Angel Island A Story of Chinese Immigration (Video Transcript)F.docx

Angel Island: A Story of Chinese Immigration (Video
Transcript)
Finally tonight, another way to make art out of history. Spencer
Michaels reports.
From 1910 until 1943, Chinese immigrants to America
approached Angel Island in San Francisco Bay with fear and
hope. They hoped the US immigration station on the island
would not be their last stop in the country they called Gold
Mountain, America. Flo Oy Wong, a Chinese-American artist,
and Felicia Lowe, a documentary maker, take the short ferry
ride to Angel Island often these days. Both are the daughters of
at least one parent who came into the US illegally. Through art
and film, they are bringing new attention to an old, and until
now, obscure story. A story that happened in the place
sometimes called the Ellis Island of the West.
This is the place where the US government, under an 1882 law
called the Chinese Exclusion Act, tried to keep Chinese laborers
and their families out of the country. send them back to China.
When I learned about Angel Island--
Lowe has documented both the pain of that rejection and the
lies the immigrants had to tell to gain admittance to their
chosen land.
--But it's a place that moves you, not only because the walls
talk. And tell you stories. But because of the spirit and energy
of this place.
Does it still move you?
Absolutely. Every time I come here, I have such deep feelings
about the people who were here, especially knowing that my
father was one of those people.
Felicia Lowe, who is raising funds and awareness to have the
old immigration station restored, has documented on film Angel
Island's history. The story begins with Chinese coming to
America to work in the California gold fields. And to build the
railroads in the mid 1800's. About a 100,000 Chinese lived in

America in 1880.
When the economy went bad, anti-Chinese feeling became
virulent, and congress voted to exclude all new Chinese
immigrants, except certain categories. Merchants, teachers, and
minor children of citizens. For the most part, wives of Chinese
men already here, even if the men were citizens, could not enter
legally, since US policy was to prevent families from settling
here.
Judy Young teaches Asian American history at the University of
California and has written about Angel Island's legacy. She
calls the Chinese Exclusion Act blatant racism.
The Chinese were seen as being not only racially inferior, but
they were seen as being political despotic. They were seen as
being heathens. They were seen as being immoral, unethical,
didn't treat their women right. They were just seen as being very
un-American and undeserving of being American.
Despite being mostly unwelcome and illegal, Chinese kept
arriving, though in smaller numbers. Starting in 1910, these new
immigrants landed first at Angel Island to face immigration
officers and possible deportation. It was an intimidating place.
Barbed wire, guards, locked doors, and unfamiliar food.
Families were often split apart. Stays of two weeks to six
months were common. And the culmination of it all was an
interrogation by officials. Lowe found the transcript of her
father's interrogation.
You had to answer a series of questions to confirm that you
were the person you said you were on the paper. In looking at
these transcripts, it's frightening. Did your father tell you what
he had done in this country? When is the first time you were
ever absent from [? kaygoc ?] village overnight or longer? How
many children did your father's first wife bear him?
In order to try to qualify for entry, many of the immigrants
assumed new identities. Wives became paper sisters who were
supposedly married to merchants, since the US allowed
merchants, and only merchants, to have families. Therefore, the
children became nieces and nephews of their real parents to

pass the test. They studied coaching books prepared by relatives
that told them about the person they were now claiming to be.
Like Lowe's father, they became so-called paper sons.
My name is Flo Oy Wong. Now, Wong is my married name. But
I also have a fake name.
Flo Wong often tells school groups how her family had to
change their identities to get into the country. She has turned
that saga into an art show, called Shhh, which is on display in
the old immigration station barracks. Rice sacks stitched to
American flags with stenciled names, real and fake, on the
work. Each panel tells of a family member or friend who
secretly changed his or her name, and then held that secret,
sometimes 'til death.
After I tell you my mom's secret, I want you to go to that part of
the room, and share the secret with different people.
Flo Wong's family arrived from China in 1933, after her father,
who had lived for a while in the US, decided his family would
do better in America than in China. Her sister Li Keng Wong,
was seven at the time they made the long journey. But she
remembers her father's admonitions.
He said well, we better pack. We're ready to leave. But he
reminded us, remember, mama is not going as my wife. Mama is
going to the United States as my sister. And the United States
would not allow me to bring your mother in as my wife. So
therefore, we're going to tell a lie.
Li Keng Wong, who later became a teacher, was interrogated
with her two sisters. They lied to the officers and passed. And
then kept the secret.
I never did want to say anything because I was embarrassed. I
was still afraid throughout all the years going to school that the
immigration officials would find out.
The Chinese Exclusion Law was repealed in 1943, yet even
today Li Keng Wong can't ignore what happened nearly 70 years
ago.
How do you feel about that? And how did you feel?
We feel ostracized. We feel as though we're marginalized. We

feel as though we're not 100% Americans. All of us feel that
way.
Her sister, Flo Wong, says she overcame her own bitterness,
though she knows many older Chinese immigrants have not.
There is anger. There's hurt. There's disappointment. There's
bitterness. There's fear. There's a fear of authority, especially
white authority, because the first people who interrogated them
where the white interrogators here at Angel Island.
Retired purchasing officer Albert Wong, who is still playing
basketball at 77, is no relation to Flo Wong and her sister, he
came to Angel Island as a child, too. And remembers seeing
Chinese poetry carved into the walls of the barracks.
There were a lot of poems on the wall. I didn't see anybody
writing one, but I was told one of the gentlemen wrote the one
by the bathroom there. And he was still there. He's been there
for over a year. And he was still waiting for his case.
The poems had long been forgotten, when in 1970 a ranger
inspecting the decaying immigration station on Angel Island,
found them, beneath layers of paint. Historian Judy Young says
many were in classical Chinese style.
They were written by Cantonese speaking immigrants. So I'm
going to read them in Cantonese. This is the way it would
sounded. The first poem. [SPEAKING CANTONESE] And in
English we've translated, instead of remaining a citizen of
China, I willingly became an ox. I intended to come to America
to earn a living. The Western style buildings are lofty, but I
have not the luck to live in them. How is anyone to know that
my dwelling place would be a prison?
Until the poetry was discovered, the state was going to burn
down the immigration station. Those plans were canceled and
the old barracks were made safe enough for tourists. California
State Parks official Tom Lindberg says that now, this site is
being increasingly visited by Asian Americans and others.
It's a chapter of California and mostly American history that's
not in our history books. We had a facility here that was trying
to keep people out. And it's been a quiet secret in the Asian

community that's finally coming out. It's a chapter that should
be told.
In the end, 95% of the 175,000 Chinese who passed through
Angel Island were admitted to the US. Immigration officials
recommended deporting many, but on appeal, the courts often
overturned those orders. Still, the scars and the secrets remain
with the new Americans, as did their new identities.
Why would my government enact a wall to keep someone like
me, or my ancestors, out of this country? And it's a puzzling
question. I don't have the answers.
It happens to be our history, and it's not always pretty. And yet
without knowing what it was, how can we go forward? So I
really feel like it's in the revealing, and uncovering this history,
that we can begin the healing process.
The old immigration station is now open year round. Flo Wong's
art exhibit is on display through September. Recently, state
funds have been appropriated for additional restoration of the
decaying and long forgotten port of entry on Angel Island.
City of the Big Shoulders: Polish Steel Workers (Video
Transcript)
Between the Great Lakes, the Grand De Tour, and the Grand
Prairie, living, lighted skyscrapers stand. Spotting the blue dusk
with checkers of yellow, streamers of smoke and silver,
parallelograms of night gray watchmen, singing a soft, moaning
song. I am a child, a belonging.
The hands of men took hold and tugged, and the breaths of men
went into the junk, and the junk stood up into skyscrapers, and
asked, who am I? Am I a city? And if I am, what is my name?
And once, while the time whistles blew and blew again, the men
answered, long ago we gave you a name. Long ago we laughed
and said, you, your name is Chicago.
Every year, Chicago holds a folk fair. 80 nationalities live in
the city. They're all invited. The mayor is Richard Daley, an
Irishman who has ruled Chicago for over 20 years. The fair was

his creation. The people of Chicago are proud of the folk fair.
And the mayor shares his city's pride.
Chicago is a cosmopolitan city made up of many people with
their own culture and their own background, and that's what we
think is a great story of Chicago. Because for hundreds of years,
many, many people have been coming in here. The Irish and the
Germans. And the Croatians and Lithuanians, and Italians.
Swedes and Spanish speaking people. All coming into a city for
opportunity and for work.
Mayor Daley forgot the largest European group of all, the Poles.
800,000 Poles live in Chicago, more than in any other city in
the world, except Warsaw. Nearly a million of them, yet the
Poles have never really made their presence felt in a city where
they've lived for 100 years.
Maybe we're not boastful enough. Maybe we're too much like I
am. Like I am, just put your head down and blush if they say
something. Nice about you. Should say damn right I am. Yeah, I
did it. Sure we did it. I think we should do more of it. Palm on
the table. Maybe they'll believe it, or they'll think different.
Poles were late arrivals to Chicago. Most came at the beginning
of the century.
Many Poles came to this country, and they did the menial jobs,
they did the hard work. And they're the people who went out
there, and they sweated, and they weren't afraid to work, and
they built up the industry, the stockyard, every type of industry
there was a Pole in there doing his bit.
In the 1900s, Chicago was the boom town of America. It began
as a military fort in a swamp. Within 80 years, it was a
metropolis. A city of two million of the world's first
skyscrapers and world's largest stockyards, it boasted of having
the biggest and best of everything.
Four out of five of its people were new immigrants from
Europe, or sons and daughters of immigrants. The first Poles in
Chicago clung to their language and their Catholic faith. They
wanted to stay together, worship as they always had, so they
built their Polish churches, sang their Polish hymns.

[SINGING]
Polonia, their first settlement, was a place to stay Polish, not to
become American.
Everybody spoke Polish, even the conductors on the streetcars.
And the milkman, the people that delivered ice and packages,
everything was in Polish. It was amazing. It was like a little
Poland here. The people at that time, my parents, they had a
language barrier.
They couldn't spread out too far or attend colleges, or what to
better themselves. Because first of all, the sacrifice they made,
it was quite a drain on them physically. And secondly, they had
families they had to feed.
[? Precopia ?] and Walter [INAUDIBLE] were both born in
Poland. She came to America in 1906, he came in 1912. In
Poland, they lived in neighboring villages. They might never
have met had thy not come to Chicago.
I met Walter because Walter at one time took my girlfriend and
me to the show, and of course, when he, we got out, he says
we'll take the girlfriend home first, and he took me home last.
And that's how we started to date, and then coming around, he'd
talk about different places with my folks, what parts of Europe
he came from.
Of course Poland, and it was so that he and I were born pretty
close by. We belonged, like, in the same county. We were both
born there. So that's how we met here. See, not even knowing
that we were from there.
Walter was 14 when he came to Chicago to work in the
stockyards. His sister Sophie was nine. Walter and Sophie came
to join their father. So had Walter's wife, [? Precopia. ?] The
fathers had worked in Chicago for years to earn the money to
bring their families over.
Then when we got to Chicago, my father wasn't unable to meet
us. For some reason, or whether because he works nights and he
slept days, so we had no idea how to get here. My mother had
the address, but we didn't know what kind of transportation to
take. So there were these enterprising peddlers, you know?

And the guy with the wagon, you know, went around, found
where your destination was. And he said he's going to take you.
It's going to cost you so much and so much. So instead of
coming by streetcar or whatever, he got some of us on the
wagon, you know? And our luggage and all that, and we sat on
the luggage.
It seemed like it took forever from downtown to 43rd and
Ashland and as the wagon pulled, you know, the horse pulled,
and the kids hopped onto the street and started howling,
greenhorns! Greenhorns! Greenhorns!
My father was in bed when we got there. And they had boarders
there and they used to sleep in shifts. Those that worked days
slept at night, those that worked nights slept days. And the quilt
he had was so holey he was all tangled up in it. Do you
remember that, Walter?
Yeah, I remember. I was disappointed, because I had a picture,
myself, America was cowboys and Indians like they showed in
the old country, in the magazines. When I see that, when I came
here and the stockyards here, so I was disappointed.
No cowboys, just cows. City stockyards slaughtered and dressed
animals from the entire middle west, and canned and shipped
them to the world. You didn't have to know how to read or
write, or even speak English. You just had to do hard and
monotonous work. And you have to live in the west part of the
city.
At that time, everybody burned coal, you know? All the yards,
all the slaughterhouses, and all that, and on some days, when
the pressure was low, that smoke spread around just like a big
cloud. The smell was terrible. When the wind just hit the right
direction, why we'd get it in the houses. For a few blocks down,
you'd get it.
They didn't have no garbage cans in the alley where you could
put your garbage in. Everything was out to just the back of the
shed. There were more flies, you couldn't pass by for the flies.
And we'd have them in the house plenty too, because there were
no screens in the windows. You had to shoo the flies out so they

wouldn't get into our food.
They used to chase the cattle down the street, you know, from
wherever they were getting them. And especially in winter, it
used to get horrible. The dung, and the snow, and nobody ever
cleaned it. There was no street here. There was mud. And on dry
days, it was dusty, ruddy.
But when it rained, you had to go to the corner one way or the
other in order to get across, and if you were going in winter,
you didn't have good over shoes, you'd be muck up to your
knees, almost. There was no consideration given to human
comfort as far as surroundings were concerned.
As a six-year-old boy in 1896, Stanley [INAUDIBLE] came to
America. Within four years, his father, a steelworker, was dead,
and the family was penniless.
His mother had to send Stanley to an orphanage. When he left
after two years, he spoke English and liked American ways. His
mother had remarried, and was about to return to Poland. 12-
year-old Stanley had already made up his mind he wanted to
stay in America.
There was an opening in a laundry for a boy there. My
stepfather took me there and explained a thing to the owner of
the laundry. He says, I'm going to make a man of him, he says. I
worked that laundry for three years. But all of them boys
coming from Europe, there was a half a dozen or more my age,
and maybe younger than I.
They all worked at the National company. While I was making
two and a half, I think I got up to $3.00 a week, they were
making $0.09 an hour. $0.09 an hour, 10-hour day, 12-hour
nights, oh, it came out to something like $6.00 a week. Well,
them boys said why should you work for money like that? Come
to the [INAUDIBLE] with us. Which I did, and I was sorry ever
after.
It was oil, dirty clothes. Wasn't like before with a collar and
free laundry. And it was hard work. You'd get cut and dirty.
And Poles were at the bottom of the totem pole there. They had
the maintenance jobs and everything. It was hard to get a good

job for a Polack. It was all Irish and German that held the best
jobs.
We had an Irish a welder at a furnace. Each furnace had three.
They worked 15 minutes or half hour. We might have two Irish,
one German, or one German and two Irish. Never a Pole. There
were Hungarians. Hagars as we called them. Had some good
friends at the mills with the Hungarians.
They were about on the same level with us. Treated the same
way. I don't remember having either an Irish or a German
friend. It was all Polish.
Iron and steel made Chicago rich. The iron ore came from
Minnesota. The men who fed the furnaces came from eastern
Europe.
Well, that's all right. You're the general, you're entitled to call.
Phil [INAUDIBLE] is a child of steel. His father was a steelman
60 years ago. Six boys in the family, all followed their father's
path. Five still work in Chicago steel mills.
The Irish ethnic groups had the better jobs because the Irish
claim to Chicago has already been laid. And the most of them
were American born, anyway. They were probably second
generation, see? And they already had benefits of a better
education, which furthered them into a better financial position.
Most of the original Poles that came over to this country weren't
equipped for any skills. So a person that doesn't have any skill
is not in a position to make any demands. Before the union
days, the company's attitude was so that you come to work
tomorrow. If I got something for you, you'll work. And if I
don't, home you go.
And that used to happen quite often. I remember my father
would go to work with a lunch. I remember his leaving the
house, and then seeing that he was back home again. Because
for every man that had a job there, there were probably two
more waiting for it. So they knew that the labor market in
Chicago was quite plentiful, and you were expendable.
You were expendable. No pay when you were sick or hurt. No
money when you're out of the job. Nothing when you were too

old to work, and even if you're healthy and willing, you could
wait all day for the job that never came. It helped if you knew
the boss or the foreman, or the tally clerk. It helped if you
spoke English.
My father didn't know the language. He had no special skills,
you know? So one thing, I guess to get his family together, took
anything that would be offered to him. And the only job he
could get was the dirtiest job that was available, because of his
limitations. And I think one of the jobs that he did over there
contributed to shortening his life.
Because one of the jobs he'd had that I know for sure that he did
for a time, at Darling's they used to cook these bones and scraps
for fertilizer. And he had to get into these hot tanks after they
were emptied, and he had to clean them out. So I think that
helped.
And then after he left there, he worked at Swift's, and he
worked on the icing gang before refrigerator cars were in. And
he would go to work before we ever got up, and he wouldn't
come home until after we were in bed many times, because there
was no such thing as pay for over time.
You worked as many hours as you were told. And I think cliche
that how hard work never killed anybody is a lot of baloney. I
think it helped kill my father.
Bob Walinski is a local politician who lives near the street
where he was born. His father came to Chicago in 1910 as a
young man of 20.
Well, I think that my father was very ambitious, and he wanted
to make his way. Evidently, my grandfather must have told him
that there is great promise for a young man that should come
out there and try to make his way, and that if he could work
hard, he could get a hit. He was an adventurer, and he was quite
a gent. And I think that he just wanted to make a good life for
himself.
Bob's father is now 85.
Hey, Pops. What are you looking for, Pop?
He's had a stroke, and now lives in an old people's home. He did

farm work in Poland. In Chicago he worked in steel.
He started as a laborer, and he was able to show his proficiency
in his ways of doing electrical work, construction work, all this
kind of mechanical work that he went to school to study.
Machines, machinery, he became a machinist just by going to
school at night and working in the daytime in the steel mills.
I also know that when he did go to visit his homeland, I know
that he took some money with him to help his parents out with
their expenses. I knew that my father was pretty well to do at
that time because he was able to make this trip.
It was a lot of excitement when we saw him off at the train
station. He wore a, what they call a sailor's straw hat, which is a
hard straw hat, and that was an example of being dressed up.
When he came into Poland to show himself to his parents, he
was very well dressed. He had a suit on, and of course he had a
necktie, which is something they didn't see around there.
It was probably an effort on his part to make himself look
prosperous and try to impress his folks. I think that was his
main purpose of going back. To show that he was successful, he
was able to come back and help them. And I believe at that
time, when he did come, they were in poverty there. My dad left
a home of poverty, and when he returned, it was still that way.
At the beginning of this century, Poland as a country did not
exist. A once powerful people had been crushed and
impoverished by 100 years of occupation by Russia, Germany,
and Austria. Three million Poles emigrated to America before
the first world war. For those who stayed, life was hard and
oppressive with no hope of change.
In 1908, Stanley [INAUDIBLE] had earned enough money in
America to visit Poland. He wanted to see his old village, and
the house his mother had built when she returned from America.
Stanley was 18.
Well, the home that I went to, it was a log cabin. But it had two
rooms, and it had a wooden floor in one of the rooms. And it
had curtains on the windows, believe it or not. Maybe the only
house in the village that mother brought from this country. And

a lot of things they brought over, like for instance, they're all
eating with wooden spoons.
Well, we had silverware that they brought home, but they were
polished so thin that it was like a razor blade. I was afraid to eat
with that spoon. Anyhow, we had things from America. Other
hoses around there were all of course, log cabins with thatched
roofs. I didn't like their houses.
It was sort of somber, what you'd see waling into a home. With
the clay floors, all clay floors. So I didn't have a very good time
in Poland. I just missed America, that's all. It's not Like being
away from home. It really meant something. I remember when
about the third week, the boys, my schoolmates here, they sent
me two complete Sunday newspapers.
Had all the jokes and all, like a Pittsburgh Leader, and another
one. Well, I had to get up on a-- right from our house was a hill
with some trees. I had to up there, laid down under them trees. I
even read the want ads. It was home. I spent a couple weeks
with them papers.
I got there in March, last of March somewhere. I think I left in
September. Glad to get away from Poland. It was as I say, it
was supposed to be my country. But I always considered
America my country. I said we were in Poland, Poland couldn't
even feed our family. America could.
Stanley [INAUDIBLE] never went back to Poland again. He
married and raised a family in Chicago. A son, Henry, two
daughters, and four grandchildren. Angel food and coffee for
Henry's birthday. Not the apple cake and vodka of the old
country.
Henry [INAUDIBLE] grew up in the 1920s, A Chicago boy with
no memories of Poland. He lived near the loop, the center of the
city in a crowded immigrant area.
I was born on O'Brien Street, which is right next to Maxwell
Street. Next to a Jewish synagogue. The house, you know, that's
gone. The expressway goes right through it. About three blocks
north of O'Brien Street was a street used to be called Bunker
Street.

And we lived in one house there for about six months, and then
moved a couple of doors down the block, where I live until we
were 18. Until I was 18. The average building was a six flat
tenement there with stairways in the center and the front. We
lived in the third floor in the back, and I watched the board of
trade go up.
Morrison Hotel, which has since been torn down. A 45-story
hotel. This was the early '20s, when there was a big building
boom. You could hear the riveting guns all night. It was very
congested in the neighborhood before we got there. There were
two houses on every lot. There would be a six flat in front, and
maybe a two flat wooden home in the back. There was a lot of
people.
You ran right through a whole series of nationalities just
walking within blocks of each other. It starts with the Jewish
people, like along around Maxwell and 14th Street, and then
Taylor Street, which is almost exclusively Italian. It was an
exciting place.
There were roving little gangs of these Italian boys, one in
particular that I ran afoul of a couple of times. But we
developed a sixth sense, you know? You knew, just you could
see a situation coming up, and you'd know where to stay away.
In the '20s, Italians, Jews, and Irish all had their own gangs.
From simple kids' gangs to notorious grown up gangs like the
syndicate. The Poles were not that organized.
See, I don't remember a Polish gang. Poles just don't seem to
work together. There's always this rivalry. I just couldn't
visualize a gang leader, although there have been some, yeah.
But they're not in a Polish gang. There were a few men that got
up in the syndicate, of course they didn't stay and live very
long.
The funerals, for some reason, stick in my mind, because I've
never seen anything like that before. I think they were the
Genna brothers. They were dumped off together. And then there
were the Aiellos. I'm almost sure they were brothers too.
Huge funerals with just flower cars and a long procession. We

used to count flower cars along around into the 70's. Most of
the flowers are given by the people that bumped them off.
The hungry '30s. Everyone in America was affected by the
Great Depression. In Chicago, nearly half the workers were out
of work. The unskilled suffered most of all.
It was a bad time for everyone, but the times were even worse if
you were an immigrant and couldn't speak English. Phil
[INAUDIBLE] had to act as interpreter for his parents when he
was only eight years old, and battle with Chicago's relief system
on his own.
I would say that we had a particular problem because I noticed
after a few days of going to one particular aid office, which was
on 86th and Commercial Avenue, which later became a Buick
automobile agency, and we had signed in with our Polish name
for two days, and after spending a couple hours each day, we
were told that we couldn't get waited on those particular days.
So all I did was take a close look of the name plates on peoples'
desks. Of course I didn't expect to see an S-K-I on any one of
them, because the Irish were forming their power then, and
already had most of these jobs. And it's likely that we were
singled out for this wait because of our Polish name.
So the next time we signed in, I decided to sign in under an
Irish name. And when I did sign in under the Irish name, it was
just a matter of minutes that we were called and we were sitting
at the caseworker's desk. But of course, when it came to filling
out the forms, I was giving out my mother's and father's Polish
name, and then this woman hesitated, and she says, well wait a
while.
I thought your name was so, so, the Irish name I gave, which
now I can't recall. I says, well, yes, that's my name, but I'm here
as an interpreter for these people who are seeking the aid. So I
guess she was kind of embarrassed, and decided, well, she
would go on with the formalities, and it was soon after that that
aid was forthcoming.
Poles had little say in how the city was governed, even less in
how its laws were enforced. Chicago police had their own way

of keeping law and order. The young Phil [INAUDIBLE]
discovered them at first hand.
I got slapped around quite a bit, and it's mostly by Irish cops.
We'd get stopped, and if you just voiced yourself a little bit,
you'd get belt across the mouth. Because the first thing they'd
ask you is for some identification of what your name is, and
then you'd give them the name, and soon as they recognized the
S-K-I as being published, then they connotated it with
something dirty.
And they'd waste no time, and tell you, all right, this is last
time I want to see you in this neighborhood, you goddamn
Pollock. And I didn't like the idea of being called that name,
and I told the cop that, hey listen, you better not call me any
names because I go as I please, where I please, when I please.
So all he did was slap me again. And he was too much for me,
being I was about 13 years old. So it was then that I decided
that I was going to be a little more vigilant of my rights. I
would familiarize myself with my rights. And it would be
nobody on earth that I will not challenge in the future regarding
my rights.
Stand Up For Poland is the hymn. It's sung every Sunday. The
choirmaster is Casey Laskowski, local politician and successful
businessman.
Casey was born in Polonia, the heart of Chicago's old Polish
community. Now like many Poles, he has moved away from the
area.
I definitely had my mind made up as a young man that I was
going to better myself, become educated. Become somebody.
Somehow somewhere I was going to climb over that wall of just
common laborer, common person. You know what I mean. When
I joined the Air Force, especially in my group, there weren't too
many Poles as cadets.
And lo and behold, the first characteristics that I felt, seeing so
many of the boys being washed out of pilot training, I made up
my mind that this would be death to me personally to be washed
out.

Thank God I was gifted athletically, which helped me in the
flying characteristic, and of course I latched myself onto a very
brilliant German boy, an upperclassman who taught me all the
things that I should know. And I graduated, I was successful.
Then I got to be an instructor. And always it felt good to see
that S-K-I at the end of my name amongst all the other
nationalities.
It stuck out like a sore thumb. I wasn't satisfied with just being
an instructor. I volunteered for combat on [INAUDIBLE]. So I
got to be a bomber pilot. I wasn't satisfied with just being a
bomber pilot. I wanted to be a leader, and I got to be a group
leader for my last 19 missions of the 40 long ones that I had in
the Pacific.
And it was good to see that Laskowski up there at the top of the
formation when the poop sheets were passed out. This gave me
great pride, and I felt that ethnicity, I felt that nationalistic
feeling, that a kid from immigrant Polish parents has become a
group leader in the United States Air Force as a Lieutenant
Colonel. And it was quite a thrill for me. And I felt, I definitely
felt the Polish in me.
The Poles remember with pride the first war they fought for
America. Chicago's Polish museum celebrates their heroes of
the war for American independence. Pulaski, an aristocrat
adventurer who fought and died for America against the British
in 1779.
Another Pole who fought in the Revolutionary War, General
Kosciuszko, a friend of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. A modern hero has a room to himself, the pianist
Paderewski.
This is the Paderewski room now. I say now because originally
this was the entire museum. They even tore out four or five
walls--
Henry Cygan delivered mail for 34 years. When he retired in
1971, he became a guide at the Polish museum. Through his job,
he's discovering Poland's history, learning what he can be proud
of in his ethnic past, like other Americans.

I think it's the drive for black power that started all this. When
they tried to find their identity, you know? And the Poles, and
the Spanish and whoever looked at their own culture, and saw,
oh my gosh, we've got a much richer heritage than this, you
know? And so everybody's going starting to dig into this a little
bit. And it really catches you after a while.
And this is the very bed that Paderewski died on. It's Sunday
afternoon, Sunday evening. Over here you see his the last piano
he played on. I understand he played it the morning he died. He
felt pretty strong that morning. He told a sister they could go to
church and leave him. And he got up and played.
For Poles, Paderewski was more than a great musician. He was
a statesman, the first prime minister of the new independent
Poland after the first world war. A patriot, the soul of Poland.
The visitors that come in there, they'll just reach out and touch
one key, just to say that they touched Paderewski's last piano.
You have to be there alone after hours, you can almost see it.
Feel him there, with all the pictures around the walls, you
know? Looking down at you, and his piano standing there.
Polish people, they brought a lot of culture into Chicago. A lot
of hard work, a lot of devotion to their jobs. Because they work
from the heart, they're proud of their work, their finished
product. Sure, they're workers. They don't depend on any street
sweeper to come along and sweet their curbs.
They get out there for five minutes or 10 minutes with a shovel
and a broom. They are the original street sweepers. We wouldn't
need any here. This is the way the Poles feel. It's not to
probably become great, or to see how much money they can
earn in this world.
But the idea is they live. To be able to pay your bills, enjoy
yourself, the greatest pride of a Polish family is to own their
own home. They just despise being a renter, to have a place
where they can't call their own.
Most Poles live on the city outskirts now. It's only in the past
20 years they've abandoned those little Polands their
grandfathers created when they first settled in Chicago.

The old Polish neighborhoods have been taken over by
newcomers, poor and unskilled like Poles once were themselves.
The Poles don't want to stay.
The black element is growing rapidly in the city, and they find a
little difficult. They can't stand the harassment. Crime, things,
they run away. And that's what's happening to the area. The area
is being changed into a Mexican, Puerto Rican, Spanish kind of
element.
Maybe they just don't get along too well, and they're just
frightened. And of course the people that are moving in feel
probably like the Poles did back in 1910. It's a migration, and
they're finding work here, and opportunities they didn't have
back home. And it's a repetition of history, it's just a different
nationality.
Sorry to see it happen, just for the sake of the churches that are
being left behind. They're practically inhabited by ghosts now
on Sundays. They're down 100 famolies, 200 families, 300
families, where at one time they had 4,000 families, 3,000
families.
The upkeep of them is very difficult. The funds are not there.
We're trying to keep them up as best as we can. They are some
of the most beautiful churches in the world, and I've seen a lot
of churches all over this world. Holy Trinity, Saint Marys, Holy
Innocence, Saint John Cantius. It almost wants to make you cry.
There used to be a saying in Chicago, I don't know whether it's
still going around. The Jews own it, the Pollacks work it, and
the Irish run it. I had a friend, a very good friend, and I'm still
friends with her, who was Irish, who is Irish.
And one time I was at her house, we had a party. And one of
them was working very hard, and somebody said, well, why
don't you quit? You're working like a Pollack. How about that?
And I think that I've been insulted many times because I was
Polish. There's been a rash of Polish jokes. There's one about a
Pole came home unexpectedly, found his wife with a lover. So
he took out a gun, put it to his head, and said how's this, don't
worry, you're next.

They try to portray the Pole as a stupid person. And they could
just as easily pick some other nationality. Why do they do it to
us? We never do it to anyone.
Chicago has enjoyed a great reputation as a place where you can
earn a good living. If you can't, it must be your own fault. But
the Poles have found it a good haven for bettering themselves.
In most of Europe, you get cast in a mold, and you're presumed
to be stupid because you're poor. And you stay there almost all
your life. It would have to be something to enable you to crawl
out. I imagine that at age 71, if I was still in Poland, I'd be in a
hell of a shape.
There's no country like United States. I don't think you're going
to find any other countries. There may be Australia. So I figured
it's the best place to be, because you're going to have your
family. You get some kind of education. And any place you can
make something.
In a way, I am very grateful that my father worked hard to get
us here. We had to work too, but then if you don't work, you
don't accomplish anything. You have to, one way or another.
Whether it's a hard job, or an easy job. If you don't have the
brains for an easy one, you've got to put your back to it. And
you get there.
Snake River Massacre: Between Two Worlds (Video Transcript)
In 1887, a rancher out looking for his stray cattle on the Snake
River between Idaho and Oregon, came upon a gruesome scene.
The remains of human beings washed up in a Creek. They were
so picked over by buzzards and coyotes that neither their
features nor their race could be identified.
Some of the bodies were found, one was found headless. Others
were found with axe wounds. This horrible, horrible crime was
committed there. And the savagery of the crime would indicate
that it was more than just a robbery.
Years later, the true story came out. A gang of white men,
ranchers and school boys, had set upon ten Chinese miners. Shot

and beat them death, then dumped their mutilated bodies into
the river. Four Chinese arrived at the camp the next day and
we're promptly murdered. The killers then travel by boat down
river to another camp. By nightfall, 31 Chinese were dead.
The leader of this group, Bruce Evans, was said to have told the
others in the gang, let's do our country a favor and get rid of
these China men. And let's do our favor for ourselves and get
their gold.
Local residents rallied around the suspects. Only three were
tried and a jury freed them all. The Snake River massacre was
not an isolated incident. In 1882, the US pasted the Exclusion
Act to stop Chinese laborers from entering the country and
deprive those here of citizenship. That law ushered in the most
violent decade in Chinese, American history.
The spread of anti-Chinese feeling was like a disease going
through the white population. They became the scapegoats.
They became the solution, if we could get rid of them, then our
fortune would be better.
The Chinese were foreign, did not belong here at all. This old
idea was given new life by the law. In Tacoma, Washington,
600 Chinese were expelled and their houses burned to the
ground. The Chinese of Juneau, Alaska, were loaded onto boats
and set adrift. In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 28 were killed, the
risk driven out.
Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California. The Chinese
were lynched, Chinatown was burned, Chinese were run out.
The last of the great fires was San Jose. When arsonists turned
its Chinatown to rubble. A 17-year-old named Young Soong
Quong packed up and fled. Like thousands of other Chinese
across the West, he made his way to the one place that seemed
safe. Where the sights and sounds were reminders of home. Dai
Fow, big city, San Francisco's Chinatown.
In order to get any pictures at all, I had to hide in doorways. I
waited for the sun to filter through the shadows, or for some
picturesque group or character to appear.
In 1895, a German photographer named Arnold Genthe,

wandered into San Francisco's Chinatown. But for him, we
would have almost no visual record of this world. Tong Yun
Gai, the Chinese street, headquarters of Chinese America.
The sidewalks were crowded with peddlers, cobblers, and
fortune tellers servicing the migrant laborers who converged
here when their work was done. Fish cutters from the Alaska
canneries, fruit pickers from the San Joaquin valley throng the
herbal stores and rice shops, temples and gabling halls.
Turn of the century San Francisco Chinatown, for a Chinese,
was the center of their world in America.
You will hear the shouts of vendors selling their wares. There
was also people speaking all different kinds of dialects.
Taishan, Hakka, Canton City dialect.
Six blocks long and two wide, Chinatown was a country within
a country filled with temptation for an ambitious young man
hungry for life. Young had worked as a house boy, got a taste
there of American ways. And now, the ways of Dai Fow.
My grandfather loved living in San Francisco Chinatown
because he liked going out with his friends. There were
restaurants, and his favorite, favorite activity was going to the
opera. And there were three opera houses, three opera houses to
choose from.
But it was an insular world this young man was in, cut off by
the exclusion law from American civic life. The law had barred
Chinese laborers, the first time the US excluded immigrants
based on nationality or race. Those already here could stay, but
could not become citizens.
Essentially, Chinese were declared permanent aliens.
It had meant that they could never participate in the elections,
that politicians would never have to pay any attention to them.
And I think also it had a symbolic significance in that it read
them permanently out of the American political community.
The story of the exclusion years is of a people in between
countries, often unsure as to which they belonged. It's about
families kept apart, lives shaped and misshaped by Chinese
custom as well as US law. To become American, the Chinese

would have to wage a long campaign. Not just in public, but
inside their home.
In the early days, homes were few in this society of men. They
slept in boarding houses and gathered at the store run by their
clan. Wongs at the Wong store, Lees at the Lees'.
Bachelors they were called, though half were married, their
wives left back in China. The store was a makeshift home,
hiring hole, social club, and where, for a few cents, letter
writers would help those who were illiterate trade words back
and forth.
Beloved parents, kneeling at your feet, you're prodigal son begs
you not to worry about him. Enclosed is $30. Your unworthy
son.
My husband-lord, according to Mr. Wang, you are indulging in
sensuality and have no desire to return home. I am shocked and
pained.
My beloved wife, because I can get no gold, I am detained in
this secluded corner of a strange land.
Chin-hsin, my son, take notice. I hope you will soon be home
and get married. I may already be dead and gone by the time
you come back. Would you feel sorry then?
Family and tradition pushed the men back to China. So did US
law with a vengeance.
The Exclusion Act made it virtually impossible for Chinese to
have a normal family life inside the United States. The
exclusion law applied to Chinese laborers. It exempted
merchants, travelers, and students. What this meant to the
Chinese who could not become a merchant, and it was not a
student or a traveler, what it meant was that he could not bring
his wife.
The so-called bachelors worked and saved and waited to go
home. But Young didn't say. Optimistic, unattached, he earned
his wages at a downtown hotel and then spent them with friends.
When my grandfather Young left the village he promised his
parents that he would be back in 10 years. Every year went into
another year and another year. And he did not realize 10 years

had gone by. And he received a letter from his mother saying
your father has passed away. And he went into the deepest
mourning. And the mourning was mixed with great regret that
he did not fulfill his promise.
Young was now stepping into the great quandary of the
exclusion years, how to sustain a family life across the Pacific.
He sailed to China to visit his father's grave and choose a bride,
Gum Gee.
But scratching out a living in the village was not the future he
wanted. He returned to the US alone. Gum Gee would serve her
new mother-in-law as custom prescribed.
I think Gum Gee was very realistic. She knew that it would be
years before she saw her husband again because that was the
way things were.
Gum Gee was just 20. She knew the law, her husband, a laborer,
had to become a merchant to send for her. She worked the
fields, she harvested, she waited. He worked at a store saving
carefully until he could buy it. No more luxuries for him now
and no trips home. Years past.
Her mother-in-law as the years went by was very, very
discouraging and said, you shouldn't go to America, you're just
so old. And you're getting unattractive, you're not going to have
any children. Why ruin my son's future?
Gum Gee honored custom and her mother-in-law for 14 years
before she got the word she was waiting for. She sailed to
California a merchant's wife.
My grandfather was waiting at the dock holding a box of dim
sum, special delicacies for his wife. And my grandmother
actually could see him. She was very self conscious, she had
aged quite a bit. And she really looked older than 35. And I
think she was very aware of that.
And here he is, trying to be pleasant. And he's trying to say
nothing's happened, welcome to America. And she looked at
him standing there, she wanted to grab that box of dim sum and
throw it back in his face.
The Youngs settled themselves by doing what they knew best,

they worked. And at 36, Gum Gee bore their first son. But as
with so many others who also waited, she never forgot.
I don't think she ever forgave her husband for her lost youth.
There was no one to take it out on but her husband. I would hear
her talk and harangue him every day and scold him. And the
tone of voice, she was begrudging him that time that he spent in
America not working hard enough or not saving fast enough.
The pain that came with exclusion laws was what stayed with
them the rest of their lives.
Congress was not finished with the Chinese. Over the years, the
exclusion laws would tighten the grip on those already here and
those who wished to come. The first change came in 1888. Until
then, Chinese laborers in America had papers allowing them to
move back and forth to China. Abruptly, the Scott Act changed
the rules.
That certificate says that you have the right to travel abroad and
come back. That was rendered invalid by our government. At
the time when this act was going through Congress there were
20,000 Chinese who were visiting their loved ones at home.
There were some people who are already on the boat, about 500
of them, arriving and only, of course, to be turned back.
More anti-Chinese laws came in quick succession. The
exclusion law expired in 1892. It was renewed with an added
sting. Identity papers, just for the Chinese, to be carried at all
times.
And if they didn't have that in their possession they were
subject to arrest and deportation. And this was a very, very--
this was the first time the United States had ever introduced
anything quite like this.
The Chinese hated the law. Tens of thousands refused to
register and mobilized a public campaign to overturn it.
Remember, the politician who lords it over you today is a
coward. When you don't have the vote, they denounce you as a
reptile. The moment you appear at the ballot box, you are
brother and are treated to cigars and beers.
His name Wong Chin Foo. He was a journalist, a showman, a

provocateur. He wanted more than a new immigration law, more
even than equal rights. For him, it was also personal. He wanted
respect.
He was the master of what we now know as the sound bite.
Chinese don't eat rats. I will pay someone $500 if they can
prove that Chinese eat rats.
Where he came from or why is a mystery. But by 1880, he was
lecturing any US audience he could find. Confucius he said,
lived 500 years before Jesus who was a Johnny come lately.
Assimilation? You try it, he said. Anybody here want to become
Chinese? He meant to shock as when he gave his newspaper its
name.
He actually put the word Chinese, American, onto his
newspaper like a banner. And his is claiming America for
himself, and in the process, claiming America for the rest of the
Chinese-American community.
More visionary than businessman, he printed 8,000 copies of his
paper for a New York Chinese population of under 1,000. In
less than a year, his venture was dead, but he wouldn't quit. In
1883, that great baiter of the Chinese, they're arch enemy, Denis
Kearney, was touring the east.
Wong Chin Foo put himself out there to be the target. And so he
challenged Denis Kearney to a dual. Let's fight it out in the
street, you and me, mono y mono.
Of course, newspapers couldn't resist. What weapons reporters
wanted to know. Kearney's choice, Wong shot back.
I give him the choice of chopsticks, Irish potatoes, or guns.
I'm not to be deterred from this work by the vaporings of Chin
Foo, Ah Coon, Hung Fat, Fi Fong or any other of Asia's almond
eyed lepers.
Wong showed up at a rally, a crowd of white men drinking and
cheering plus Wong Chin Foo heckling from a front row.
And Denis Kearney dismissed him, but he made his point. You
saw his statement to Denis Kearney in all the newspapers of the
day.
Then Wong showed up in Chicago, agitating for the right to

vote.
We want Illinois, the place that Lincoln called home, to do for
the Chinese what the North did for the Negroes.
But how do you change laws when you don't have votes, or
money, or allies among whites. That was a problem no
showmanship or eloquence could solve. In the 1890s Wong Chin
Foo vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared, leaving no record of
where or when he died. But by then, the Chinese were deep into
another fight.
They somehow grasped this very important concept that
America prides itself in being a country ruled by law.
The one venue open to them since they were not allowed to be
citizens, since they were not allowed to serve on juries, since
they were not allowed to vote, since they were nobody's
constituency, was the court. And why was that? Because of one
word in the 14th Amendment, no state shall deny to any person
the equal protection of the law. The 14th Amendment did not
apply to only to citizens of the US, it applied to persons. And it
was as persons that the Chinese brought case after case.
The Law had been no friend to the Chinese. They were barred
from public schools and from hospitals. There were special
taxes on Chinese miners, launderers, fishermen. But this was
not a fate the Chinese would accept.
Almost every single anti-Chinese law that got enacted in
California whether it be local or state, you will find Chinese
contesting it.
The first great battle was over the so-called cubic air ordinance
in San Francisco. On its face, an innocent health measure.
Under this ordinance no person was allowed to stay in a room,
in a apartment, unless there were 500 cubic feet of air space for
each person. This law was enforced only in the Chinese quarter
of the city where Chinese workers often bunked in triple bunks,
double bunks, in small rooms.
The police swept through the Chinese quarter making arrests.
But the elders of Chinatown ordered the men not to pay their
fines. To crowd the jails instead. Then, their lawyer turned the

logic of the law against the city itself. Was this not a health
violation? Were there 500 cubic feet of air for every prisoner?
The city was not only embarrassed and furious, but sought
revenge.
So a law was passed in 1876 which said that all prisoners
committed to the county jail should have their hair cut off to
within one inch of the scalp. It was clearly designed to
humiliate male Chinese prisoners who wore their hair in a long
braided queue.
The Chinese sued for damages and reached Judge Stephen Field
on the circuit court who, over a long and distinguished career,
had done nothing to hide his dislike of the Chinese.
Justice Field asked the representatives of the city of San
Francisco for what purpose they had enacted this statute? And
the answered that it had to do with lice being in people's hair
and that they shaved their hair for that reason. But Justice Field
noted that the law only shaved the heads of male prisoners. So
he wanted to know if it was believed by San Francisco that
women prisoners never had lice, that there was something
genetic, was there something genetic about women that they
could not have dirty hair? And the city could not answer that.
Then Justice Field went on. In a famous statement he said, when
we are appointed to the bench, we are not struck blind. He then
pulled out the record of the enactment of the law in the city
council and showed that the purpose of the law was to harass
the Chinese for sitting in the jails. In other words he said, what
you are doing is punishing people for availing themselves of
their own rights. He said, look, he has no friendship toward the
Chinese, that he wishes there could be a way to keep them out
of the country. But he points out when it comes to violating the
Constitution, the Constitution comes first. He will not permit
that.
That case set the precedent. And in 1886, a San Francisco
laundryman harassed by the city took his complaint all the way
to the Supreme Court and won. Now the protection of all
persons was the supreme law of the land. And the Chinese

weren't done.
The opening words of the 14th Amendment say that all persons
born in the United States are citizens of the United States. But
what about Chinese born in the United States?
Wong Kim Ark was a 22-year-old cook born in San Francisco.
But after visiting China, he was stopped when he tried to come
back to the country. If he was born here, he was a citizen. But
the law said Chinese couldn't be citizens. Wong sued.
Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the
descendants of the Patriots of the American Revolution? The
exalted qualification of being eligible to the presidency of the
nation?
It took the Supreme Court to remind the government that the
words of the 14th Amendment meant just what they said. A
person born in America was an American.
If you look at the record of Chinese activism in the courts, they
had assimilated to the extent that they understood that there
were American political institutions that they could use.
It sort of contradicts a popular stereotype-- the Chinese usually
take it lying down and very stoically accepted whatever fate
that they were assigned by American society when in fact, they
were very, very active in the pursuit of their rights. The pursuit
of the dignity in American society against all odds.
The signor of this contract, Sun Gum, hereby accepts that she
became indebted to her master for food and passage from China
to San Francisco. She shall willingly use her body as a
prostitute at Tan Fu's place for 4 and 1/2 years. She shall
receive no wages. If she becomes pregnant, she shall work one
year extra.
Should Sun Gum run away, she shall pay all expenses incurred
in finding and returning her to the brothel. If she contracts the
four loathsome diseases, she shall be returned to China. Thumb
print of Sun Gum.
No one knows what happened to Sun Gum, whether she was
shipped back to China or survived long enough to be a free
woman here. But one thing is sure, the public campaigns that

Chinatown waged, the great court battles it fought for its
freedoms, were not waged by or for its women. While it's men
fought the oppression of whites, women fought the oppression
of Chinatown itself. And in the Chinese push for freedom in
America, this was the second front.
It was not easy to grow up as a woman in Chinatown in those
days. They were brought up to not only to be good wives,
obedient wives, but to be good mother, to serve the husband, to
serve the in-laws, and to serve even the male children.
Chinese come from very strong patriarchal society with very
strong futile feelings against women.
Tradition held that a virtuous wife should stay at her Chinese
village. The few who broke custom by coming here were
expected to serve. To please their husbands, many had their feet
bound so tightly that they were crippled.
The custom of bound feet in the main is to restrict the mobility
of women so they would not travel too far away from home and
get into trouble. And there are those man who believe the shape
of a small foot is erotic.
Merchant wives, they were pretty much house bound. And they
didn't go out in public because it was considered indiscreet or
improper for women to be seen in public.
Husbands were free to take concubines into the home or second
wives. Arranged marriages were common, often against a young
girl's will. And these were the lucky ones. The harshest lives
belong to the prostitutes. And in the 1880s, they were almost
half the women in Chinatown.
Gangsters roamed the Chinese countryside looking for parents
so poor they would sell their daughters. $50 was the going
price. Girls as young as six were smuggled in and sold as mui
tsai, indentured servants. Brothels bid for the older girls who, in
America, could fetch $1,000 or more, a windfall to their
smugglers.
When the women were brought into this country, they would be
auctioned off. Many of the women did not outlive the terms of
their contracts. When they did become ill and died, sometimes

there were reports that the bodies were discarded in the streets.
They weren't given decent burials, they weren't shipped back to
China like the men were. It just speaks to how little value is
attached to women and women's lives.
The women couldn't turn for help to the police who were
indifferent to crime in Chinatown, or to law abiding citizens
who were terrorized by the Chinese gangsters, the Tongmen.
Their refuge was the Protestant church and one ironed willed
missionary.
I remember seeing her once in my life when I was about 13
years old. She was a tall, domineering presence when she
walked in the room. She came to a Chinatown that she knew
nothing about and she didn't speak a word of Chinese.
Donaldina Cameron barged her way into San Francisco's
Chinatown in 1895. She came to the Presbyterian mission home
a teacher, but when she saw the lives of women around her, she
heard God's call.
She drew allies among Chinese women in the home. Wu Tien
Fu, once an indentured servant, became her aide and interpreter.
And soon they were a common site. Cameron, dressed in a
worsted British suit and Eton collar, swooping down on a
brothel, policeman in tow.
She would go on top of the rooftops and get in through the
skylights. And get into the brothels, grab the girl, running back
to the mission home.
It was like something out of Hollywood, like a King Kong
movie. I really did not believe it. Tong men would guard the
brothels and make sure that they didn't escape. It's amazing that
doing as many rescue raids as she did, she did not ever get hurt
herself.
And she was always threatened that dynamite sticks would be
found outside the home. And there were all kinds of messages,
threats sent to her.
But her work was about much more than prostitutes. Any girls
or women suffering at the hands of men she wanted rescued and
sheltered at the mission.

There, they'd be remolded in the image of God and of his
chosen instrument, Cameron herself. There were classes in
English and needlework.
I cry out to God Most High--
There was Bible study, housework. Girls complained about the
austere regiment, some fled. But many seized their chance and
made new lives.
Mission girls would be among the first Chinese American
women to go to university. Would be among the first to vote.
And many joined the mission's crusade and in time, helped
stamp out the traffic and slaves girls. A revolt was taking form
that would upend the old ways of Chinatown, though at the turn
of the century, it was just barely in view.
In 1900, Europeans were pouring through Ellis Island. The
Bureau of Immigration spot checked them for disease, kept an
eye out for criminals. But beyond that, there were few
restrictions and most got through within hours. Since exclusion,
some 10 million Europeans had entered the country. Over that
time, the tiny Chinese population of 120,000 had dropped
further still to 90,000.
Chinese has the sore distinction as the only immigrant group
that I know of, in American history, their population declined.
The Exclusion Act did exactly what they intended it for.
The law had been renewed every 10 years. But prominent
Americans now call for a tougher law. None more loudly than
the labor leader, Samuel Gompers. As a young immigrant
himself, Gompers had worked as a cigar maker and after he
watched the Chinese take hold of that industry in the 1870s, he
never forgot it.
This tornado of a man, now the most powerful labor leader in
the country, made it a mission to keep the Chinese out of
America and its workforce. And he was one of many. The labor
movement was filled with the enemies of the Chinese.
They were driven out of blue collar working class jobs. There
were many, many Chinese working the sewing industries and
they were driven out. In boot and shoe-making, they were

driven out. They were forced out in fishing, farming, cigar
making.
But if the Chinese threat to labor had long past, Gompers
passion had not. In 1901, he carried his message personally to
the new president. He got no argument from Teddy Roosevelt,
and not much at his next stop, Capitol Hill.
So this was Gomper's message to Congress, the free emigration
of Chinese would be for all purposes an invasion by Asiatic
barbarians. It is our inheritance to keep civilization pure and
uncontaminated. We are trustees for mankind.
By 1902, the question is no longer should the United States
restrict immigration, it's how to restrict immigration and how to
do it better.
In 1902, Congress expanded exclusion to Hawaii and the
Philippines. Then two years later, it rewrote all its anti-Chinese
laws so they would last forever.
The law was passed in Congress with almost no debate, no
discussion.
That same year, a popular magazine carefully reviewed the
Chinese population. It was aging. There were few girls or
women. There was much illness. Cheerfully, the author
predicted extinction. By 1930 or 40, he said, the Chinese in
America would be gone.
The Chinese were the first immigrant group excluded from
America. Therefore, they became the first to have to sneak their
way into the country. The Chinese would dress up as Mexicans,
learn a few phrases of Spanish. You can imagine a Chinese
immigrant walking across the border saying que pasa, or
something like that in his own Toisan-Mexican dialect.
Another way was through Cuba. They would get on a ship and
work as a crew member. And some of the Chinese painted
themselves black to make themselves look Cuban. Jump ship
and there you, you're in America. You're Cuban, but you're in
America.
It was at the border that the drama of Chinese Exclusion played
out. Where whites and Chinese acted out the parts handed them

by the law. Chinese diplomats and merchants were welcome, the
rest had to fend for themselves.
1906, San Francisco's great earthquake followed by days of fire
and 3,000 dead. Chinatown was burned to the ground, a
catastrophe, or so it seemed.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a stroke of good luck
for Chinese because of the resulting fire that burned much of
the city and burned many of the immigration records of
Chinese. The Chinese could say, I was born in America. And no
one could prove them wrong.
Here was an opening and for the next 40 years, the Chinese
would use their wits and money to make the most of it. Now the
law and the math were on their side. Because if they could
persuade an official they were born here, they became citizens.
And their children did too.
They could go to the immigration bureau and say, I'm Mr. Lee,
I'm going to make a visit to China. I have three sons. I'm
bringing those three sons in. Now maybe he has those three sons
and maybe he doesn't.
They would claim more than what they actually have as their
children. And these slots could be given to their friend's
children or in fact, sold to others so other people could come to
the United States and claim to be American citizens. And this is
called paper son.
That's how I got over here, by using the paper son citizenship.
The paper costs about $2,000.
My parents bought a paper for $4,500.
My mother hadn't wanted me to come over because it cost so
much.
But getting hold of the papers was just the beginning. Now you
had to learn about the family and the village in China you were
pretending were yours. That assumed identity had to be
memorized from a coaching book.
Coaching letters can be sometimes 50, 60 pages. Sometimes
they have maps of the village on them. They're as big as a
library table, an elaborate map showing every house, the name

of every person living in house.
And I would say it would take about three months or so to
studying that document, and get more or less fluent to get into
the United States.
You arrive at San Francisco. The white people get off the ship,
you are detained. You're put aboard an Angel Island ferry.
Angel Island in San Francisco Bay unveiled by the Bureau of
Immigration in 1910. Until the end of exclusion, these graceful
buildings with their palm trees and manicured lawns were the
main arrival point for Chinese hoping to enter. Americans
dubbed it the Ellis Island of the West.
Ellis Island was a symbol of freedom. It's a wonderful beacon.
Angel Island was a symbol of detention, of interrogation, and of
trauma.
You arrive at Angel Island. You're marched under guard to the
detention barracks.
Armed guard to march you around and follow where you go.
First stop to the hospital and they want you to remove all your
clothes and they make sure, even though you have no clothes
on, they put a guard in there.
Months of preparation came to this, the interrogation.
My admission to America was totally dependent on that. I was
10 years old and to be brought into a room for interrogation and
you see this big Lo Fan, the devil, so to speak. And it was kind
of over powering.
I was really afraid to fail because all my parents spent all the
money.
They brought in a huge stack of photos for me to identify my
paper father.
Suk Wan's real parents had slipped into the US nine years
earlier. Since they were not citizens, they could not legally send
for her. She'd be questioned many times about a family she'd
never met, a life back in China she'd never led.
Where does your family eat their meals?
In the parlor.
About how far is it from your house to the nearest house on the

left hand side?
There are no houses on the left hand side.
These interpreters and the interrogators are very sophisticated
in their ways. They're putting little X's next to these answers
and these responses. And so the person is flustered.
Why are you sure your father was home at the time your mother
died?
I just remember that he was home.
We know that the man whom you claim to be your father was in
the US at the time. How do you explain your testimony?
You are wrong.
Are you sure your mother died on September 3rd 19--
Under scrutiny, Suk Wan's story broke down. She was ordered
back to China. While her real parents secretly financed her
appeal, she was held in the women's barracks, crowded with
detainees.
You're segregated from any family members here or back in
China. Months might go by. Sometimes the time is so long that
the people themselves start to write letters to the immigration
officials saying I've been here now four months, six months,
seven months. I want to go home. Let me go home.
After nine months, Suk Wan asked to stop the appeals. Her
parents tried to visit her the day she was deported.
My parents, my sister, my cousin.
A lot of people came to say goodbye.
We were separated by a fence and we're not allowed to talk to
each other.
Everyone was crying.
Suk Wan Lee would not return to the United States for nearly
half a century. And never saw her parents again.
Mark Chin's family took no chances. With a well placed bribe,
they got him through in a week. Bob Chin was held on Ellis
Island for two months. Dale Ching, who's papers were
legitimate was kept Angel Island for three months. But then he
too was set free.
The fact that the Chinese were willing to go through this very

difficult, at times very humiliating process, is that after all
these problems, they still see United States as a place of
opportunity. A place that they could improve their family's well
being. That's why they keep coming. The Chinese were
determined to beat the system.
They kept pushing their way in. After 1920, their numbers in
this country, which had been steadily dropping, began to climb.
Chinese America was here to stay.
The 1920s. Exclusion was nearing its half century mark.
All this progress that was going on in American society really
did not touch the Chinese community. They were pretty much
isolated, they were left to their own devices.
The Chinese who made their way here we're still shoved to the
sidelines of American life. They were waiters, domestics, and
almost a third were laundrymen working the eight pound
livelihood. Named for the arms they wielded as they pressed
100 shirts a day.
The daily drudgery was something that they had to tolerate. If
they're lucky, they could accumulate enough and go home and
buy a piece of land and retire. They're not really living in the
present.
White racism trapped them. So did custom. By a wide margin, it
was still men and boys slipping into the country, keeping
bachelor society alive with all its familiar rituals.
My father was a laundryman. And these men from the
community would come to the laundry to have my parents read
their letters to them.
I'm folding socks or I'm pressing the underwear and meanwhile
really listening. They were always telling about some terrible
condition in China. And the wives are saying how could you
leave me? And you're leaving me to starve to death while you
are having fun in America? Now you send me more money.
And then it was up to my mother or father to write a letter back.
Sometimes some very formal stuff. Oh I miss you, you are so
dear to me, and I will come home soon. And a lot of times I
really felt they were writing fiction.

Which was home, China or America? Almost 50 years into
exclusion, many had no clear answer. But change was coming.
In the worst days, there'd been nearly 30 Chinese men for every
woman. Now there were seven. Even the humble laundryman
and waiter could hope to find a wife. And their children, raised
in America, would want very different lives.
She was a laundryman's daughter who decided to be a movie
star. She went far. In the '20s and '30s, she played opposite
Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks.
People could see Anna May Wong in this tiny dress with
Fairbanks pointing a sword right at her mid-section. That outfit
made her sensational around the world.
American born, confident in ways her father's generation could
never be. Still, she lived suspended between two countries.
Starting with how people saw her.
His passion for power, twisting his brilliant mind as he revels in
the horror of human sacrifice and torture.
Americans regard us as a dark, mysterious race, impossible to
understand. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the
villain? And so crude a villain, murderous, treacherous, a snake
in the grass. I was so tired of the parts I had to play.
She played all the stock parts. The Mongolian slave, the
temptress, the doomed lover. And her lines were usually in
Chinglish, as it was called.
People were surprised that I speak and write English without
difficulty. But why shouldn't I? I was born right here in Los
Angeles and went to public schools here. For years, when
people asked me to describe my native country, I've surprised
them by saying it is democracy composed of 48 states.
Her skin marked her. Hollywood followed a very strict code of
no kissing between people of other races which is to say that
Anna May Wong could not kiss a Westerner on screen. And of
course this limited her terribly because that meant she couldn't
be a leading lady. The studios had the roles for her, but they
would prefer to use a Western star and put them in makeup.
They would pace their eyes back, they would adopt their lips,

and it would oftentimes look absurd.
Your eyes are as soft, your hair is pleasant in my touch, you
know, I cannot see this change. And I-- I do not--
If they get an American actress to slant her eyes and eyebrows,
and wear a stiff black wig, it's all right. But me? No film lovers
could ever marry me. So I must always die in the movies so that
the white girl with the yellow hair may get the man.
Wong called himself the woman of 1,000 deaths. It should be
her epithet, she said. To slip the racial codes, she made for
Europe. Berlin, Madrid, London. Anywhere the work was, and
the limelight.
Every time that Anna May Wong left United States, and she left
frequently between 1927 and 1937, she would have to visit an
immigration specter.
She was required to have two white witnesses testify on her
behalf that she was indeed Anna May Wong, that she was
indeed a Chinese American citizen. The subtitle of the form
says something like, reentry permit for alleged citizen of
Chinese descent. So their citizenship, their status, is under so
much suspicion that it's documented in this bureaucratic form
that they're only considered alleged citizens.
But this alleged citizen always came home. In Hollywood, she
took whatever parts there were, even the daughter of Fu Manchu
himself.
For her to make it in the film industry she had to embrace being
a foreigner. Anna May Wong, at some point, realized she
needed to play along with the game.
She knew her industry, knew what it would take. She went for
Shanghai Express as a step up, even if, once again, she'd play
the fallen woman. Then in 1932, came Pearl Buck's runaway
best seller, the novel, The Good Earth.
Here she was, the preeminent Chinese American actress of her
generation, in the most important movie Hollywood had ever
made about China.
But once they announced that Paul Muni, a white man, would
play the lead, Wong knew that she, a Chinese, would be barred

from playing his wife. She packed her bags.
I'm going to a strange country, and yet in a way, I'm going
home.
Chinese in the United States suffer from a lifelong
homesickness. I have never seen China, but somehow I have
always known it.
But her tour of China was not as pretty as it seemed. The
Chinese were divided about Anna May Wong. They were
troubled by the roles that she had taken. The anger that was
under the surface came boiling right through to the top. And the
welcomes turned into chants of down with Wong Liu Tsong, the
stooge of America.
Those roles that she didn't want to play, that she felt imprisoned
by, and trapped by, followed her to China.
The officials made speeches that lasted for hours. They all took
turns berating me for the roles I had played.
She had talked of spending years in China. But after nine
months, she sailed home.
She was back in Los Angeles in time for the enormous success
of The Good Earth. Louise Rainer, the white actress who'd
landed the lead role now picked up an Academy Award.
And thank you very much.
She had the enthusiasm, the talent, the beauty, the entire
package to be someone of enormous fame. I think that if she'd
been in The Good Earth, we wouldn't of had this type of
conversation we've had which we're trying to remember what
Anna May Long was like. But
I think it's a mistake to see Anna May Wong's career as a
tragedy, or her life as a tragedy. She was probably the most
visible Chinese American worldwide.
The laundryman's daughter made a total of 54 films and became
an advocate for Chinese causes as her career drew to a close.
She spoke up at a time when women didn't do that so much, and
Chinese Americans couldn't. She in many ways is an unsung
hero for what she accomplished.
For Chinatown, the Great Depression was another indignity in

the life already filled with them.
Every family knew the stories. The Lee's son down the block, he
graduated from law school, and then nobody would hire him.
And what about Pardee Lowe, that Stanford boy? A job
interviewer told him right out, me no likee, me no wantee
Chinee boy. Parents urged their young to look to China.
It was always emphasized that there was no future for us here.
Why is education important? I mean even for women? It's so we
could serve China some day. I was born here, but the expression
was to go back because my parents had come from there.
To make lives for themselves in America, the young would have
to push on two fronts, against the codes of white society, and
those of their parents as well. The assault on Chinatown's was
had started with its women. It would be carried forward by their
young.
In the classical Chinese family, the father is the patriarch. He
was all powerful, there's never to be any back talk by any
member of the family.
I'm now 79, my mother's 101, she's never said thank you to me
yet. Any service one does for one's parents is expected. The
more you do, the better.
Jade Snow Wong, as a daughter, was only a siu hay, a small
happiness for her parents. She was expected to clean up after
her brothers and yield them the better food at the table. She
began working at age six.
As soon as we could handle scissors, we were helping mom.
And as soon as we could do more, we were sewing. Child labor
was just accepted to make ends meat.
Somebody's got to chop wood, clean the bean sprout and peel
the eggs. And in the morning, swamp the restaurant. It was what
we call a mom and pop restaurant, except there was no mom.
Ark Chin's father came from the old school. He'd left his wife
behind in China and ruled over his Chop Suey restaurant, and
his son, with a strict hand.
Some of the demands that my father laid on me didn't make any
sense. But in spite of it, I never did talk back. In my schooling

and my reading, I could see and escape from the restaurant. And
so that constantly propelled me forward.
Art lived behind the restaurant with his father and grandfather,
who'd worked here all his life as a laundryman.
When I was in the last year of high school, I was washing
dishes. And my grandfather say, what are you going to do after
high school? I said Grandfather, I'm going to go to college and
do civil engineering. He said, you know, going into engineering
is a dead end. He said I've known people who have studied
engineering, they never got a job as an engineer.
He was a very affable old man, but there was irony in his voice
when he talked to me. He understood the I'm a bright person and
that my future was hemmed in. And the sadness is that he feel
powerless to do anything. And then that was the kind of
pervasive, mental attitude among that generation.
I really was excited with learning new ideas outside of my
cultural background. But when I approached my parents for any
help, they refused. My father declared that his obligation was
first to his sons. And he said, if you have the talent, you can
provide for your own education. So I took up the challenge,
worked my way through college.
I took this course in sociology and I could just see John Ross
now, he's standing there, looking at us and we're all looking at
him. And he says very quietly, well there was a time in America
when parents had children to make them work. And I thought,
that sounds right. But he says, now we think differently,
children have rights. Well that was different. And they should
have their individual wishes regarded as well as being part of
the household. And that was revolutionary to me.
Right around that time I was 16, I was so excited to be going
out on my first date. And of course my father noticed it, asked
me, with whom are you going out? And when I said a boy he
said, well I forbid you to go. And so then I gathered up my
courage and tried to sound like my sociology professor and said,
in America, children have rights here. They don't just exist to
work for their parents.

And my father said, where did you learn this philosophy? And I
said, well from my teacher and you always taught me my
teacher is supreme after you. And he said, how could you let a
foreigner's teaching refute our Chinese culture? He was very
angry because it was the first time I had talked back to him,
didn't expect it. But nevertheless, I went out and it was my
declaration of independence.
December the 7th, I remember that day. The night after
December the 7th, the federal agents came in and they wanted
the Japanese people. They questioned everybody, what are you?
Chinese or Jap, Chinese or Jap? So I tell them I'm Chinese. Let
me see an ID, I gave them the ID. Wong? OK. The two Japanese
fellows that I rooming with, they took them away.
They were rounding up the Japanese for the internment camps.
And we were told not to leave Chinatown and that if we did
leave, that we wore our buttons that proclaimed American
Chinese.
December 7, 1941 was a calamity for the American Navy in
Honolulu and for Japanese Americans. Perversely, it would be
Chinese America's deliverance. For four years, China had been
at war with Japan. Suddenly, China was our ally. The goodwill
spilled over to the Chinese here. Now they were the good
Asians.
Registration day line-ups. Throughout the nation, rich and poor,
citizen and alien, enact a drama of democracy. East side, West
side, even in Chinatown, New York's melting pot response--
Being in the United States Navy was one of the proudest days
of my life. I wasn't a Chinese, I wasn't a white man, I was a US
Navy military Naval man.
People would ask me, Sailor, do you need a ride? They would
go out of their way to take me where I wanted to go. Putting on
a uniform I was like a showoff for them. I was happy because I
had that respect that I never had before.
I make a better life in the service because a civilian, at that
time, he did laundry or restaurant business. So by going through
the service, I could be somebody else.

There was tremendous shortage of labor because most of male
went to war.
Here is where the victory is born, in the factories of American
industry going full blast--
And so, Chinese for the first time, were able to in large number,
work alongside American workers. And the white's had the
opportunity to see the Chinese as real individuals rather than
this horrible image of them as aliens.
It is a very sad twist of fate that Japanese Americans now are
the bad guys. The place that the Chinese used to have.
From San Francisco's huge Chinatown comes a steady flow of
patriotic Americans of Chinese decent eager to register for work
in vital war-time industry--
There were seven shipyards in the Bay Area and they needed
workers to help build ships. So Chinese women ended up for the
first time, taking on jobs like welders and riveters, and burners,
and flangers.
One of my aunts was one of the riveters. And I remember she
just gloried in the fact that she was working for a good money
now.
Patriotic fervor swept through Chinatown. But there were still
15 anti-Chinese laws on the books. What to make of them? They
were now an embarrassment among allies. And in 1943, with
FDR's support, a bill repealing exclusion sailed through
Congress. This historic event barely earned a headline. Even
Chinese Americans had other things on their minds.
We were getting ready to be shipped overseas and I think all of
a sudden, people were becoming colorblind because suddenly
they realized that we are going to really have to hang together,
or die.
Ark Chin was one of thousands of young replacements thrown
into the European front in the winter of '44.
Fear never leaves you. One time we went into a hollow. The
guys were tired, they wanted to rest and I said, now guys, let's
get the hell out of here. Sure enough, as we got out of there, the
mail came in.

So after that, I didn't have any problem with my squad. They
followed me. So that was a sense of realization that I had
become somebody more than I had started with.
Coming back, first of all, I survived. Later, back in the
restaurant, we went through another one of those incidents
where the red necks said, we fought god damn war for you
Chinks. I say what? I was out there, I fought that war.
Veterans came home with new rights. It wasn't just the G I Bill.
Now laws were written to allow them, and all Chinese with
citizenship, to bring in wives.
Ark's family dispatched him to China in hopes he'd find a bride
in the old village. He would have none of it. But on the way
home, he stopped at an uncle's in Hong Kong.
He says, I know a girl that is absolutely perfect. She's a
university student and she is absolutely beautiful. I said, no
forget it. But went over there and I saw her standing there with
parasol in a cheongsam. I was totally stunned.
Literally, it was love at first site.
Some 65 years after the Exclusion Act, the Chinese here could
lead lives that others took for granted. They could become
naturalized like other immigrants, could live together like other
families. Bachelor society was dying at last.
Chinese mother's present their youngsters in this Chinatown
baby parade at San Francisco's--
Our children we sense been born into a new era. I did not kid
myself that still, there would be road blocks. Yeah, it was going
to be a struggle. But what the hell? That's life.
Funding for this series was provided by Walter and Shirley
Wang and by the Henry Luce Foundation. The family of Hsien
Hsien and Bae Pao Lu Chow. The family of Kenneth and Mary
Wang. The Herb Alpert Foundation. SIT Investment Associates
and SIT Investment Foundation. The John D. And Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation. The Star Foundation. The Kelvin
Foundation and Albert Yu and Mary Bechmann.
The Tang Fund. Gina and David Chu, Nautica International. The
Cheng-Kingdon Foundation, Intel Corporation. Sybase e-

Business Software, because everything works better when
everything works together. And by Mutual of America. For over
half a century, people from all walks of life have turned to
Mutual of America for retirement and pension products.

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