The Daily Tribune from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin • Page 19

Thursday, December 15, 2005 5C Daily Tribune. Wisconsin Rapids Lifestyle Park restoration preserves immigrant poems ft a wl- i iMiiil ii -i in By LOUISE CHU The Associated Press ANGEL ISLAND, Calif. Cold, damp barrack walls, weathered from years of neglect, stand as a reminder of the detainment center that housed thousands of Chinese during the early 1900s on this mountainous island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Beneath layers of chipping gray paint, however, is a nearly forgotten piece of the human story one of longing, disappointment, fear and rage, etched as poems into the decaying wood panels by immigrants held for weeks or months during enforcement of Chinese exclusionary laws. "I'm heartsick when I see my reflection, my handkerchief is soaked in tears," reads one poem carved in Chinese characters on a first-floor wall.

"I ask you, what crime did I commit to deserve this?" This and dozens of other poems have been the focus of a $50 million, three-phase state parks restoration project under way at the Angel Island Immigration Station on the 470-acre island in San Francisco Bay. A mix of federal, state and private money is funding the project. Before work began in August, a team of scholars combed the station's barracks and hospital, locating every visible piece of writing on the walls. It's the first-ever attempt at creating such a record, and scholars are using it to find out more about the life of detainees. Until now, the most comprehensive account was the 1980 book "Island," which published more than 100 Angel Island poems, said Charles Egan, a Chinese Studies professor at San Francisco State University and a lead scholar on the new project.

But the collection, based on 1930s-era manuscripts by two detainees who reportedly copied poems off the walls, never grueling interrogations, many Chinese turned to poetry to vent. "Poetry is much more central to Chinese culture than it might be to others," Egan said. "Poetry was seen as a natural product of emotional experience, so there was always a premium placed on expressing yourself, especially in a time of high emotion." The poems suggest the writers were well-educated and well-organized, possibly working in "poetry clubs" that were selective about what became murallike carvings on the wall, Egan said. Homer Lee, who was 16 when he arrived at Angel Island in 1926, remembered seeing groups of older men many of them schoolteachers huddled together to discuss and display their poetry on the walls during his six-month detainment. "They tell the truth of their lives and the future of their lives on the wall," said the 95-year-old, who now lives in Berkeley and revisited the island last year.

While scholars have debated the poets' literary prowess, Egan argued that the richness of emotion displayed makes the works worth studying. "One thing you can't fault any of the poems out there is lack of feeling," he said. "From that perspective, Angel Island poetry is very high quality" Historian Judy Yung, a coauthor of "Island" who conducted oral histories of former detainees, said researchers have been unable to locate any of the poets. Unlike writings by detainees of other nationalities, most of the Chinese work was unsigned. "There was a sense of secrecy and shame to what happened at Angel Island," Yung said.

"It doesn't matter who wrote them, but that the poems speak certain truths and speak certain feelings that we all understand." The Associated Press McNamee looks at a Chinese poem inscriptions inside of a barrack the poetry by Chinese immigrants during the early 1900s has led to of the building. non-Asian immigrants, who were held in separate quarters. Asian detainees, housed in sections of the two-story barracks building that were meant to accommodate 100 but often held 500, were given substandard food, saltwater showers and limited recreation behind barbed-wire fences. Views from triple-stacked bunks only hinted at the lush greenery and deep blue ocean just outside their confines. Detainees were kept on the north side of Angel Island, faced away from the bustling city that promised them so much opportunity.

Languishing from indefinite stays, prisonlike quarters and Dismissed as graffiti by guards and officials at the time, the writings frequently were painted over, which obscured the writings for decades until a park ranger rediscovered them in the 1970s. At the time, the dilapidated barracks were scheduled for demolition. "That's the reason why the building is still standing," said park guide Casey Lee. "If there hadn't been the writing in there, it probably would've been gone, and the stories wouldn't be as powerful." The multiple coats of paint presented a challenge to restoration workers, who wanted to preserve the writings between the layers, said park superintendent Roy McNamee. "We can't come in and repaint without the risk of destroying some of the resources; we can't come in and strip the paint without destroying the resources," McNamee said.

"There's not much we can do, so our goal in this venture is to do no harm." A protective coating likely will be sprayed to prevent further decay and protect visitors from the lead-based paint, he said. The station will reopen to the public late next year after completion of the first phase of restoration, featuring a new exhibit with the scholars' findings. The exhibit spotlights the Chinese poetry, but it also includes writings from other Asian, Russian, South American and Middle Eastern immigrants who passed through the station, as well as World War II prisoners of war later held there. While those writings were mainly just short messages and name inscriptions, Egan said the diversity shown hopefully will help visitors understand the Angel Island experience as "a real American story out there that has a large resonance." inward "Crossing Jordan," "NCIS" and others. She considers them ridiculous and dangerous.

One episode of "CSI" still gets her upset. The premise: A body had plummeted from a high-rise window and the fictional investigators determined it had to be a homicide since the victim was wearing eyeglasses. Why? They reasoned that no suicide victim would want to see his own fall. "You cannot make assumptions like this!" Cornwell screams. "When you're talking about somebody who is so deeply depressed that he or she is suicidal to the point of jumping off a building, I'm not really sure we can say for a fact that person is going to take his or her glasses off.

It's just not black and white that way." What Cornwell fears is that fans of such shows will begin blurring the line between fact and fiction when they sit on juries. She cites examples of killers set free because jurors believed police didn't perform the blood or gun tests they saw on TV In an effort to stem such damage, Cornwell has partnered with the National Forensic Academy in Tennessee to educate new investigators and argues mat forensic science should be taught in high school. Enur CIRCLS Bv Bil keane Forensic specialist turns her attention Angel Island Superintendent Roy on Angel Island, Calif. Discovery of renovation, rather than destruction physically was corroborated. The project located most of those poems and found about 60 new ones.

Meanwhile, park contractors are busy restoring the station to the way it looked in the days when it was known as the Ellis Island of the West, the main gateway for immigrants crossing the Pacific. From 1910 until fire destroyed part of the station in 1940, it processed about 1 million immigrants, including 175,000 Chinese. But unlike Ellis Island, where most immigrants only stayed several hours, Angel Island held Chinese immigrants for an average of two or three weeks, some put her out of business. "Let's face it: This forensics stuff has been beaten to death on television," she says. "Why waste a chapter explaining an electron microscope when we can watch it on TV? I'm afraid to say, if you're realistic, you've got to change with the times." While discussing her literary predicament with her publisher, Cornwell hit upon her next step.

"It's going to be the brain. It's got to be it's the last frontier," she says during an interview in her sprawling Upper West Side apartment overlooking Central Park. "To tell you the truth, forensic science, for all its bells and whistles and as much as I do with it, is a cleanup crew. You come in after the fact when it's really too late to do anything to stop what's happened. What we don't really explore is the why." This time, readers get to hear the voices inside a serial killer's head, listen as he tortures his victims and eavesdrop on his fantasies.

Cornwell who also came up with a pretty gruesome way to truss up victims with wire coat hangers had a painful time writing those scenes. "It is disturbing because you think, 'How can I think of things for nearly two years, as officials verified their immigration status. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, laborers were not allowed to enter the United States. The law, the first one in U.S. history that targeted a specific ethnic group, was enacted in response to complaints about the influx of Chinese laborers, who had come to work on the railroads.

Exceptions to the law, later repealed in 1943, were made for wives and children of American citizens, merchants, students, diplomats and tourists. Historical accounts of life at the station showed great disparity between treatment of Asian and like this? How am I she says. "It's disturbing that you can imagine these things. What it tells you is that we're all capable of almost anything." So far, her fans seem willing to go along for the ride. "Predator," which boasts a first-run print of a million copies, has spent three weeks atop best-seller lists.

Cornwell perfectly groomed and dressed in a conservative pantsuit seems to betray little whimsey But look closer: Her belt buckle sports a metal skull, and her right hand features a signet ring with Scarpetta's coat-of-arms, a design she helped create. Her home, too, offers little obvious signs of the mayhem that occurs in her novels. A collection of walking sticks by the door and framed etchings by James McNeill Whistler give it an English country feel. But a closed door down a hallway reveals a killer's arsenal. On a table are various daggers, straight razors, Indian decapitating knives, handcuffs and other Victorian-era weapons all primary sources on which she relied for an earlier book that sought to unmask Jack the Ripper.

For her latest novel, Cornwell similarly leapt into her research. Besides having the MRI, she learned inc. Z. i 1 AOUA-VU UNDERWATER CAMERA. Used 2 winters.

175. Call 715-323-1899. Bowftex XLT leg extension $700 Pro Form 595LE Treadmill $350 Gazzelle freestyle Elite $150 (715 675-9819 Furnishings line was 'All of a all of a sudden something is going to happen." Further proof of Cornwell's unique take on the world is a poem she wrote at age 9 about Abraham Lincoln. The poem framed and hanging on a wall in her home begins innocently enough: "There once was a manHis name was Abe." Soon, though, it gets downright macabre: "He became president one dayI don't know if it was in June, July or even May And then one day he got shot and he was deadHe got shot in the head." The child's poem, she thinks, offers a clue to the adult writer. "I'm very, very sensitive to pain and suffering and to violence and I tend to therefore see it," she says.

"I'm the opposite of what people would think I'm overly sensitive. "I can be clinical as you would imagine if there's an emergency or I'm in the morgue. But then beneath all that, I am empathic to a point that it probably gets me into trouble sometimes." One thing Cornwell decidedly is not empathetic about is the current glut of forensic science shows populating TV's prime-time the "CSI" franchise, "Bones," By MARK KENNEDY The Associated Press NEW YORK Just for the record, Patricia Cornwell's brain looks quite normal. The best-selling crime novelist got a gander at her own gray matter while doing research for her new book, "Predator." Always eager to undergo whatever her characters do, she slipped into an MRI machine and got her head examined. "They said for my age I had a nice brain," says Cornwell, before adding with a smirk: "They didn't see any gross abnormalities, which shows you they probably need more sophisticated equipment." The brain, it turns out, plays an unexpected role in Cornweli's latest novel, the 14th in her series featuring forensic criminologist Kay Scarpetta and her ragtag band of investigators.

Unlike writers such as Thomas Harris, Cornwell had little interest in the inner wiling of killers when she launched her series that widely is credited with popularizing the forensic thriller. But while the franchise transformed the one-time police reporter into a wealthy woman whose books are translated into 32 languages, there's a catch: Her success has li1 'Pit. J- oK shies shot I I to ride a Harley-Davidson and shoot a .9 mm Baretta carbine. For earlier books, she flew a helicopter and learned to scuba dive. "She is a very committed person," says Neil Nyren, publisher and editor-in-chief of Putnam.

"Whatever the project, she does it wholeheartedly and completely. I've worked with a lot of authors, but she is as professional as anybody I've ever dealt with." Cornwell, 49, began her career as a crime reporter in North Carolina for The Charlotte Observer. Then she decided to be a novelist and did a six-year stint at the Medical Examiner's Office in Richmond, before her first book, "Postmortem," was published 1990. She also has penned a more lighthearted series though no less deadly featuring reporter-turned-cop Andy BraziL "I've always had a very fearful imagination, even as a little kid," Cornwell says. She remembers making up stories for the neighborhood kids and once making a little boy burst into tears and run home.

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