American Scene

By Gregory Jaynes

It is said that nearly half of all living Americans can track their ancestry through the imposing Great Hall on Ellis Island, once the nation's largest immigration station. No wonder, then, that a drive to make a national museum of the cracked, peeling facility, along with its famous next-door neighbor, the Statue of Liberty, has not gone wanting for funds. Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty -- their very names seem to pop latches off pocketbooks.

Look around. If not Ellis Island, what is a nation of immigrants, to say nothing of sentimentalists, left with to enshrine? A Customs desk at Kennedy? A baggage carrousel at Miami? Immigration today, although it may take 18 months or more, is for the eminently acceptable, by and large a sterile affair, cut and dried -- for some, almost a snap. In the busiest of Ellis Island's days, immigration was a deeply traumatic ordeal, the stuff of family history that descendants keep alive.

"On board the ship we became utterly dejected," one immigrant wrote of his voyage early this century. "Seasickness broke out among us. Hundreds of people had vomiting fits . . . As all were crossing the ocean for the first time, they thought their end had come. The confusion of cries became unbearable . . . I wanted to escape from that inferno but no sooner had I thrust my head forward from the lower bunk than someone above me vomited straight upon my head. I wiped the vomit away, dragged myself onto the deck, leaned against the railing and vomited my share into the sea, and lay down half-dead upon the deck."

The flight from Seoul to Los Angeles, (where, according to an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman, a second Statue of Liberty ought to be erected), took 13 1/2 hours, two movies, three meals and a snack. Yeon Hee Park, 33, and her two sons, Sung Joon, 8, and Yong Joon, 7, passed the hours pleasantly. No one became ill.

"The day of the emigrants' arrival in New York was the nearest earthly likeness to the final Day of Judgment, when we have to prove our fitness to enter Heaven," wrote Globetrotter Stephen Graham. (His report of a 1913 journey is one of scores dug up by Irving Howe for his fine book World of Our Fathers, to which this account is indebted.) Another observer recorded the anxiety that rent the hordes in steerage as they were taken off the steamships, loaded into lighters, taken to the quay: " 'There is Ellis Island!' shouted an immigrant who had already been in the United States and knew of its alien laws. The name acted like magic. Faces grew taut, eyes narrowed. There, in those red buildings, fate awaited them. Were they ready to enter? Or were they to be sent back? 'Only God knows,' shouted an elderly man, his withered hand gripping the railing."

After the Korean Air jumbo jet landed at LAX, as the locals like to call their airport, the first instructions over the public address system were given in Korean. "If you have any questions, please ask us. Regardless of your destination, you have to declare baggage and clear customs here. Thank you." Yeon Hee Park and her boys were shown to the proper desk. "I am a little uncomfortable," she said through an interpreter. "Not afraid. I know my husband is here. He will take care of us." Her husband In Wung Park, 37, was nearing the airport about then in the new white four-door Buick Century he had purchased just one week before.

A mechanical engineer, Park had been a successful businessman in Seoul. But life there, he felt, was a "dead end. Too much red tape. Too much trouble. As a man I wanted to do something more." He had made several business trips to the U.S. in the past eight years, and he felt that he could expand and prosper greatly there. He applied for an immigrant visa, and it took him seven months to be cleared.

Upon arrival last year, Park moved into the Western Inn, a hotel run by Koreans in Los Angeles' Koreatown. Soon he noticed that there was no billiard parlor anywhere nearby. Billiards is very popular in Seoul, Park knew, though he himself did not play. So Park opened a billiard hall, which is at present the hot gathering spot for Korean students at USC and UCLA. Last January he got his coveted green card and sent for his family. Four months and three days later they arrived. His net income from his business is now $5,000 to $6,000 a month.

Then as now, money helped a lot. For the fortunate few who could afford first- or second-class cabins on the old steamships, a polite interview in the ship's parlor often satisfied American formalities. But for 17 million im- migrants (and some 250,000 rejectees), the baggage room at Ellis Island was the first stop, then a long flight of slate stairs up to the Great Hall, 170 ft. long, 102 ft. wide, the ceiling 58 ft. above, and everywhere white ; tile and thick plaster made of lime and cattle hair. At the top of the stairs were doctors who watched the immigrants' ascent for lameness, deformity, signs of respiratory problems. Then they were made to walk in circles. "Whenever a case aroused suspicion," one inspector wrote, "the alien was set aside in a cage apart from the rest . . . and his coat lapel or shirt marked with colored chalk, the color indicating why he had been isolated." They would mark them "H" for heart disease, "X" for dementia or perhaps just for looking stupid, "E" for eye problems. The immigrants were entitled to an interpreter. "Name? Where were you born? Have you ever been to the United States before? Do you have any relatives here? Where do they live? Who paid for your passage? Do you have any money? Let me see it. Do you have any skills? Do you have a job waiting for you here? Are you an anarchist? Are you a polygamist?"

Today U.S. consulates abroad are responsible for the medical and legal eligibility of immigrants. They arrive with the necessary papers and X rays; clearance customarily takes but minutes. After Yeon Hee Park and her sons went through the line in Los Angeles, she and the two boys collected their five bulging imitation-leather bags and cleared Customs.

In Wung knelt and caressed the little boys' faces. "Appa!" both cried again and again, teaching all within earshot the Korean word for daddy. In the car, the older boy, Sung Joon, was impressed by the width of the freeway. Traffic congestion he knew from Seoul, but so many lanes! The younger boy asked for a banana. He wanted to see if they tasted better here. Yeon Hee said there were no surprises; it was all as her husband had described it. They had talked so many times on the telephone.

In Wung drove them to the Western Inn, where the boys turned on the television and settled in with Woody Woodpecker. This would teach them English, the father explained. They were familiar with Woody Woodpecker in Seoul; now they could follow the story line in their new language. He said they would be at the hotel only for a couple of days. He had rented a $750-a- month, two-bedroom apartment in Glendale because he had been told the schools in that northern suburb would be good for his sons.

In a month, Park said, he planned to expand his business interests with a one-hour photograph-processing establishment near the billiard hall. He had just purchased a $41,000 French-made processing machine. His only regret, he said, was that he had to make a 20% down payment; if he had been in the U.S. longer, he could have qualified for the financing with only 10% down. These little businesses, Park explained, were just stepping-stones toward getting into high-tech research -- analytical chemistry, immunology, protein chemistry, cell biology, molecular biology -- with Korean scientists as partners.

Soon, Park said, his wife would go to school to train in interior decorating and he would go to study English and broaden his knowledge in liberal arts. And, oh yes, he nearly forgot: after Korean cars are introduced on the West Coast this fall, he intends to open a repair and parts shop.

Sung Joon's attention strayed from the TV to his father's key ring, a great metallic wreath. Why, he asked, so many keys? "Are there so many thieves in America?" In Seoul, they had lived without locks, and the father had carried only car keys. As Park explained that keys were necessary in this country, his wife drew a visitor aside. She said she was certain she would enjoy her new life, but for now it was something of a strain. They had had to sell their home and furnishings, coming here carrying only clothes. The worst part, she said, was leaving her relatives. Then she ran her index fingers from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks, showing how she had cried.

The faces in the faded photographs of the immigrants on Ellis Island are sad too. "I never managed during the years I worked there to become callous to the mental anguish, the disappointment and the despair I witnessed almost daily," said a young interpreter named Fiorello La Guardia. "At best the work was an ordeal."

By 1907, after the facility had been functioning 15 years, 5,000 was unofficially regarded as the maximum number of immigrants that could be processed in one day. However, during that spring, there were days when maximum capacity was exceeded twofold. They were jostled, pulled, pushed and misunderstood. There is the story of the Jew who cried out "Shoyn fargessen!" -- already forgotten -- only to have his name set down upon his documents as Sean Ferguson.

Given the confusion and the size of the mobs, it is astonishing that 80% got through within hours. Felix Frankfurter got through. Knute Rockne's health, mind and abilities were found to be acceptable. Irving Berlin, Bob Hope, Sol Hurok, Samuel Goldwyn and Elia Kazan were examined at Ellis Island, as were Louis Koch, the mayor's father, and Immaculata Giordano, Governor Mario Cuomo's mother.

In 1924, laws were changed to require that immigrants be approved or rejected at consular offices overseas. Then came the Depression and a reversal of roles: Ellis became a deportation center. The approach of World War II would bring in refugees, of course, but the great migration of immigrants from Europe to the U.S. had ceased, as had the original purpose of Ellis Island. In 1955, it was put up for sale -- 27 1/2 acres, 35 buildings, good view -- but at $6.5 million the government found no buyers. Vandals had the run of the place.

Today workboats leave at all hours from the Battery, hauling hard-hatted construction crews and materials for the restoration. The Great Hall is a maze of scaffolding. Fans hum everywhere, drying out plaster. Bare bulbs hang down all over. Occasionally there is the frantic sound of beating wings, a gull or a pigeon come in through a smashed window. Here and there is the faintest scent of lye.

In the kitchen are rusted cast-iron stoves, muffin tins in the ovens, wire whisks the size of basketballs suspended from a rack. From down a dim passageway comes the sound of boots crunching glass underfoot, and out into the light appears a rat patrol, four hard hats spreading poison. From the darkest corners the beams of contractors carrying out inspections by flashlight dance around like fireflies.

"This is it," says a young timekeeper on one of the construction jobs. "The biggest project in America. Liberty. Freedom. What this country is all about. If I do my job well, some day I'll be project manager, the big cheese."

And out in the slip where the lighters used to moor (the ferry Ellis Island, scuttled by decay after logging 1 million nautical miles crossing to Manhattan, now lies beneath the water there), two deckhands on a workboat sprawl out sunning themselves. "Everywhere you look there's a study team combing over something. I'm surprised they ain't started strip-searching us yet. Everything's historic! Jeez, I bet I'd get busted if I tried to take a damn Coke bottle off this island."

"Hey, easy there, Sal. My great-grandfather came through here."