Angel Island WWII Confinement

Hannah Schoenberger

My name is Hannah Schoenberger, and in this experience, I'm going to be sharing some firsthand accounts of men who were detained on Angel Island during World War II. Many of them later shared their experiences, allowing us to gain a better understanding of their time here and how it affected their lives afterwards.

Casey Dexter-Lee

Welcome to Angel Island State Park. My name is Casey, and I'm an interpreter with California State Parks. We're at the historic immigration station, which operated from 1910 to 1940. This facility was used to detain immigrants arriving from all over the world, about 80 different countries. The majority of the people detained here were coming from Asia. After the administration building burned down, this site was turned over to the U.S. Army, which had a fort here called Fort McDowell. This became the North Garrison of Fort McDowell. During World War Two this facility held people. The people held here were prisoners of war or P.O.W.s, as well as people with Japanese ancestry identified as 'enemy aliens' by the U.S. government. People came and went here from a dock that is no longer on the island, and there have been many different buildings at this site as well, and uses for those buildings. Over the years, the changes were made to adapt to what was needed for these spaces.

Hannah Schoenberger

Otokichi Muin Ozaki was born in Kochi Prefecture, Japan. He was a journalist, a school teacher, a community leader, a flower grower, and a poet in Hilo, Hawaii. Ozaki did volunteer work for the Japanese government to help new immigrants adjust to life in Hawaii. He also taught Japanese at a language school. This, coupled with his proficiency in Morse code, made him a suspicious person to the FBI during World War Two. The FBI did note that no evidence is found that he is engaged in espionage, is a potential saboteur, or is disseminating subversive propaganda, except possibly by teaching school children under his direction the Japanese culture and loyalty to ancestral country. While the FBI says they had no evidence against him, Ozaki was interned for the remainder of the war because of the assumption that by teaching Japanese language, he was loyal to Japan. Ozaki said: When we reported to the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco, soldiers ordered us to remove our clothing, searched our belongings, and took them all away. A week later, when we were about to be transferred in, our belongings returned to us three watches were found to be missing.

Casey Dexter-Lee

In 1941, the U.S. Army took control of the former immigration station site. The people that were held here stayed in a barracks and there was a mess hall and recreation area. There were additional facilities for feeding American soldiers, as well as barracks for troops that were stationed here at Fort McDowell. There were a few changes that had to be made in the transition from an immigration station to a P.O.W. detention facility, and a place that would come to hold people identified as 'enemy aliens' by the government. There were fences added around the barracks building. There were two guard towers added, but there was already a fence around the entire site that was about eight feet tall, and there was already enclosed recreation areas. These additional measures were changes that were made to further restrict people's movements within the site.

Hannah Schoenberger

Yasutaro Soga and Kumaji Furuya were both prominent members of the Japanese Hawaiian community in Honolulu, Hawai'i. They were both arrested shortly after the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and were detained on Sand Island in the Honolulu harbor before being transferred to Angel Island. They both later wrote about their experiences in detention here, using the pen name Suikei Furuya, Kumaji Furuya wrote: Although the physical examination was quite severe, the officers noncommissioned officers and guards were nice to us. Angel Island turned out to be better than I expected. Behind the building was a small field on a hill. Bushes grew around the field and I happened to find apricot flowers blooming among the green leaves. Birds were singing and it felt as if spring were here. I heard the voices of children walking along a road in the middle of the woods beyond. It was the first time I had heard children's voices since being taken from my home just three months earlier, but it felt as if I had not heard this sound for years.

Casey Dexter-Lee

The main building where people were held at this site is the barracks. The first floor had just over 300 beds and unfortunately a healthy capacity of 70 to 80 people. There were also rooms on the first floor used as offices, supply rooms and a room designated for, quote unquote, “unruly prisoners.” The second floor held just over 400 beds. Some of the larger rooms were divided in half to create smaller spaces. Additionally, there was a separate room for prisoners of war that were officers. They were held separately from enlisted men, and there were, doctors offices and an infirmary on the second floor as well. Those healthy capacities are determined at the time by public health standards. So these facilities were extremely overcrowded.

Hannah Schoenberger

Yasutaro Soga was the editor of a Japanese language newspaper in Hawai'i. He wrote the following about the detention barracks: Living quarters for all 49 of us, were two rooms, about 36ft by 70ft, on the second floor of an old building that had once been the Immigration Bureau office, because there were about 90 internees from California already housed there space was very tight. The beds were tri level bunks with barely enough walking space in the aisles. There were about ten windows and one ventilator, but with 140 occupants air circulation was poor. That night I had difficulty breathing and had a headache. The place reminded me of the Honolulu immigration office soon after my arrest. Using the pen name Suikei Furuya, Kumaji Furuya wrote: Even though I enjoyed the area's scenery with nothing much to do, I became bored. I was walking aimlessly around a big hall when I noticed the walls were covered with graffiti. I was surprised to see that the marks had been engraved, most likely with knives. There were many kinds of graffiti, and I assumed they had been made by Chinese immigrants long ago.

Casey Dexter-Lee

Prior to 1940, the writing we see on the barracks walls is left behind by immigrants detained here. They wrote and carved on the walls, but that was painted over by the immigration officials. On the top layer paint from World War Two is where we see inscriptions mainly from prisoners of war from Germany and Japan. People with Japanese ancestry that were held here, that were solely held for that ancestry, were not considered prisoners of war. The writing you'll find from the World War II era is typically around windows and window frames, sometimes hidden in corners, obviously done with a little bit of discretion to hide it. The words that they left typically were messages to would be rescuers. How many people were in the group, where they had been and where they thought they were going next.

Hannah Schoenberger

Isoo Kato was an immigrant from Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. He became a coffee farmer in Kona, Hawai'i, and was a member of the local Japanese school board and hospital board. He was arrested and detained in Hawai'i before being transferred to the mainland. He later wrote: Here at the center are about 14 or 15 Germans and 23 Italians along with us. It is different here from Hawai'i in that we are enjoying more privileges. We are free to bathe and use the toilet at any time. All accommodations are comfortable so it's a good feeling. The dining room is new and the food preparation is sanitary and tasty. The cook in the kitchen helpers were all military men and they treat us kindly. During dinner the German and Italians are together with us. We are all enemies and comrades alike.

Casey Dexter-Lee

The mess hall provided seating for 200 people to eat meals at one time. There are also remnants of what is left behind in the kitchen, like stoves and dishwashers that were used to cook and prepare meals. There was also a wooden path outside the mess hall to sinks where prisoners of war would rinse their trays before they would head to the dishwasher.

Hannah Schoenberger

My ancestors were immigrants from Japan who arrived on the West Coast in the early 20th century. While they didn't pass through Angel Island themselves, their history is deeply connected to that of the people who both immigrated through here and the people who were detained here during World War II. My great grandmother was a picture bride, like many of the women detained here in the 1910s and 20s. My great grandfather was detained by the FBI after Pearl Harbor and sent to an internment camp, separated from his family in North Dakota. He later joined his family at Manzanar, but their separation had a deep impact on their family for decades to come.

Casey Dexter-Lee

During World War II, soldiers stationed here had many different jobs, everything from KP or kitchen patrol duties to serving overseas. Fort McDowell shipped soldiers to the Pacific campaigns, and most of the folks leaving here were replacement troops traveling to areas where other soldiers had already been injured, or had become ill, or had died in battle. They replaced those soldiers to refill the ranks. At the end of World War II, soldiers came through here to be discharged and sent home.

Hannah Schoenberger

Throughout this experience, I've shared quotes from some of the men who were detained on Angel Island during World War II. For all of these men, Angel Island was not the first nor the last place they would be interned. During World War II. Otokichi Muin Ozaki left Angel Island and was transferred first to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, then Camp Livingston, Louisiana, then Santa Fe, New Mexico. His family elected to leave Hawaii and join him at the Jerome concentration camp in Arkansas. He returned to Hawai'i after the war and continued his work as a poet and journalist. After Angel Island, businessman and poet Kumaji Furuya was interned at camp McCoy, Wisconsin, Camp Forest, Tennessee, Camp Livingston, Louisiana, Fort Missoula, Montana, and finally Santa Fe, New Mexico. He returned to Hawaii in November 1945, where he returned to his work as a businessman and continued his literary pursuits. After Angel Island journalist Yasutaro Soga was sent to the Lordsburg camp in New Mexico and later the Santa Fe Camp, he returned to Hawai'i in November 1945 and continued his work as a journalist, working for the Hawai'i Times. Coffee farmer Isoo Kato left Angel Island to be transferred to the Fort Sam Houston Internment Camp in Texas. He later was sent to the Lordsburg Camp in New Mexico and finally the Santa Fe Camp, also in New Mexico. He returned to Hawai'i in November 1945.

Casey Dexter-Lee

After World War II, the former immigration site went unused for many years. In the 1970s, a park ranger going through the building out of curiosity was one of the staff that noticed writing on the walls here. That writing was the poetry left behind by immigrants detained between 1910 and 1940. That led to a movement from the community to save this building from destruction. The path this site might have taken was to become camping and picnicking areas, but instead the buildings were preserved to make sure that this story was never forgotten. Remodeling to the facility was done in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000 to bring it to the condition it's in today.