Closing the Golden Door

Asian Migration and the Hidden History of Exclusion at Ellis Island

Anna Pegler-Gordon

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781469665733
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The immigration station at New York's Ellis Island opened in 1892 and remained the largest U.S. port for immigrant entry until World War I. In popular memory, Ellis Island is typically seen as a gateway for Europeans seeking to join the "great American melting pot." But as this fresh examination of Ellis Island's history reveals, it was also a major site of immigrant detention and exclusion, especially for Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian travelers and maritime laborers who reached New York City from Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean, and even within the United States. And from 1924 to 1954, the station functioned as a detention camp and deportation center for a range of people deemed undesirable. Anna Pegler-Gordon draws on immigrants' oral histories and memoirs, government archives, newspapers, and other sources to reorient the history of migration and exclusion in the United States. In chronicling the circumstances of those who passed through or were detained at Ellis Island, she shows that Asian exclusion was both larger in scope and more limited in force than has been previously recognized.

1 Enforcing Asian Exclusion at Ellis Island

September 4, 1939. William Fook Yee was, in his words, a “fourth generation” American when he arrived at Ellis Island in 1939. Three generations of his family had worked in the United States. Yee’s great-grandfather worked on a sheep ranch in Wyoming in the nineteenth century as a ranch hand who was “friendly with the Indians” and respected by his employer, but chose to return to China when he had finished his working life. Yee’s grandfather immigrated to the United States shortly after the Civil War but died of an unknown illness after just a couple of years in Walla Walla, Washington. Yee’s father then emigrated, working as a laborer in various places from Alaska to New York. Yee was born in 1924 and grew up in Toisan, a farming district in Guangdong province in Southeast China. Almost all Chinese living in New York in the first half of the twentieth century came from Guangdong, mostly from Toisan. In an interview with the Ellis Island Oral History Project, Yee described himself as “one of the overseas children left behind in China.” He lived with his mother and older sister while his father worked in the United States, returning to Toisan only three or four times.¹

When Yee was sixteen, his father made arrangements for him to immigrate to the United States. His father’s first concern was that Yee might be conscripted by the Chinese Army to fight Japan, but he also felt that it was time to continue the family tradition of working overseas. Yee traveled from his home in Toisan to Hong Kong, where he boarded a massive modern liner, the Empress of Canada. Along with twenty-three fellow passengers en route to New York, Yee sailed to Vancouver, then took a train to Montreal, and another to Nova Scotia. One month after he departed Hong Kong, Yee boarded a smaller ship, the Evangeline, in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The following evening, he arrived in New York. “Looking at the Statue of Liberty,” which he had learned about at school in China, he recalled, “I know I’m there.”²

Although he was a fourth-generation American, Yee could not immigrate legally. As none of Yee’s forefathers had been born in the United States, he could not legitimately claim U.S. citizenship. Because his father was a laborer, he could not immigrate under limited exemptions to Chinese exclusion that allowed the entry of diplomats, merchants, students, actors, and travelers temporarily visiting the United States. Instead, Yee claimed to be the son of a U.S. citizen, a man who was not his father and did not share his birth name. According to Yee, arriving as a paper son was the only way that Chinese could immigrate to the United States. Many Chinese would have agreed. Although there were some limited options for Chinese to immigrate legally, most appear to have entered through “indirect smuggling” schemes. Exact numbers are difficult to establish, but it is estimated that 90 percent of all Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States during exclusion using false documentation.³

When Yee’s ship docked in New York, European and Chinese passengers were separated, with the latter ordered to the Chinese Division. Before they were detained, however, the Chinese arrivals were allowed to go into New York City. They chose to see “an American movie, a cowboy movie,” and then returned to the island. Yee expected to be landed the next day. However, he was held for three weeks at Ellis Island—longer than the other Chinese on his ship—because immigration inspectors believed that he was a paper son. His papers said that he was sixteen, but he was taller than typical for his age. Inspectors knew that many paper sons tried to find papers that closely matched, but sometimes adopted identities that were not similar to their own backgrounds. Yee was in fact sixteen, although he was not who he claimed to be. Yee was interrogated: “How many neighbors did you have, what house, what direction your house facing, and, you know, how many relatives you have, and what gender are they, male or female, and so on and so forth.” Anxious and unable to speak with his father, Yee kept a positive attitude while being detained. When he was finally told that he was free to go, he was ready in minutes, having already packed his bags.⁴

Ironically, given his reasons for emigrating from China, Yee was drafted into the U.S. Army four years after his arrival. He served in the all-Chinese Fourteenth Air Division. He hated serving in a segregated unit, comparing it to the discrimination faced by all-Black units. If he got shot, he pointed out, his blood was the same color as everyone else’s. Yee was posted in China, where, in his words, he worked as a “buffer” between the American and Chinese forces because he understood both cultures and languages. While in service, he met his wife and they were married by an army chaplain in Shanghai. When asked whether he had to go through Ellis Island on his return from the war, Yee replied, “You kidding? The American army, with the stripes and everything won. You returned as a hero with the wife.”⁵

---

Yee’s experience reveals key aspects of Chinese migration to New York and the enforcement of exclusion at Ellis Island. Like many others, Yee traveled from Toisan as part of an established migration network with long-standing regional connections to join his father in New York. Although Yee followed the Canadian overland route, other Chinese arrived from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. Despite this and in contrast to Europeans arriving at Ellis Island, exclusion laws prevented Yee from legally immigrating to the United States. European immigrants were processed quickly, and few were detained. All Chinese arrivals were subject to regulation by the Chinese Division, which interviewed them to ensure their identities and eligibility for entry under exclusion laws. New York officials emphasized that they treated Asian arrivals courteously; Yee’s opportunity to travel into the city may support this. They also highlighted the speed with which they processed return certificates, verifying Chinese New Yorkers’ residence and immigration status. Return certificates were required for Chinese planning to make a round trip to China, as Yee’s father had done. However, many more Asian than European arrivals were detained and for longer periods.⁶

Nonetheless and not surprisingly, Yee found the experience of being detained and interrogated difficult. He described how many detainees were “depressed.” Other oral histories mention that children were crying and completely shocked by being taken from families they had just met upon arrival in the United States. They describe how longer-term detainees became “tense and aggravated,” creating an atmosphere of anxiety among all Chinese. These experiences, which show a disconnect between immigration officials and Asian detainees, are explored in more depth in chapter 2. Contrasting his arrival experience with his heroic return from World War II, Yee implied that passage through Ellis Island was demeaning. Like other travelers in New York, especially diplomatic representatives and other elites, Yee critiqued his treatment by immigration officials.⁷

Other aspects of the administration of exclusion at Ellis Island are not as clear in Yee’s experience. As we will see in this chapter, exclusion laws were contested in New York. Across the United States, Chinese worked together to challenge exclusion and shape the enforcement of the laws. In California, most officials held anti-Chinese views and were strongly supported by the local white community. In New York and the eastern United States, Chinese were more likely to secure the support of non-Chinese Americans who questioned or actively opposed exclusion laws. Exclusionary policies and practices were more contested, both by non-Chinese locals and among immigration officials. Some New York inspectors held clearly anti-Chinese views. Others, including senior officials, were more respectful of Chinese arrivals. Chinese community organizations had influence with the Chinese Division in New York, in particular in recommending Chinese interpreters; however, their involvement was challenged. Some reporters and restrictionists claimed that enforcement of exclusion was lax at Ellis Island. “It is evident,” the New York Times editorialized in 1893, “that the enforcement of the law has for some time been perfunctory at the port of New York, and probably elsewhere.”⁸ Indeed, New York officials were critiqued by the national office for not rigorously enforcing, and sometimes resisting, restrictions against Chinese and Japanese arrivals.

These criticisms sometimes led to claims that Chinese were more likely to gain entry to the United States via New York.⁹ However, these claims are not accurate. Asians arriving in New York did not have better chances of entry than those arriving in other ports. Although the data are limited, and are explored in more detail later in this chapter, Chinese arriving in New York were almost three times more likely to be rejected than those applying for entry in San Francisco. Japanese were seven times more likely to be rejected in New York, although their overall prospects for entry were better than those of Chinese arrivals in both San Francisco and New York. Rates of acceptance or rejection do not appear to be the key reason Chinese and Japanese arrivals chose this port, as applicants for admission through New York continued to rise even as larger numbers were rejected (tables 1, 2, 3 and 4).

Why, then, did Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians choose New York as a port of entry? The most obvious reason was convenience. As explored in the introduction, Ellis Island was the most direct entry point for most Asian arrivals traveling from Europe, Latin America, or the Caribbean. It was also the most convenient location for individuals who lived or were planning to live in New York or in the eastern United States. If they were detained at Ellis Island during an investigation, Ellis Island was closer to their homes and families, offering easier access to witnesses and visitors.

A more important reason may be that success rates were not the only consideration for arriving immigrants. Asian immigrants may have chosen to enter through New York in part because New York officials administered Asian exclusion with relative restraint and treated Asian immigrants with limited respect. Detainees carved poems in Chinese into the wooden walls of San Francisco’s immigration station lamenting the “barbarians’ cruelty” and their “hundreds of despotic acts.” In contrast, the very limited number of poems from Ellis Island did not focus as extensively on immigration officials. Some writings were political statements about the 1930s Sino-Japanese war or references to erotic poems. Others criticized exclusion laws but expressed confidence.¹⁰ One Ellis Island poem, for example, read as follows:

Though imprisonment is bitter, my life will be long;

When I landed from the ship, I feared bodily harm.

I urge you: don’t be afraid of immigration laws—

It’s certain we’ll be freed to go home in peace.¹¹

Chinese diplomats charged with representing their citizens’ interests in the United States repeatedly emphasized that they did not necessarily oppose the exclusion of Chinese laborers. However, they took issue with disrespectful treatment by immigration officials, especially toward respectable merchants, students, and others who were entitled to enter.¹² At Ellis Island, Chinese arrivals remained subject to the law but received more respectful treatment.

The contested yet considerate enforcement of exclusion at Ellis Island was very different from the administration of exclusion in San Francisco. Since the publication of Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung’s Island forty years ago, historians have understood the harsh ways that exclusion was enforced at Angel Island during the time that the station operated in San Francisco between 1910 and 1940.¹³ Because San Francisco was the largest port for arriving Chinese, its officials played an outsize role in shaping exclusion enforcement and pushing the Immigration Bureau in Washington, D.C., to support stronger “gatekeeping” restrictions.¹⁴ In her definitive study of exclusion, Erika Lee argues that exclusionists sought to make San Francisco’s zealous enforcement of Chinese exclusion “a model for the nation.”¹⁵ This is the Angel Island model of exclusion. However, New York did not follow this model very well.

Exclusion and Immigration Laws

During the exclusion era, Asians were increasingly prohibited from entering the United States. This process started with the very first federal immigration restriction, the 1875 Page Act, which prevented the entry of criminals, coolies, and immigrants imported involuntarily for “lewd and immoral purposes.”¹⁶ It was extended with the 1882 law that became known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. This law banned the admission of newly arriving Chinese laborers for ten years and barred all Chinese from admission t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations Map Tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of Maps
• Introduction: Locating Ellis Island in Asian American History
• 1. Enforcing Asian Exclusion at Ellis Island
• 2. America’s Chief Deportation Depot: Expanding Expulsion across New York
• 3. Smugglers and Stowaways: The Dangerous Journeys of Human Freight
• 4. Asian Sailors: Shanghaied in Hoboken
• 5. Japanese Internees: New York Has a Concentration Camp of Its Own
• Conclusion: The End of Detention at Ellis Island
• Appendix of Tables
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index