Coming into San Pedro Bay, was he happy and excited, or anxious and fearful?
His biggest hurdle was still ahead. My father, Bing K. Wong (AKA Wong Park Dung or 黄柏宗), arrived on Friday, July 22, 1938, in America at the Los Angeles port town of San Pedro, California. He was a Chinese immigrant. He wasn’t entering San Francisco’s infamous Angel Island Immigration Station as most had. But close enough.
The ordeal he faced was no kill-or-be-killed Hunger Games, but it must have seemed life or death nonetheless.
Back in his home village of Gom Benn, China, 20-year-old Bing had left behind his 17-year-old wife, my mother Sau K. Wong. They hadn’t been married long. Was she pregnant? Many years later, we’d hear they had a baby girl who later died. My parents never spoke about her. But we heard. The baby was only ever a whisper.
Stay or Go?
So why leave? My father departed from Hong Kong on June 27, 1938. The Japanese had invaded China a year earlier, interrupting the civil war between Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang. Two weeks before my father boarded the SS President Coolidge, the Japanese began a months-long siege of Wuhan, China’s provisional capital. With the war expanding, there wouldn’t be many more ocean liners sailing between Hong Kong and the U.S.
It must have seemed that the Japanese Army would soon engulf all of China. Actually it would be another three years before the Japanese attacked Hong Kong – on December 8, 1941 – the same day that across the international date line they bombed Pearl Harbor.
My father couldn’t have known. For him and many aboard the President Coolidge, their great fear must have been that they’d never see their families or homeland again.
The Great U.S.A.
The United States was their great hope. Maybe their only hope. Yet, fresh off the boat in San Pedro, my father wasn’t greeted by cheering family or friends. No Statue of Library. No welcome at all. Just the prospect of days, weeks, and maybe months in detention.
There was still the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which barred most Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. There were exceptions, notably for merchants and the children of Chinese men who were U.S. citizens. (Yes, birthright citizenship, the Constitutional guarantee that President Trump seeks to end).
Although Chinese immigrants faced violence and racism for decades, those who could prove themselves as U.S. citizens were accorded due process under the law, and their children were also American citizens and accorded due process — the right to fair legal procedings.
That was my father’s claim – that he was born to a U.S.-born Chinese American and thus himself a U.S. citizen.
It was a claim that would be rigorous tested.
Taking the Hot Seat
A month after his arrival, on Friday, August 19, 1938, he began a grueling, all-or-nothing, pass/fail interrogation. Imagine. Pass and you would enter into the mythical Gold Mountain. Fail and you would be sent back to war and worse.
His interview was probably at the newly opened Terminal Island Quarantine and Detention Center next to a new federal prison that a year later would become home to Chicago mobster Al Capone. There is scant mention of the immigration processing facility in a Google search. I can only guess it was something like Angel Island.
Like Alcatraz, but Heavenly
Between 1910 when the Angel Island Immigration Station opened and 1940 when it was closed after its administration building burned down, the facility was America’s primary processing center for approximately half a million mostly Asian immigrants, according to the National Park Service which today operates the site as a National Historic Landmark.
Angel Island is San Francisco Bay’s largest island, notable today for its picturesque parkland, beautiful beaches, picnic areas and hiking trails. The Spaniards thought it idyllic, too, and named it Isla de Los Angeles or Island of the Angels. For immigrants, it was hardly heavenly.
Like the Chinese Exclusion Act, the aim at Angel Island was to deter or even block Chinese immigrants, especially the paper sons who purchased false identities. An estimated 250,000 Chinese were detained in the prison-like facilities and questioned there. Approximately one-third of them were sent back to China.
Beating the Odds
After a ship docked in San Francisco, immigration officers would board to inspect each passenger’s documents. Those with questionable papers were taken by ferry to Angel Island for further examination.
Once there, they were separated by race and sex. Children under 12 could stay with their mothers during their quarantine. They received a medical examination. If there was evidence of a disease, the infected immigrant could not enter the U.S.
After their medical examination, healthy immigrants faced a hearing where immigration officials tried to ferret out fraudulent claims, asking for the most minute, intimate details of a person’s life. Many paper sons relied on “coaching” books to memorize the details of their phony identities.
These intense interviews were very different from the streamlined, hours or day-long process that European immigrants faced at Ellis Island in New York. At Angel Island the proceedings could take days, months, or in some instances, several years.
Like so many others, that’s what my father faced, not in San Francisco Bay but in San Pedro.
So It Begins
On August 19, he was brought before a Board of Special Inquiry. According to a 20-page transcript of the proceedings, the board consisted of inspectors Willis F. Cole (chairman), John B. Bartos and Elizabeth A. Nelson (clerk and secretary). Henry S.Y. Kwok interpreted the board’s questions in Hoisanese or See Yip for my father, and translated his Hoisanese responses back in English to the board.
Also present were Bing K.’s “alleged father Wong Wong (黃旺) (or Wong Chung Wong (黄昌旺) AKA Wong Lai Chee (黃礼池)) and prior-landed brother Wong Gim Yem,” according to the transcript, although it wasn’t clear whether they sat in the hearing room listening to the interrogation, or waited outside.
Comparing Notes
The board had an February 23, 1938 affidavit in which Wong Wong testified that Bing K. was his third son. I assume they used Wong Wong’s affidavit to compare, verify and/or impeach my father’s testimony that day.
The board also seemed to have an affidavit from his alleged brother Wong Gim Yem. Of course, I assume my father also had had copies of the affidavits and had studied them or something similar for months if not years.
Details, Details, Details
The hearing was a legal cross-examination except my father wasn’t represented by legal counsel. The board would ask my father for details about his life with Wong Wong’s family. They honed in on many, many of the smallest details: their extended family, birth dates, weddings, feasts, jobs.
His responses must have been compared to Wong Wong and Wong Gim Yem’s affidavits, and then they followed my father’s testimony with their own. My father, Wong Wong and Gim Yem were asked to describe many of the same things, such as their house, village and a nearby graveyard.
The three were asked about incidents the board members said one of them had testified to, but that the board seemed to dream up to confuse my father, his paper father and paper brother in an attempt to get them to give false replies.
The board was looking for inconsistencies, for lies.
The Same Boat
In a sense, all three had to pass, or failure could mean each might be deported back to China.
The interrogation began with a series of preliminary questions establishing that my father’s name was Wong Bing Kwun (黄炳崑), and he only spoke the Chinese dialect of Hoisan. He stood 5 feet 9 ¼ inches; his hair was black and his eyes brown. He had a scar on his forehead, and a mole on the right side of his nose. He was born and had lived in Nar Sai Village except for four years in Canton City. His mother was Fong Shee of Nar Sai, and his father Wong Wong lived at 444 N. Los Angeles Street in Los Angeles, Calif.
The transcript shows they asked my father 155 questions during much of the day August 19th, and the morning of August 20th.
How It Ends
You can probably guess how it went. Of course he passed the interview!
Our family is here in the United States only because my father aced that extraordinary interrogation. Until I read the entire transcript I couldn’t have imagined that my father was so brave, so cool, that he had such a photographic memory,
See what you think.
How Would You Do?
I assume Chairman Cole led the questioning. He began by asking my father basic questions about his alleged father Wong Wong. My father had to tell them Wong Wong’s birth date and place of birth (February 17, 1892, in San Francisco); his age (47) and occupation (tea seller). But then it got trickier.
(Note: The questions are in bold, but not bold if paraphrased. The responses begin with “A” for answer, and are italicized.)
Question 8: What was the last time you saw your father in China? A. October 1932, when he left to return to the United States.
Question 9: What time of the day did he leave the village and who accompanied him? A. He was alone and he left early in the morning.
How would my father know all this? Did he really memorize these details from a coaching book?
Going Way Back
They asked for details about my father’s paternal grandparents. A. My paternal grandfather Wong Dai Chung or Wong Choon Kwock, marriage name, and my paternal grandmother Lee Shee both died in the United States a long time ago. I have never seen them. They are now buried together in the Sek Lung How hill, about 10 li to the north of my village.
Ah ha! Of course Wong Wong’s parents had both lived for a time in the United States because Wong Wong was supposedly born in San Francisco in 1892.
Paper Mom
They asked about Bing K.’s mother Fong Shee. My father mentioned her unbound feet, and they followed up with three questions about the appearance of her feet! A. They were not deformed…but her feet were very small and her toes were very close together…
My father describes his mother as “medium size.” The board tells him that his “alleged” brother testified in 1936 that his mother was thin. A. She is not so thin.
How was my father so confident in his answers? Even if he had a big book about Wong Wong’s family, and a super photographic memory, how could my father memorize and be so certain about all these details?
Decades later, my father confessed to the U.S. government that he had come to America as a paper son. In the early 1900s, thousands (who knows how many) of Chinese immigrants entered the U.S., falsing claiming to be a blood relative of a legal U.S. citizen.
Confessing in an amnesty program that allowed him to apply to become a naturalized citizen, my father said his paper mother was actually a close friend of his real mother, Ng Shee. That’s all he said about his paper family, but…
Just Suppose…
What if my grandmother and her good friends grew up together and remained close even after they married, visiting each other frequently. And my father went along on these visits so he knew Fong Shee, knew she had small feet, knew she wasn’t thin, knew she had a scar over her left eyelid (as he told the Board of Special Inquiry).
What if he actually knew Wong Wong’s whole extended family including his sons, and Fong Shee’s siblings. What if he was actually there during Wong Wong’s later visits to China, and there for the key milestones of Wong Wong’s family: weddings, the birth of babies, and more.
Yes, there were many other details, such as birth dates, he had to learn. But if, like my uncle Bing T., the paper son arrangements were made many years earlier, my father might have studied these paper son details for much of his life.
So maybe he really knew. They questioned him about his alleged maternal grandparents, about his mother’s siblings, his maternal uncle, and his rest of the family and their work and businesses. And he knew.
Last Days in Canton
Beginning with Question 41, they asked about his alleged siblings: five brothers and their birthdays and place of residence. They focused on the oldest brother, Wong Gim Yim, I suppose because they had his affidavit from when he came to America in 1936. My father tells them that the last time he saw Gim Yim in China was in Canton City, in the spring of 1936.
Question 43. What was your alleged brother … doing in Canton City? A. He was a cashier, selling tickets in the theater…
Question 44. In what theater…? A. In the Gim Sing theater.
They followed up with questions about the theater’s address, how long his brother had worked there (2 ½ years), and if the theater might have had another name, maybe the Grand Theater? A. No other name…
And so it went with similar questions about the other brothers.
By this point, they had asked my father nearly 60 questions. There is no mention of any breaks, not for lunch, not to go to the bathroom. My father never responds with “I don’t know.” He never seems to confer with his attorney – if he even had an attorney. And so the questioning goes on…
Ah Ha! Canton!
Beginning with Question 60, they asked my father a series of questions about what he was doing in China – presumably in the years before he came to America. A. I have been working in the Min Hing leather goods store in Canton City. I started there in (March or April 1934) and worked there until (April or May 1938) when I quit. I returned to the village after I quit work in that store and lived there (in the village) until coming to the United States.
Wow! If I’m right, this account about the leather goods is also true. It was always a little strange that my father spoke a little Cantonese and my mother spoke almost none. But it would make sense if my father had lived in Canton City (Guangzhou) and learned a little Cantonese there. And if these dates are correct, it seems my father returned to Gom Benn in the spring of 1938 to marry my mother only a few months before he left for the United States.
With Question 68, they ask my father about his schooling. He tells them he attended the village school for about five years. I wonder if the members of the Board of Special Inquiry were impressed by my father’s detailed responses, his poise and self confidence. Or am I reading too much into a simple question?
Digging Deeper
The questions about minutiae seem endless.
They ask about the wedding feast at his oldest brother’s wedding. A. Yes, we had a wedding feast the same day my brother was married. There were six tables spread, three for men and three for women.
Question 76. Where were these tables placed? A. In the parlor of our house.
Question 78. How large is the Nar Sai Village? A. It has 21 dwelling houses, one lantern house and a school.
Question 89. How high is the river bank at the landing in front of your village? A. It is all level land from the river to our village. The river is affected by the tides and sometimes the water is almost at a level with the bank, and other times the water is quite low.
And Deeper
They ask my father about his house in Nar Sai Village and several of his neighbors.
Question 99. Who lives in the house located in the third space, fourth row from the south? (My father had drawn a diagram of the village.) A. Wong Doo Soon, about 23 years old, single, lives there alone. He has a married sister who lives some other place. His mother died some time ago, and his father Wong Choon Ngen is in Mexico.
Question 101. Describe your house in the Nar Sai Village. A. It is a brick building having two stories in the front part of the house and one story in the rear. On the ground floor there are two bedrooms, one parlor, two kitchens and one open court. It has tile floors in all the rooms on the ground floor. There are two rooms over the kitchen in the front part of the house which forms the second floor. Those two rooms have cement floors.
He goes on to describe the shrine loft in the parlor, the eight glass windows covered with iron bars and shutters. He tells them theirs is the only two-story house in the village. So it seems the family had been relatively well off.
Nearing the End
After 114 questions, the hearing was adjourned at 4:30 p.m. And then they reconvened at 8:30 a.m. the next morning. They asked my father more questions about the village, and its school.
Then, there’s a series of questions about whether my father slept in the school or lantern house when all the brothers were home – which is what his oldest brother, Wong Gim Yim, supposedly said in a statement. A. He is mistaken. I always slept at home. He was never home when I returned.
After Question 129, interpreter Arthur Lem replaced Henry S. Y. Kwok. There’s no explanation why. But there are many more questions.
Again, they asked for more descriptions of the village, about a nearby market, about the burial place of his paternal grandparents and their tombstone.
They asked my father how he came in possession of Exhibit A – Wong Wong’s affidavit. A. My mother received this document about the third month of this year from the Ngoon Yick Company in Wah On Market, where my father sent it. Also with this document was the money for my steamship ticket, I think $500 Hong Kong currency.
Chairman Cole turned over the questioning to member Bartos, who asked about the ownership of their house in Nar Sai Village. A. I understand that house was built by my paternal great grandfather. It was left by him to my family.
After a few more questions, Bartos turned the questioning to member Nelson who had no questions.
My father’s interrogation was over. But there was more.
Another Witness
The Board of Special Inquiry then called Wong Wong to testify.
I assume Chairman Cole continued with the questions. He asked Wong Wong for basic information including his age, occupation and address. Interestingly, Wong Wong said his mailing address is Sam Sim (Sing) Company, North Los Angeles Street … the butcher shop operated by Wong Toy Wing, Bing K’s cousin. Wong Toy Wing was the paper father for Bing K.’s older brother Bing Tew Wong.
Small world?
They ask Wong Wong many of the same questions they had asked my father, including the one about when they’d last seen each other. And his replies are the same as my father’s. They asked him to describe their house. They asked Wong Wong if my father ever slept in the school house. A. Not that I know.
They asked about where Wong Wong’s parents were buried, their tombstone, and about Exhibit A. His replies echoed my father’s.
After Question 185, Chairman Cole again turned the questioning to member Bartos, who again asked about ownership of their house and more about the grandparents. After Question 193, Bartos turned the questioning over to Nelson, who had no questions.
A Final Witness
They then questioned my father’s alleged brother Wong Gim Yim. He too responded with his age (26), his occupation (waiter), but he added that he lives with his father at the Plaza Hotel, 568 ½ N. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles.
They asked him about when he last saw my father, for a description of their house, the surrounding villages, his last village to his paternal grandparents’ graves. Again, Gim Yim’s responses were the same as my father’s.
Then, after Question 221, the questioning was over.
The Verdict
It isn’t clear from the transcript if the board members then adjourned to privately discuss the testimony. If there were deliberations they probably weren’t very long since they would eventually adjourn before lunchtime. But however long, it must have seemed a lifetime for my father as he awaited his fate.
The transcript concludes with a formal, legalistic one-page summary by Chairman Cole.
In his four paragraphs, he notes that Wong Bing Kwun, who claims to be the foreign-born son of Wong Wong, was born Sept. 20, 1917. Cole says Wong Wong’s status as a native-born U.S. citizen has been conceded on several occasions, and he cites a San Francisco case file.
That file also shows that Wong Wong had departed the United States from San Francisco on the SS Tjisondari on November 21, 1916, and returned to San Francisco on the SS Tenyo Naru on December 26, 1918, “at which time he claimed a son of the same name and birthdate” as my father!
Wow! Was there really a child born on Wong Wong’s visit in those two years? What happened to that child? Or was the son he claimed a placeholder for the paper son to come. It certainly seems a paper son arrangement was in the works at the time of my father’s birth in 1917?!
Look Alikes
Cole adds, “There is a strong family resemblance between the alleged father Wong Wong and the present applicant and a striking resemblance between the applicant and his alleged brother Wong Gim Yim…”
Huh? I’ve looked at their photos and don’t see any resemblance at all. Did they look more alike in person? Or was this white people thinking all Chinese look alike? Or was it possible that my father was related to Wong Wong’s family? Were my grandmother and my father’s paper mother relatives?
I’ve learned so much from my father’s citizenship files, and yet there is still so much more I don’t know. I know what happened to my father after this hearing, but what became of Wong Wong, and Wong Gim Yim? I don’t recall them at all. They seemed to disappear from my father’s life.
Chairman Cole concluded the hearing summary by saying the board had found “no discrepancies of any note” in any of the testimony. “I believe the claimed relationship has been satisfactorily established and I therefore move that the applicant Wong Bing Kwun be admitted to the United States as a citizen, son of a native.”
My father had passed, and his new life began.
