ABSTRACT

Suspended on a wooden frame at the edge of a small beach on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay is a two-ton lump of oxidized gray-green bronze known as the Immigration Station Bell. It hangs as a pivot between two long-destroyed but constantly invoked features: a 120-foot wharf reaching out into the bay and, on land, a two-story federal administration building. 1 Today the bell's clapper is swung occasionally by visitors, each time adding a dent to the thousands of pockmarked scars from years of barrage. The chime produced is a rewarding clear tone that carries out across the water to the mainland, a sound that originally acted as a warning signal for traffic negotiating the narrow fog-plagued Raccoon Straight, a passage that joins the Sacramento River with the Pacific Ocean. But now, as well as being a physical prop for the aural pleasure of tourists to a heritage site, the bell is a gathering point for the beginning of a tour that brings into collision ideas of race, national identity, and exclusion. From the Immigration Station Bell, visitors are guided by California State Park docents on a journey tracing the footsteps of an estimated 175,000 Chinese immigrants that were detained on the island between 1910 and 1940; immigrants processed under racially targeted laws that severely restricted their entry to the United States and prevented them from obtaining citizenship. Typically, this tour begins with the following words:

Imagine a typical foggy day in the San Francisco Bay. The bell rings automatically to warn passing ships of the wharf. You have travelled for about twenty-one days across the Pacific, leaving your family and all you know behind. The immigration station's ferryboat, the Angel Island arrives with you and fifty others on board. You get off the boat and onto the wharf where you see a huge building with two large flagpoles out front. You see a fifteen-acre site completely fenced in. You walk to the front porch of the administration building. This building will begin the start of your enclosed life. 2