"We were real, so there was no need to be afraid": Lum Ngow's long detention on Angel Island.

Yung, Judy

An earlier version of this story appears on the website of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, www.aiisf.org, under "Immigrant Voices."

On February 5, 1935, thirteen-year-old Lum Ngow [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and his mother, Ow Soak Yong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], arrived in San Francisco from China on the President Taft. They had come to join his father, Lum Piu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a merchant who ran Lun Kee [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a Chinese poultry market and deli in Oakland Chinatown. Family members of the merchant class were exempt from the Chinese Exclusion Act, and they should have been admitted into the country. Instead, mother and son were detained on Angel Island for eighteen months, fighting a legal battle to prove they were in fact the son and wife of Lum Piu. (1) At issue was a major discrepancy between their testimony and that of other witnesses regarding the wedding date of Lum Ngow's parents. As Lum Ngow (also known as Lee Show Nam [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) explained to me seventy-five years later, Before my aunt [Mo Shee [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]] came to America with my uncle [Lum Yun [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]] in 1921, they knew she would have to answer questions from the immigration bureau, like when did your brother-in-law [Lum Piu] get married? And if he had married, there would be more questions, like where is the wife from, what Ls her surname, how many were at the wedding, who introduced diem, did she ride in a sedan chair, and so on. To avoid all these kinds of questions, she was told to say, "My brother-in-law is not married." But they did not tell my father that was what she said at the interrogation. So when we arrived, they saw that her interrogation records had said my father was not married when she left China for America. Yet my father had said he got married in 1920 and was sponsoring his wife and son to come to America. So it was all wrong! In those days, things were very crooked. Someone told my father he could give a $350 bribe to get us admitted. (2) My father said, "$350 is a lot of money. I could buy a new Ford automobile for that amount." So he didn't want to pay that much money. He thought there was nothing to fear since our papers were real. So he took it to court instead. The appeal process took eighteen months, during which time 1 lived there on Angel Island. In the end, the appeal failed, and my mother and I were deported back to China in 1936.

It was not until 1958 that Ow Soak Yong would be admitted into the United States and not until 1963 that Lee Show Nam would be able to bring his family and join his parents in America. By then he was forty-two years old and had suffered through the hardships of the Sino-Japanese War and the Communist takeover of China. Still, he was not bitter, for he had persevered and in the end attained his goal of making his home in Gold Mountain.

I met Lee Show Nam at the annual Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation gala in 2009 and knew right away that I should interview him. (3) He looked much younger than his age (eighty-seven) and he obviously had a great memory for details about his long stay at Angel Island. He attributed his robust health and jet-black hair to his chi gung [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and liu tung quan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] exercises as well as his stoic attitude toward life: "I don't let things get to me." By then I had done a considerable amount of research about Chinese immigration through Angel Island, including over fifty oral history interviews with former detainees. (4) Lee told me things that I had not heard before about the Zizhihui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Self-Governing Organization, founded by Chinese immigrants on Angel Island), the smuggling of coaching notes, the "dark room" or isolation cell, and the role of Donaldina Cameron, matron of the Presbyterian Mission Home, in helping immigrants get landed. I was also intrigued by his immigration case file, which, when combined with his oral history interview, clearly shows how thorough and suspicious the immigration officials were in their investigations of Chinese applicants and how a real son of a Chinese merchant could still fail the test and be deported to China.

Through no fault of his own, Lum Ngow was caught in the web of lies that Chinese immigrants often resorted to in order to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act and pass the rigorous cross-examination at Angel Island. (5) What many failed to realize was that the Immigration Service had detailed records of all past Chinese immigration cases and that once a lie or inconsistency in the testimony had been uncovered, it could not be easily retracted. As far as the immigration inspectors were concerned, it was a question of "How do we know they are telling the truth now when they have lied before?" Particularly with Chinese immigrants, the assumption was almost always that they were not telling the truth. In Lum Ngow's case, this assumption persisted even after Donaldina Cameron wrote three letters of support vouching for the family's credibility.

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This is Lee Show Nam's story based on my oral history interview with him on December 3, 2010, in Oakland Chinatown. I was born in 1923, the second month and fourth day, in Kuchong village [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Zhongshan County [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. I had a younger sister and an older brother who died soon after I was born. The custom then was that when a child died, the next child would be named alter an animal. So I was given the nickname Ngow [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (cow). Later, my teacher in Shiqi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] changed my name to Show Nam [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (longevity) so that it would sound better. Life wasn't bad in China. My father was a merchant in America and he periodically sent money home to support us. I helped with the farming and attended school in the town of Shiqi. Still, I wanted to go to America for a better life. People returning from America were able to buy land, build new houses, and get married. So everyone wanted to come to America. No one wanted to remain in the village, especially after the world depression set in and money began to lose its value. In 1935 my father finally sponsored Mother and me to come to America. We had to go to Hong Kong for inoculations and the physical exam. Then we had to book passage to America. After we took care of everything, we returned to the village until it was time to sail. My father sent us coaching notes to study, even though we were real relatives and did not have to lie. [They] included answers to questions that would likely be asked in the immigration interrogation and a map of the village. We traveled special third class on the President Taft, a twenty-thousand-ton ship. We had a small room to ourselves with two bunk beds and a small table. It was December and quite stormy. We were seasick and stayed in bed. When we felt better, we went to the dining room for our meals. The food, Chinese food, was good. The voyage took over twenty days, with stops in Shanghai, Japan, and Honolulu. We got off the ship in Shanghai to go shopping at the large store owned by Zhongshan people. We refused to step foot in Japan. After all, they had attacked and invaded China! But when we got to Honolulu, we got off the ship to walk around. We had an uncle in Hawaii. Our ship docked at Pier 5 in San Francisco. A large station wagon drove us to Pier 35 to catch the ferry to Angel Island. They just took the two of us, since the rest of the people were going elsewhere--to Panama, Peru, New York, and so on. After we arrived at the island, some lo fan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (foreigners) took us to the dormitories. There was a men's dormitory and a women's dormitory. The Chinese had their own dormitory, and Indians, Japanese, and Mexicans lived in another dormitory. Since it was past dinnertime, they took us to the dining hall, where we ate alone. The food--corn beef, cabbage, and rice--tasted awful! From then on, this was the daily routine. In the morning a loudspeaker blasting the radio woke us up at 5:00 a.m. Then at 6:00 a.m. they opened the door and we went down the covered stairway to the dining room for breakfast. Those too lazy to go have breakfast could keep sleeping. Lunch was at 10:00 a.m.--usually bread and jam, coffee and tea. Dinner was at 3:00 p.m. At 12:00 noon a White guard by the name of Pete would open the door and yell in Chinese, "Jing sung law hall [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]." In other words, bring your dishes of food to the dining room for the Chinese chefs to cook or warm up. That would be the food that relatives sent from the city, like salted fish, bean cake, and barbecued chicken, that could be added to the meal. Otherwise it was one main dish and one small dish like corn beef and cha gwa [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (cucumbers), laam gwok [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (pickled olives), bean curd, and things like that. The food was poor and we seldom had chicken. If you had money, during snack time at 6:00 p.m. you could buy milk, cookies, or a piece of pie for five cents from Henry, an Italian who ran the concession. He also sold us stationery paper and envelopes, pencils, toothpaste, and notebooks. We had a Zizhihui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] run by sixteen officers elected to these positions, including a chairman, vice-chairman, secretary, treasurer, two negotiators who spoke English, a public safety officer, general affairs officer, four investigators, and four law enforcers. They usually asked kids like me to be law enforcers. Whenever we saw anyone throwing cigarette butts or spitting on the floor, we were to tell the officers and the offender would be confined to the "dark room" for half an hour. It was a closet where they stored old newspapers and brooms. I was confined there once for not shutting off the water faucet in the bathroom. One kid caught stealing fifty cents was confined there for a whole week. There were basketball and volleyball games, ping-pong, dominoes, and mah-jongg, also Chinese chess, newspapers to read, and musical instruments like the yang qiu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (butterfly harp) and erhu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (two-stringed fiddle). There were also two radios and a phono-record player. The Zizhihui put out the money to buy these things with the onetime membership dues they collected from the new arrivals. The officers read outgoing letters to be sure there was no coaching information in [them], and they were also responsible for receiving coaching notes that the Chinese kitchen help sneaked in. How did they do this? The cooks would pick up coaching notes in the city on their days off and wrap them in the foil paper that came in a pack of cigarettes. (This was before the days of plastic bags.) All the big shots [officers] sat at the first table near the kitchen and were served special dishes like green beans, chicken, steamed eggs, and so on. The cook would indicate there was a coaching note hidden in the food by putting a drop of soy sauce on top of the dish of steamed eggs, two drops for two notes. All the time I was there, I never saw anyone get caught passing coaching notes. (6) There were many kids my age. We played ping-pong, read the newspapers, listened to records, and played dominoes. We were never bored. Someone taught me how to play the erhu, and another guy who was a pilot taught me the English alphabet and simple words like "good morning," "how are you," "table," and "chair." One time when we were outside in the recreation yard, a boy by the name of Low Wai Yui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] shot a bird with a slingshot. Then he threw the ball over the fence and shouted to the guard, "Outside ball!" So the guard opened the door to let him go outside to retrieve the ball. Wai Hung got the bird, plucked it, and had the cook make us san gai jook [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (rice gruel with chicken). That was the only time I ever saw a bird like that. It looked like a fat pigeon, but it was gray color and could not fly. Once a week I would be allowed to go visit my mother in the Administration Building, where the women were kept. Sometimes I would run into Miss Maurer (Methodist deaconess Katharine Maurer] on the way. She had a room full of playthings and she would give me things like a ruler, pencil, eraser, or puzzle. She really liked Chinese people and would help them write letters and purchase things from the city. She was very nice to me and did not want me to leave. I remember she hugged me and kissed my cheek. She was a very nice woman. There was also a Miss (Donaldina] Cameron at the Presbyterian Church who was very helpful to the Chinese. My father got her to write a letter on our behalf. Her letters usually helped people get landed, but not us. Sometimes I was asked to serve as a messenger on these visits. I remember this case of a brother and sister who were living in different dormitories. After they were interrogated, he asked me to take a letter to my mother and tell her to give it to his sister. Then another time, the sister gave my mother a coaching note to give me to take to her brother. The guards never searched me and 1 was able to help them out in that way I waited ten days [after my arrival] before they called me for the interrogation. It took place in an office on the second floor of the Administration Building with two immigration inspectors and interpreter Hall Lan [Mabel Lee] present. (7) I was well prepared. We were real, so there was no need to be afraid. I remember the interpreter asking me, "Is your grandmother joy sang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (still alive)?" I didn't understand what she meant by joy sang. Then she asked, "Do you still have a grandmother?" I said no. Then she asked when my father got married, and I said I didn't know. Who would know that my aunt had said my father was unmarried? So there's the mistake! And my father refused to pay bribery, so we had to fight it out in court. That was the situation!

According to Lum Ngow's immigration file, (8) he passed the medical exam and was called to appear before a Board of Special Inquiry fifteen days after he arrived at the immigration station. Elis parents and he were interrogated for four days and asked a total of 808 questions regarding their family background and village life. Their answers were compared to previous testimonies given by six relatives who had emigrated to America earlier. The Board was thorough in its summary report, which alone numbered eight pages long. It denied Lum Ngow and his mother, Ow Soak Yong, admission on the grounds that their relationships to the alleged father and husband, Lum Piu, had not been satisfactorily established. Aside from finding no resemblance between father and son, Chairman Moore noted many discrepancies in the testimonies regarding marriage and death dates, sleeping arrangements in the house, their neighbors, details of their wedding and the birth of their first child, the number of trips Lum Piu had made to Hong Kong, and whether the sister-in-law had bound feet or not.

Lum Piu went to great expense and trouble to appeal the decision. He retained attorney Thomas Lew to file an appeal with the secretary of labor in Washington, D.C., and when that failed, he retained attorney Chauncey Tramutolo to petition for a writ of habeas corpus from the district court. Three months later, mother and son were informed that the petition had been denied. Tramutolo then asked that the case be reopened to hear the testimony of two new witnesses--aunt Mo Shee and business partner Low Pung [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--to address the discrepancy in the date of Lum Piu's marriage to Ow Soak Yong. Mo Shee claimed that she had attended Lum Piu's wedding before she left for America but that her husband had instructed her not to say so at her interrogation because of a family quarrel over money matters.

Q: In view of the fact that you have on one occasion deliberately given false testimony under oath before this Service, can you state any reason why this Board should regard your present testimony as that of a person entitled to be believed?

A: After all, I am sorry for what I said when I first came in. She is my sister-in-law and I thought I should tell the truth or she would never be admitted.

Low Pung likewise testified that he was present at the wedding, but when he was confronted with his previous answer at his own interrogation that he did not attend any weddings during his visit to China in 1921, he could only say,

A: (After a long hesitation) I did not think it was important so I just said no.

Q: Then your judgment as to whether or not a matter is of importance determines whether or not you will tell the truth about that matter?

A: I have told you how I felt. I have nothing more to say in that respect.

Lum Piu, Ow Soak Yong, and Lum Ngow were again cross-examined separately and asked a total of 171 questions. The Board engaged Ow Soak Yong in this exchange:

Q: Was your previous statement that you had never seen your sister-in-law, MO SHEE, the result of a mistake on your part or a deliberate mis-statement of the facts?

A: It was my mistake. I was too hasty in making the answer.

Q: The record shows that you were not at all hasty and that you were repeatedly questioned on this point, eliminating any possibility of an honest mistake.... Do you wish to make any additional explanation or comment?

A: I really have no explanation than what I have already given. I know I made a mistake, such a mistake that I don't blame you a bit for denying my admission. However, I was not deliberately telling you an untruth.

Q: It seems very strange to this Board that at the previous hearing you were unable to identify a good clear photograph of this MO SHEE taken about the time you were supposed to have last seen her and that you can now promptly identify a photograph of this woman taken at the present time which is some 14 years after you last saw her. How do you explain that?

A: Her picture was shown to me at my first hearing. I really was able to recognize her but when I said I had not met her I could not say I knew that picture.

Q: According to that, your previous testimony concerning MO SHEE was not an honest mistake on your part then but a deliberate mis-statement of the facts. How about that?

A: I know I made a mistake but I didn't know I could correct my mistake at the time and I realize now that I did wrong.

In his four-page summary, Chairman Moore concluded that the evidence presented at the reopening "in no way cures any of the adverse features" of the case. "On the contrary, I believe there is further proof that the testimony given as evidence to support the applications is false and perjured." He moved to deny both applicants admission into the United States on the same grounds as before, and Board members Cole and Silver concurred.

Lum Piu did not give up. His attorney, Chauncey Tramutolo, submitted another appeal to the secretary of labor in Washington, D.C., which was turned down, followed by another petition to the district court, which was also denied. Mother and son were to be deported on the next available ship. By now they had been detained on Angel Island for more than a year. Tramutolo then contacted Donaldina Cameron for help. According to her first letter, dated April 2, 1936, to District Director Edward Haff, she had conducted her own investigation and was "convinced beyond any doubt that they are in fact husband, wife, and son." She requested that deportation be delayed so that attorney Tramutolo could present further evidence. As she explained in the letter, "Please remember that my underlying motive for interceding on behalf of this family is the deep desire I hold to further decent family life and right home influences among the Chinese people, who because of Immigration Regulations have missed so much of the blessing that other nationalities have enjoyed." Her request was granted.

Tramutolo next took new photographs of the father and son and had a physiognomist attest to their similar features, but to no avail. In a second letter to District Director Haff, dated April 10, 1936, Donaldina Cameron proposed that the wife and son be given parole for six months, during which time Lum Piu and Ow Soak Yong would marry according to the laws of California and Cameron would stay in close contact with the family. Although parole was often granted to European immigrants, and Japanese picture brides were admitted on the condition that they (re)marry in an American civil ceremony, the same privileges were not accorded Chinese immigrants.

Cameron stayed involved and wrote a third letter on April 21, 1936, requesting that the Board of Special Inquiry interview a new witness, Chun Wai Hin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], who remembered meeting Lum Piu's wife in China on two separate occasions. Unfortunately, Cameron warned, Chun, like many other Chinese immigrants, had told immigration officials at his own interrogation upon return from China that he did not know the family for fear of becoming involved in "other people's business." Sure enough, the Board questioned Chun's credibility as a witness on that score.

Q: When you returned to this country in 1922 you stated before this Service that during that trip to China you had not visited any resident of this country who happened to be at his home during your trip and that you had not met the wife of any resident of this country during that trip. How do you reconcile those statements with your present testimony?

A: The reason that I replied "No" to some of the questions asked was that I did not want to appear as witnesses for anyone coming to this country. During my trip to China at that time I did visit the home of LUM BEW [PIU], and the home of WONG JONG and the home of WONG YOUNG and WONG SUNG and the home of WONG YUK LUN; the home of QUAN SING.

Q: Then you admit that whether or not you answer these questions truthfully is determined by your own wishes and convenience at any particular time. Is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: Under those conditions how is the Board going to know or not whether you are telling the truth at this time?

A: I am telling you the truth now--every word of it.

But the Board evidently did not believe him. Even though Lum Piu and Ow Soak Yong gave similar details about their encounters with Chun Wai Hin, the Board dismissed the new evidence on the grounds that "the parties have had ample opportunity to prepare themselves for examination on this matter, the principals having been permitted to visit frequently and for considerable periods." (9) Moreover, they doubted Donaldina Cameron's judgment in the case: "We feel that Miss Cameron probably is not in so good a position from which to judge the truth or falsity of the statements in question as is this Board." Mother and son were deported back to China on June 19, 1936.

When asked how he felt about being deported, Lee Show Nam said matter-of-factly, "My mother felt bad about being deported, but I was okay. The way I looked at it, if I had been admitted, I probably would have served in the military in World War II and maybe been killed. If I had been admitted, I won't have had a Chinese school education and my Chinese won't have been as good. So there's good and bad in being landed or not."

Upon his return to China, Lee Show Nam attended school for about a year before Japan invaded China in 1937. "Japan bombed everywhere--the bridges, the electricity plants, the bus stations," he said. "Our teacher died and our school closed." He fled to Hong Kong and found a job fixing radios in a machine shop. In 1941 Japan occupied Hong Kong, forcing him to return to farming in his native village. He got married and had three children. Then, after the Communists took over the country in 1949, Lee escaped with his family to Hong Kong, where he operated a drugstore. He had to wait until 1963 to emigrate to America with his family, after his father "confessed" to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that he had immigrated as the "paper son" of Lum Ying and took back his real surname, Lee. (10) Compared to his first trip to America in 1935, Lee said, "It was very quick. We got the papers signed in Hong Kong and came by airplane. There was no detention or interrogations when we got here." (11)

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The family settled in Oakland, California. Lee Show Nam worked at his fathers deli in Chinatown until he retired in 1980. He bought an eight-unit apartment building, which he continues to manage, doing all the repairs himself. He is an accomplished photographer and has traveled all over the world. Every morning, without fail, Lee can be found at the park near Lake Merritt doing his Chinese exercises with many other senior citizens. When asked about his feelings toward Angel Island after all that he had been through, Lee did not hesitate to say, "The Chinese exclusion laws discriminated against the Chinese and made it hard on them by imprisoning them in the wooden building. Now its better and people are allowed to come. (12) Before, they looked down at the Chinese. Now we even have a Chinese mayor in Oakland [Jean Quan] and have had a Chinese governor in Washington [Gary Locke]. There were no opportunities like that before." He is well aware that if he had not persisted and made it back to America, his three children--Eric, Elaine, and Anna--would not have gotten a good education and be enjoying the middle-class lifestyle they do today. As Lee Show Nam proudly showed me pictures of his three grown children, he told me that Eric works in Hollywood as a martial arts actor and instructor; Elaine married a Chinese chef and lives in the suburbs; and Anna became a floral designer and acclaimed Chinese folk dancer and opera singer. An innocent victim of the Chinese Exclusion Act, he concluded, "It was all worth the trouble and long wait at Angel Island."

NOTES

(1.) The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, allowed the admission of certain exempt classes--merchants, teachers, students, diplomats, tourists, and derivative U.S. citizens. Upon arrival in San Francisco, Chinese newcomers were usually taken to the Angel Island Immigration Station for the medical exam and immigration interrogation to verify their identities and legal right to enter the country. Their average stay was two to three weeks, although those appealing exclusion decisions were often locked up on Angel Island for months and even years. For a history of Chinese immigration during the exclusion era, see Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999); Erika Lee, At Americas Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Erika Lee and Judy Yung, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

(2.) Immigration officials and Chinese interpreters were known to accept bribes from immigrants for facilitating their illegal entry. See Lee, At Americas Gates, 198-200.

(3.) The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation was founded in 1983 to preserve, restore, and interpret the Angel Island Immigration Station as the Pacific gateway to America.

(4.) See Lai, Lim, and Yung, Island; Lee and Yung, Angel Island; Judy Yung and Marlon Hom, "Life Is Like a Dream: Confessions of an Illegal Alien," Chinese America: History & Perspectives--The Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1989): 87-110; Judy Yung, "Detainment at Angel Island: An Interview with Koon T. Lau," Chinese America: History & Perspectives--The Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1991): 157-68; and Judy Yung, "'A Bowlful of Tears' Revisited: The Full Story of Lee Puey You's Immigration Experience at Angel Island," Frontiers: A Journal of Women's History 25, no. 1 (2004): 1-22. Transcripts of the oral histories featured in these articles are available at the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and the Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley.

(5.) To circumvent the Chinese exclusion laws, which were in effect from 1882 to 1943, many Chinese immigrants assumed false identities as "paper sons" and "paper daughters" of members of the exempt classes. Aware of this fraudulent practice, the Immigration Service subjected all Chinese newcomers to an interrogation in which they were asked minute details regarding their family history and village background in an effort to verify their identities. Any discrepancies between their answers and those of their relatives and witnesses could result in their exclusion and deportation.

(6.) The coaching note usually contained vital information for a specific applicant. On at least two occasions, riots broke out in the dining hall when immigration staff tried to confiscate coaching notes. See Connie Young Yu, "Rediscovered Voices: Chinese Immigrants and Angel Island," Amerasia Journal 4, no. 2(1977): 131-32.

(7.) The Board of Special Inquiry consisted of a chairman, two inspectors, an interpreter, and a stenographer.

(8.) File 34831/2-2 (Lum Gnow (Ngow)), Investigation Arrival Case Files, San Francisco, Records of the U.S. INS, RG 85, National Archives, Pacific Regional Branch.

(9.) To prevent collusion on the interrogations, Chinese applicants were not allowed visitors until the Board of Special Inquiry had decided their cases.

(10.) The Confession Program was established in 1956 to allow Chinese who had entered the country by fraudulent means to voluntarily confess their status and thereby become eligible for an adjustment in that status. Lum Piu was among thirty thousand Chinese who took advantage of the program and "confessed" to the U.S. government.

(11.) After the Administration Building was destroyed in a fire in 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station was moved back to San Francisco. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 as a goodwill gesture to China, an ally of the United States in World War II, and an annual quota of 105 immigrants was allocated to China. The detainment of Chinese applicants to determine admission eligibility stopped in the early 1950s when the responsibility of issuing visas shifted to consular officials at the port of embarkation.

(12.) In 1965 Congress passed the Hart-Cellar Act, which abolished the national-origin quota system and gave preferences to relatives of U.S. citizens, professional and skilled workers, and refugees escaping persecution, sparking a dramatic increase in Chinese immigration.