Carved in Silence

¶ … Carved in Silence directed by Felicia Lowe [...] its particular value in sociological perspectives. This is a moving and emotional documentary regarding the Chinese Exclusion Act, and their subsequent incarceration on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. It indicates how poorly America treated Chinese immigrants, and how desperately these people wanted to live and work in America.

This documentary film uses interviews of survivors of Angel Island, workers on the island, and modern day reenactments to depict the plight of the Chinese immigrants who were forced to stay on Angel Island until their immigration papers were either approved or disapproved. This practice took place from 1882 to 1943, as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which limited the number of Chinese immigrants that could legally come to the United States.

Immigrants who thought they were traveling to a new life in "Gold Mountain," were actually forced to stay on Angel Island and wait to be interrogated about their lives, their relatives, and even their homes and living conditions to establish they were indeed who they said they were. The documentary is short, only 45 minutes or so, but it presents a vast amount of information in that short time.

The interviews of people who stayed on Angel Island are quite compelling, but the documentary also uses modern day footage as historic recreations of what life was like on the island, from what the detainees ate, to how they wiled away the long, isolated hours. Some played games, some read, and some wrote poetry, which they carved into the wooden walls of the stark barracks.

Many of these poems, "carved in silence," remain in the barracks today, and there is a concerted effort to save them for posterity and for Angel Island visitors to understand and view. The documentary ends with a review of what happened to immigrants after the Exclusion Act was lifted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, and how Chinese still distrust Americans because of these early practices.

It also indicates how the Chinese, excluded by white society, founded their own areas to live and work, and how these Chinatowns in cities across the United States helped keep the Chinese separate and apart from a vast segment of society. The documentary ends with two moving portraits of people who survived Angel Island, or were deported, making it quite clear how these people suffered enormously, and yet still wanted to remain in America for a better life.

This was a moving film that created a sense of anger and disbelief in the viewer. It is difficult to believe that these practices went on in America, and that they were only applied to the Chinese immigrants. Early in the documentary, the narrator notes that on the East Coast, immigrants viewed the Statue of Liberty on their arrival in the country, while on the West Coast, Chinese immigrants viewed no statue, they viewed a makeshift prison instead.

It seems so unfair to keep the Chinese out of the country, especially when they were so instrumental in building and business in the country in the 1860s and 1870s. This is one of the reasons they were kept out. The country faced a recession in the 1880s, and people felt the Chinese were taking jobs away from Americans, and so they were banned.

The Chinese had to undergo physical exams, to make sure they did not carry any communicable diseases, and this was excruciating for the women, who were not used to these intimate exams. They also had to undergo extensive oral examinations, where they were asked questions about their homeland, their relatives, and even their neighbors. The intricate questions were designed to trip them up, and many Chinese were deported back to China because they could not successfully answer the questions.

In one interview, one of the former immigration interrogators noted that his own two sons, who slept together in the same room for six years, could not successfully answer some of the same questions about their own room. It was a sad and moving story, and seeing how deeply the people were affected was probably the most valuable part of the documentary. The time on Angel Island changed people.

One man became a crusader for equal rights for all races after his stay on Angel Island, and one woman who was deported took 14 years to make it back to the U.S., but she did come back, raise a family, and worked in a successful business. These people wanted to be good citizens, but they were denied that opportunity because of their race, and it was wrong. The historical value of this documentary is immeasurable.

What the people went through was amazing, and this documentary should be a part of every American history class. From an AAPI standpoint, it is difficult to see how one country's immigrants were so totally subjugated. It is easy to see it could have been any.