ANGEL ISLAND IMMIGRATION STATION: Poetry on the Walls

View of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay from the Tiburon Ferry.

Angel Island sits in the middle of San Francisco Bay, not far from the much smaller island of Alcatraz. It can be reached by ferry from San Francisco, Oakland, or Tiburon (in Marin County). In 2013, when I visited Angel Island, I took a tram tour and heard about the island's long history, including the story of lighthouse keeper, Juliet Nichols, and how she kept the fog bell ringing by hand on an extremely foggy night and day in the summer of 1906. That became the inspiration for my children's picture book, Keeper of the Light: Juliet Fish Nichols Fights the San Francisco Fog (Cameron Kids/Abrams, 2022).

Arriving at the dock in Ayala Cove on Angel Island, August 2024.

A few weeks ago I visited Angel Island for the first time since Keeper of the Light was published. It was a beautiful day and the ferry from Tiburon was crowded with people going to Angel Island for a day of hiking, biking and enjoying the out of doors in the state park.

Map of Angel Island. We followed the blue perimeter road to the Immigration Station on the north side of the island.

On all my previous visits to the island I had focused my attention on the southwest side of the island where Juliet’s lighthouse had been located (marked with a yellow X on the map) and where the story of my book takes place. But this time I wanted to visit the former Immigration Station on the other side of the island, where thousands of immigrants, mostly from China, had been detained between 1910, when it was built, and 1940, when it was closed after the main administration building burned down. So, after disembarking at Ayala Cove, Art and I followed the path past the Visitor Center and up the hill to the perimeter road, for a half-hour walk to the entrance of the Immigration Station.

View of Tiburon from the perimeter road. Can you find us in the reflection?

At 12 square miles, Angel Island is the largest island in San Francisco Bay. When Juan Manuel de Ayala y Aranza, the first European to visit the island arrived in 1775, he encountered the indigenous Miwoks, who had been coming there to hunt, fish and gather acorns and other wild plants for thousands of years. Over the next half century, the regional Miwok population was decimated due to resettlement and introduced diseases, and their use of the island as a hunting ground ended. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, California became part of the United States. Two years later the Federal Government became the official owner of Angel Island.

Dormitory in the Detention Barracks as it might have looked while immigrants waited for decisions on their cases. They slept in bunk beds, six between each set of poles.

The Immigration Station on Angel Island opened in 1910. It was the West Coast’s primary immigration facility, where immigrants, mostly from China and Japan, but other countries as well, were brought to be interrogated, often being detained for weeks, months or even years, and in many cases deported. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1882, prohibited most Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. (It was repealed in 1942.)

Detention Barracks are in the upper left of the photo. In the lower left is the large water tank which provided fresh water for cooking and bathing. Both the Detention Barracks and Hospital Monument are now museums.

In 1962, the military left Angel Island and soon after it became a California State Park. The former Immigration Station is now open to the public. In the Detention Barracks Museum you can see rows of narrow bunk beds in the large room where detainees slept, examples of some of the clothing and items they had brought with them, games they played, the guards' office, and more. While most of the detainees at the Immigration Station were men, there were also women and children, who were kept separately. (Note that there is a $5 fee to see the Detention Barracks Museum. It is well worth it!)

Examples of the writing on the wall.

What is most unique about the Detention Barracks Museum is the writing on the wall. Many detainees wrote or carved their thoughts into the wooden walls of the barracks. These inscriptions, many written as poems, form a personal record of their experience and have become a unique and valuable record of the immigrant experience. Over the years, the walls were painted, obscuring the writing. When we first walked into the room we said—but where is the writing?—until the docent showed us by shining her phone light onto the wall to catch the shadows of the engraved characters. Poems were everywhere!

Island of Sadness. You can press the button to hear the poem read aloud.

Signboards provide information about different kinds of Chinese poetry and give examples. And one display allows you to listen to a poem being read aloud in both English and Chinese. When you listen to the Chinese, even if you don't understand the words, you can hear the rhythm and rhyme.

Fog Bell at the Immigration Station Memorial. 

The Immigration Station also had a giant fog bell, much like the one Juliet Nichols rang on that foggy night in 1906. Unlike Juliet’s bell, which is inaccessible, but still in place on the rock where the bell house once stood, the Immigration Station bell is part of a memorial to the immigrants who once came to the island. It has a clapper, which you can swing to make the bell ring. We ate our picnic lunch on a shaded bench next to the bell.

The Immigration Station on Angel Island was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997.

During my visit I finally got to meet Park Interpreter Casey Dexter Lee in person, who had been so helpful with my research for my book. It was a pleasure to talk with her and learn more about Angel Island’s history.

Keeper of the Light is for sale at the kiosk gift shop.

Before we caught the ferry back to Tiburon, I visited the kiosk gift shop near the dock, where I was pleased to see Keeper of the Light displayed. All profits from sales in the gift shop go to support the Angel Island Conservancy.

Ferry landing, Tiburon.

For our visit to Angel Island we had bought our ferry tickets ahead of time online, showing the QR code as we boarded in Tiburon in the morning and where we were given a ticket for the return trip. We made sure to be on time for the 3:20 ferry back to Tiburon, the last trip of the day. If you miss the last ferry you are stuck on the island! And unless you brought camping gear, there is no place to stay. There is a small café in Ayala Cove, but services are limited on the island.

For more information about Angel Island and the Immigration Station check online.

View from inside the Detention Barracks.

For my post about my visit to Angel Island in 2017, click HERE.