Tyrus Wong came to Angel Island when he was only nine years old. But he was not your typical "paper son." This term refers to the many Chinese who seized the opportunity to immigrate to the U.S. when a fire accompanying the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed immigration records of Chinese persons in California. Memorizing papers and papers of information on their new identities, paper sons and daughters had to prove to immigration officials during grueling interrogation sessions that they were related to Chinese already in the U.S. in order to pass through Angel Island. When was the last time someone asked you how many steps lead to your front door? This process often took months to years, which translated into the time immigrants were detained at the station. 

Mr. Wong went through this same process, but had a different experience. Young Mr. Wong got off the ferry, and with his father (already in the States) nowhere in sight, became immediately frightened. The only child detained at the station at the time, Mr. Wong had no one to play with, and no materials to paint or draw with. Going on to become the lead artist for Disney’s Bambi, Mr. Wong loved to draw and paint even then.

Mr. Wong shares how he hated the station, how he came to know of several suicides by men and women detained for years at the station, and how a guard gave him a piece of gum, an unexpected source of entertainment. A “paper son,” Mr. Wong had to memorize pages and pages of information on his lineage to prove his relation to his father. Under no illusions about the interrogation, Mr. Wong asserts that the poker-faced immigration official knew the papers were false.

For Mr. Wong, the existence of the glorious land of opportunity known to Chinese at the time as Gim San, or the Golden Mountain, is quite plausible. He himself points to his own family – his wife and three children – as his greatest accomplishment. The video ends with Mr. Wong celebrating his birthday at Santa Beach in Los Angeles.

The streets weren’t lined with money, as Mr. Wong and many others were led to believe, but his fulfillment of his own sort of American Dream rings unmistakably of hope.

By Samantha Ching 

Media Credit: The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) via YouTube