U.S. accompanied by his mother and his two young sons, one of whom is a deaf mute. Crossing the Atlantic, the boat encounters rough waters and several passengers are injured; some die.

It's hard to imagine what an original cinematic take on the 19th century Italian American immigrant experience might look like until the giant vegetables start showing up in Emanuele Crialese's beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey "Golden Door," winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival. Salvatore (Vincenzo Amato) is an illiterate, impoverished Sicilian widower considering emigrating to America with his elderly mother and two young sons.

Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca on Monday kicked off a fund-raising campaign for the Ellis Island museum that offers Americans a chance to list their immigrant ancestors on a "Wall of Honor" there. Iacocca was joined by actress Sophia Loren to announce that a $100 donation will buy a spot.

Bob Hope has come a long way on his wit and grit, in more ways than one. At age 4, the future entertainer came to America as a British immigrant. Soon, a proposed family history center at Ellis Island will be named for the 87-year-old comedian, the Ellis Island Restoration Commission said Thursday. Plans for the Bob Hope Family Heritage Center were disclosed as Hope was winding up yet another Christmas visit with American troops overseas.

The crowded hospital is overflowing with hundreds of patients every day, as a small, harried staff copes with pregnancies, critically ill patients, mentally ill people and children in varying states of distress. They come from all corners of the world, and the trick is to treat them quickly -- to make way for the next arrivals. "It is by no means unusual to receive 100 cases or more at this hospital in one day," writes one journalist, astonished by the scene.

Re "Border states' burden," editorial, Feb. 7 You write, "California gladly accepts its role as the 21st century Ellis Island." That has to be a joke, right? Equating the legal Ellis Island immigration with the chaotic illegal immigration mess California is experiencing boggles the mind. If there is any role California is playing in the 21st century regarding immigration, it is that of facilitator of an illegal invasion. DONALD HIRT Paso Robles Once again, President Bush is seeking to place the entire burden of jailing criminal illegal immigrants on individual states.