New Hope

RUSSIAN REFUGEES SEE HOPE IN THE UNITED STATES
San Francisco News Call
July 2, 1923

A name like a prophecy ... "Angel Island" !

Day was gasping its last breath beyond the Golden Gate as our launch slapped the water softly against the dock at Angel Island. Captian James L. Craig, smiling and handsome in his trim khaki uniform, met us acting as host for the island that is like a small city.

For here are the refugees, the 526 wandering orphans of broken Russia.

"Room for them? I'll say we have, and we have room for plenty more as well," said the Captian cheerfully.  And he led the way through the great airy brick builings with the hundreds of iron cots.  Among the refugees there were women with 'kerchiefs and caps upon their heads, with children playing at their feet, with their few possessions bound in bundles and lying beside them.

Quietly, with interest, the refugees watched this first night, falling on American soil.

NO HOPE IN RUSSIA

"They say we are here just just in time for your Independence Day," said a teenaged refugee to one soldier eagerly.  An older male refugee commented, "To me he was only a boy, wearing the white cross of honor on his faded, worn military coat.  That was good, like a sign. In Russia we have no hope left."

The older male continued, "There were 7,000 of us and we boarded ships in Russia, for us to live on, because to stay on land meant death. Two of those ships went down.  Babies were born and died, and there was sickness and trouble.  But we continued on and arrived in Manila.  For a while we did not know if America would welcome us. Then we knew. She is giving us refuge.  Tomorrow there is hope for a future."
 
His wife nodded her head. She was also very young and lacked the slight English her husband had learned at the cadet school in Russia.  The white lace cap, that made an aura around her tired girlish face, was ragged.  Yet she was loveIy.  Her husband looked at her tenderly. "She says she is glad our child will be born here, " he translated proudly.

PRIEST AMONG THE COTS

Father Serge Denisoff came walking slowly down the dormitory aisle, between the beds that were the homes of these newly arrived people.  He has no church here, and yet he was not without hope. With a certain eagerness he chatted with Father Vladimir Sakovich of the Russian Orthodox Holy Trinty Cathedral in San Francisco.
 
ENTER PRINCE ANTOLY

Prince Anatoly Chaogadaef comes from the cadets quarters in the dormitory to meet us.  He is very tall, very powerful, very young.  He wears a white shirt open at the throat that shows a heavy gold chain about his neck. His sailor trousers are made of thick white duck.  He looks like a movie idol.  At one time he was a wealthy prince in Russia. Now, suddenly, he finds himself in a country where he knows no English nor does he have has a single friend.

"But I will find something to do, and I will learn English," the prince said quietly.

TAKING TO ANGEL ISLAND

Generals, lieutenants, soldiers of every varity, aviators, priests, authors, clerks and farmers, men of every trade, and their babies and their wives, all together on Angel Island, and all hopeful.  Remember, these people represent the cream of Old Russia.  There are among them the once powerful and rich. Yet they have taken to Angel Island, the medical examinations, the long tables laden with plain hearty food, and the rows of beds, as cheerfully as if it were a picnic.