Vault #6: Patient Inscriptions
Forgotten Messages of the Hospital
Hospital patients left messages and illustrations on the unvarnished plaster walls in 1910. This image shows the European women’s ward (room 207). Photo credit: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library, c. 1909.
The hospital’s inscriptions are among the oldest-dated messages on Angel Island. Written before 1912 and hidden beneath a layer of varnished enamel, the inscriptions were protected until 2002, when paint flaked off the walls, revealing their location.
Most of the hospital’s writings were discovered in the Japanese men’s ward (room 221). While the inscriptions are primarily Japanese, some include lines of Chinese characters. The ward also showed evidence of carvings and illustrations that depict birds, people, and objects. And, unlike the poems of the detention barracks, the hospital’s inscriptions only contained one or two lines of text.
The Japanese men’s ward (room 221). The square-cut holes show where conservators carefully removed the plaster. Photo credit: AIISF, 2004.
After the hospital closed in 1946, it was abandoned for the next 50 years. In the Japanese men’s ward, moisture had caused the paint and plaster to crack and mold to accumulate on the walls. The state deterioration became alarmingly clear in 2003 when plaster fell from the wall after a season of heavy rains and damp conditions.
Following the loss, Angel Island State Park stabilized the wall to prevent other writings from meeting the same fate. The ward’s dire condition justified hiring a conservator to remove the remaining inscriptions. So, in 2004, sixteen sections of plaster were cut from the walls and treated. They are now housed in the Angel Island State Park collection.
Conservation Work (2004)
Poetry from the Detention Barracks
The hospital’s inscriptions tell us little about how doctors treated their patients. Fortunately, some immigrants documented their experiences on the barracks’ walls. The following Chinese poem describes the anger and humiliation one former patient felt.
Alas! Heaven!
So desolate is this sight;
It is disheartening indeed.
Sorrow and hardship have led me to this place;
What more can I say about life?
Worse yet,
A healthy person would become ill after repeated medical examinations;
A private inspection would render a clothed person naked.
Let me ask you, the barbarians:
Why are you treating us in such an extreme way?
I grieve for my fellow countrymen;
There is really nothing we can do!
ARG Conservation Services. Hospital Building: Emergency Conservation of Writings, 2004.
Lai, H. Mark, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, eds. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940. Second edition. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.