AIISF Newsletter / October 2022

A Message From AIISF’s Executive Director

The image above is from the Nichi Bei Foundation's Nikkei Angel Island Pilgrimage that AIISF co-sponsored and took place on October 1. Thank you to Kenji Taguma and his team at Nichi Bei Foundation for bringing nearly 300 visitors to the site. Thank you also to Rosalyn Tonai of the National Japanese American Historical Society and Grace Shimizu for selecting Angel Island as the kick-off site for their traveling exhibit, The Enemy Alien Files.

Kudos to Susan Moffat of UC Berkeley’s Future Histories Lab and Lisa Wymore of Berkeley Arts and Design who have done a tremendous job with their “Year on Angel Island” project that continues through Spring 2023. I was invited to be part of their Fall Lecture Series and had the opportunity to highlight Angel Island Immigration Station’s history and the efforts to save its buildings.

This month, we celebrate National Filipino American History Month, National German American Heritage Month, National Italian American Heritage Month, and National LGBT History Month. Interestingly, among AIISF’s four staff members, all four of these communities are connected to our personal journeys and identities. I encourage you to take a few moments to engage with our Immigrant Voices Project and read the stories of immigration whose journeys from these countries are connected to Angel Island. For example, watch Eliseo Felipe talk about leaving the Philippines and settling in Salinas, CA, and William Sienang, who passed away at the Angel Island Immigration Station’s hospital.

Thank you to everyone who attended our API Animated Histories launch last month and engaged in the small group discussion. We will release another set of animated videos in late 2022. We look forward to hosting future in-person and virtual events that allow us all to be in conversation and community. All of the videos we featured are available to watch here.

We are thrilled to invite Skyler Chin and Sita Sunil to perform a staged reading of "ILLEGAL: A New Musical" on Saturday, October 22, on Angel Island! Be sure to reserve your tickets (see link below), as seats are limited. We've featured a few pieces from this musical in our previous virtual programs, and one of the API Animated Histories videos is adapted from the soundtrack.

Finally, congratulations to AIISF Board Member Richard Lui who will be honored at the Asian Pacific Fund’s Annual Gala later this month, and a very happy 45th anniversary to our friends at the Chinatown Community Development Center!

I hope you enjoy all of Fall’s flavors and weather.

Edward Tepporn

AIISF Executive Director

Be sure to reserve your tickets ASAP for ILLEGAL: A New Musical, created and performed by Skyler Chin, co-composed by Sita Sunil, and featuring Catherine Gloria is inspired by family secrets, and poetry etched into the walls of Angel Island during Chinese Exclusion. With a professional AAPI cast, colorful characters, rap, song, comedy, and drama, ILLEGAL entertains as it shines a light on a dark chapter in history and on the fighting spirit of those who dared to become American.

Saturday, October 22, 2022

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Angel Island Immigration Station Detention Barracks Museum

Tiburon, CA, 94920

Until the end of November, the Angel Island Immigration Museum is hosting a new exhibit from the National Japanese American Historical Society called The Enemy Alien Files: Hidden Stories of World War II. This groundbreaking exhibition offers a comparative and multicultural presentation of the lesser-known stories of 31,000 German, Italian, and Japanese immigrant residents—and US citizens—who were discriminatingly deemed "enemy aliens" during World War II.

Enemy Alien Files was co-curated by the National Japanese American Historical Society, Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project, Italian American Studies Association / Western Regional Chapter, and German American Education Fund.

To find out more information, click here!

Are you a teacher? Do you know a teacher? Do your kids have teachers? Then please check out and/or share our field trip scholarship program. AIISF can help support the costs (up to $1000!) of classroom field trips to the Angel Island Immigration Station -- with priority for Title I schools or schools with a large percentage of students eligible for free meals.

Use the button below to access a step-by-step guide on how to book a classroom field trip and how to apply for scholarship funding.

Use the link below for a step-by-step guide on how to book and apply for a scholarship.

‌On September 29, we launched the first three videos in our Animated API Histories project. We want to thank Dietra Hawkins, Felicia Lowe, Stanford SPICE, Ben Fong-Torres, YouthBeat, our funders, and many others who helped to develop these three animated shorts. We hope you find them useful as conversation starters or as a resource to introduce Angel Island's history to those unfamiliar with it.

In "A Journey Through Angel Island" (produced by Felicia Lowe and narrated by Ben Fong-Torres), a mother and her two sons experience family separation on Angel Island. Based on Skyler Chin's grandfather's detention on Angel Island, "Fat Pork's Interrogation" is a battle of words between an immigrant and his interrogator. Listen to several Japanese Americans describe their childhood memories of the day their families were torn apart in Taken From Their Families.

Note: While these videos are animated, they depict experiences of detention, racism, and family separation.

Watch the videos via the links below:

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