News and Events

Professor Charles Egan at San Francisco State University Professor Egan has researched the wall inscriptions at the Angel Island Immigration Station for several years, and has identified up to 60 new Chinese poetic inscriptions at present unknown to the public. Miscellaneous Chinese prose inscriptions and up to 40 pictorial carvings have also been found on the walls. Chinese is not the only language represented: inscriptions in Japanese, Korean, Russian, Punjabi, and several other languages have been found, deciphered, and researched.

While Chinese were the only group to carve poetry on the walls, other groups wrote poems about the immigrant experience as well – and published them in newspapers. Professor Egan and his research team have reviewed Japanese and Korean newspapers of the 1910-1940 period, and discovered scores of compelling poems by new immigrants describing such topics as Angel Island detention, picture brides, homesickness, impressions of San Francisco and the Central Valley, and farm and factory work. Some poems are poignant complaints about the unfair laws and racial bias to which Asian immigrants were subject.

For this event, Professor Egan will present a selection of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean inscriptions and poems, and also read excerpts of a Japanese detainee’s Angel Island diary, and recount the tragic suicide of a picture bride