Angel Island SP

ALT A birds eye view of the US Immigration Station detention barracks is a high resolution digital rerecreation of the existing historic building and its surroundings. The barracks is a two story building with a wood shingled roof and exterior walls painted beige on the first floor and white on the second floor, surrounded by a barbed wire fence. A covered wooden staircase descends from the front of the building to concrete platforms representing the former location of the historic administration building, destroyed by fire in 1940. A single lane road under the vaulted staircase cuts through the center of the image. Fenced in areas used as the “European Playground” and “Asian Recreation Yard” are visible behind and to the left of the barracks. A smaller mustard colored building is visible in the upper left of the image. In the post-immigration era of the site during World War II, the Mess Hall fed POWs and Japanese-American/Hawaiian internees held in the barracks.

ALT A screen shot of the guided digital tour highlights, with a superimposed thick black border, a section of the interior detention barracks wall where a Chinese poem was carved into the walls. The poem was painted over as graffiti during the immigration era in yellow paint. Special lighting from above casts shadows on the barely visible writing to help the viewer see lines of poetry. Written in 6 vertical lines with 7 characters each, the poem is beautifully carved, the writing itself being an art form. Inset images of the female guide dressed in a CA State Park uniform, English translation of the poem, and audio transcript are on the left. On the right a second inset image is a still from the video with the same guide wearing a face mask explaining the poem.