The Japanese "picture brides"are unique and attractive features of the oriental work at Angel Island. Pretty, polite, bowing, smiling, or sitting demurely with downward eyes, these girls draw one's unspoken sympathy, for what hard and sorrowful days may be before the little creatures in this unknown land, with their unknown bridegrooms? Generally these "picture brides" have never seen their future husbands, till meeting them here at Angel Island.

Marriage by Photograph -
These girls are given this curious name because their marriages are arranged in Japan by photograph. The sprightly author of "The Lady and Sada San" has described the arrangement as it takes place in Japan itself as follows:

"The great unseen has lived in America for two years. The maid makes her home in the school. The groom-to-be wrote to a friend in Hiroshima, Find me a wife.' The friend wrote back, Here she is.' Miss Chestnut Tree, the maid, fluttered down to the court-house, had her name put on the house register of the far-away groom, did up her hair as a married woman should, and went back to work. Tomorrow she sails for America, and we are all going down to wave her goodbye and good luck. She is married all right. There will be no further ceremony."

Well, a further ceremony might not be necessary in Japan, but when pretty little Miss Chestnut Tree arrives at Angel Island and the kindly eyes of the United States Government behold her, she is not considered a married lady at all. The great United States Government is bound to protect little Miss Chestnut Tree, so she and her husband-to-be will be married according to American laws, before the United States official loses sight of them. Family-tree registration may be marriage in Japan, but however honest the intentions of the unknown bridegroom may be, there is no safety for these Japanese girls save in a marriage which the worst-intentioned bridegroom knows will bind him in this country.

How romantic, how momentous is the day when the "picture-bride" sees her future husband for the first time! The Japanese girls are in their quarters in the upper story of the Administration Building. Perhaps the Methodist deaconess is with them. A telephone message comes that the future husband of a certain "picture-bride" has arrived and awaits her downstairs. She opens her bundle, finds the picture of the man, and perhaps some letters, and goes downstairs to see him for the first time.

On the bulletin-board, outside the front door of the Administration Building, I read a very plain hint, whereby it is evident that Uncle Sam is of the same mind a some fathers, when young men who come to woo stay too long. The notice on the bulletin-board was as follows:

"The constantly increasing number of Japanese visitors to this station and the tendency of such visitors to repeat and prolong their visits makes it necessary to issue the following order for the control of the situation: Visits to inmates of the station will be limited to one hour on any one day and must not be repeated by the same persons oftener than three times per week. The hours for such visits shall be between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., and visitors will not be permitted to see their friends at other times."

Speechless Wooing -
One would think it rather hard on a Japanese young man, however, if his "picture-bride" should sit, almost speechless during the whole of the permitted hour. A man who acted as guide for our party told me that sometimes a Japanese girl and her future husband will sit for an hour and not say anything.

"I'm bashful that way, myself," said the guide with whimsical sympathy.

Generally, despite the brevity of acquaintance, the Japanese girls are pleased to marry their bridegrooms. Sometimes, however, there comes an unexpected difficulty. Among the "picture-brides" and bridegrooms in the Japanese section of the main room of the Administration Building, I noticed apart from the others, a pretty Japanese girl sitting in the corner of the section. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes downcast. Next her, sitting on the railing, was a Japanese, looking like quite a man of the world in his American clothes. The pretty girl would speak a few words to him, occasionally, but she hardly raised her eyelids when she addressed him. If she had been an American girl, I should have thought that there might have been repressed tears back of that flushed countenance, yet often the girl's lips curled in a smile at something the man said. Still she persistently looked down.

"She is not supposed to look at him," said the missionary from Japan who was with our party. "She is supposed to show modesty by looking down continually."

But I had never seen a "picture-bride" act in that way, and I could not rid myself of the impression that she was in trouble. Finally I discovered that there was indeed trouble for the pretty, pink-cheeked girl. It seemed that when her prospective bridegroom had been asked whether he had ever been married, he replied that he had, but that he had obtained a divorce. The year required after an interlocutory divorce not having expired, no marriage could take place between himself and his "picture-bride," and the girl must be sent back to Japan. An appeal had been made to Washington, I understood. Poor pink-cheeked little picture-bride! Yet perhaps she was more fortunate than she knew, for I did not exactly like the looks of him who wished to become her husband.

Hookworm -
Among the "picture-brides" the unromantic disease of hookworm is often found, and many "picture-brides" have been detained two weeks at Angel Island to be treated for this disease. A small sum is charged per day. The hospital is a white building perched high among the live-oaks on the bluff opposite the Administration Building. In his report for the year ending June 30, 1904, the San Francisco Commissioner of Immigration, Samuel W. Backus, reported 539 cases of hookworm treated in the hospital. That was a reduction of 36 per cent from the number of cases treated the previous year. Mr. Backus reported a change in the method of the Pacific Mail Company in regard to hookworm cases, the plan being to examine their prospective passengers before embarking in the Orient (f)or this country, and if they were found afflicted with hookworm, to give treatment during the voyage. If aliens arrived here still afflicted with hookworm, a fine of one hundred dollars was assessed to the steamship company for each case.

Sometimes the Japanese bridegrooms bring presents to their "picture-brides" - American shoes, perhaps, that make a Japanese girl, who is not used to heels, tumble on the stairs, if the matron does not watch her. Once, just before the journey to San Francisco to be married, two bridegrooms brought American suits of clothes to their Japanese brides, and when I saw the two girls, each had donned her dress and wore a hat, as if she had been used to such American headgear from childhood. But there are"picture-brides" who enter San Francisco bareheaded.

A Link Between Home and Foreign Missions -
Angel Island is the place where Home and Foreign missions join hands, for often, among a company of "picture-brides" arriving at the island, there will be one or two Christian girls who have been taught by missionaries in Japan. Such girls are very glad to find at Angel Island the Methodist deaconess, and tell her that they too are Christians. They are pleased to receive a copy of the gospels in Japanese. "Arigato!" cried a Japanese "picture-bride" to me once, as I was hurrying along a passageway at this station. As I had just given a gospel in Japanese to a "picture-bride" in the dining-room, and as I knew that "Arigato" means "Thank you," I supposed she was calling her thanks, and telling her she was welcome, I disappeared. But a moment later, when I returned, the same Japanese girl again called "Arigato!" It seemed that she had not received a gospel though I had given one to her companion, and not knowing how else to ask for one, she was calling her persistent thanks for a gospel she hoped to receive, and which of course, I gave her as soon as I understood.

A Christian Bridegroom -
Some days, one sees the railed-off Japanese section of the large room of the Administration Building filled, not with "picture-brides," but with young Japanese men, waiting to see if the girls have "passed." Once I watched such a company, as the young men stood before the official, who had brought the list of thirty or thirty-five "picture-brides" who had arrived from Japan the previous day. The official's voice came across the room - "Passed, passed, passed," after each Japanese girl's name that he read.

The reading of the list being over, the group of Japanese broke up, some walking on the piazza while awaiting the next boat to the city. As I stood inside the door, there came toward me from the group an intelligent, gentlemanly young Japanese, to whom I ventured to give a gospel in his own language. He received it politely, telling me that he was a Christian, and that he would use the little book among his own companions in San Francisco.

He spoke English very well, and I asked him to tell me how he became a Christian. He said that his people in Japan were Buddhists. He came alone to California when he was fifteen years old, never having heard of Christianity in his native land. After arriving here, he was taken very ill. Alone among strangers, he thought he was going to die, and he had very serious hours and prayed earnestly in Buddhist form, I suppose. When he grew stronger, an acquaintance guided him to a mission, and there he heard of Christ.

"My heart was hungry for God," said the young Japanese bridegroom to me.

After he had secretly accepted Christianity, he persuaded himself that if he prayed very earnestly, he need not come out openly and confess himself a Christian. However, he came to see that this course was impossible, and joined the Methodist church.

"The day I was baptized," he said to me, "I was so happy to think I belonged to the Christian Church."

He had found friends in a good Methodist family where he had worked for four years. "They always introduce me as one of the family," he said.

Now his future bride had come from Japan and had "passed." All he had to do was come back the next day and answer some questions and be married. His bride was not a Christian, but he hoped she would become one after marriage.

Once on the return from Angel Island, there were two or three "picture-brides" and their bridegrooms on board the boat. I ventured to address one bridegroom who spoke English, and after wishing him happiness, I told him that I hoped they would find Christ in this country. He answered me with the unfailing Japanese politeness, "We are trying to find out."

It was only a courteous way of avoiding the issue, I think, but it reminds one of Count Okuma's saying, "Japan has everything else, but she is searching for a religion."

Friendship or Inhospitality -
At the San Francisco wharf where the boat from Angel Island stops, the Japanese "picture-brides" who are to be married separate themselves from the other passengers, and with their bridegrooms form a little group. Before them stretches the great city, the city of their hopes, the entrance to the great State. The heart of the American woman, watching, misgives her. How dared these little blue-garbed girls leave their people and come so many thousand miles across the sea, to meet their unknown bridegrooms? Oh, little brides, there are few enough at the gateway to California to say to you, "Yaku irashi-mashita. Dozo oagari kudasai." [You are welcome. Please walk in.] In the lonesome hours that are to come, when you find yourselves in a land of an unknown language, When you remember your beautiful Sunrise Islands and honorable Fuji and the old father and mother whom you shall never see again, may your bridegroom be good to you, and may America's God be revealed to you.

A young missionary acquaintance of mine, recently returned from Japan, said that Japanese women in California told her that they had never had a friend among American women.

"If we had been treated like that in Japan," said the young missionary, "we should never have known some of our best friends. Many of our dearest friends are Japanese."

It is only as these little "picture-brides" meet with friendly treatment that they will realize beauty in the Christian religion. A Methodist deaconess who was a worker at Angel Island used to receive pathetically queer little gifts from the Chinese and Japanese women, who were grateful for her kindness. Sometimes they gave her little pieces of dried fish or a piece of a dreadful sort of sponge-cake that smelled badly and tasted worse, and once, - oh crowning delicacy! - she received an egg that had been buried in Japan for two years.

Suspicious Increase of Proxy Marriages -
During several years past, the number of Japanese "picture-brides" coming to Angel Island has been very noticeable. In May 1912, it was stated that more than four thousand Japanese women had arrived in the ports of the Pacific Coast during the previous year. In that same month, one steamer brought seventy-five "picture brides." In his report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1912, the Commissioner of Immigration at San Francisco said, "The total number of Japanese arrivals for the year was 2,816, divided into 1,369 males and 1,447 females. Only 737 of the total number of arrivals were former residents, thus giving a total of 2,079 new arrivals - almost as many as the total number of arrivals for the previous year. The striking increase was in the number of Japanese wives, which rose from 1,101 in the fiscal year of 1911 to 1,447 in the year just ended. A large percentage of this movement is what is known as the proxy-marriage bride, a class of applicants concerning which there has been considerable criticism, but which we have not found to be anything other than they claim to be, except in the rarest of instances. A searching investigation, which we have been unable to make, might show otherwise."

However, by the succeeding year, ending June 30, 1913, the Commissioner at San Francisco was of the same mind as to the genuineness of the "picture-brides" coming here. The total number of Japanese who had arrived that year reached 3,477, an increase of over 25 per cent. Of these, 1,567 were women, and the commissioner reported, "As will be suggested from the foregoing totals, the Japanese "bride" continues to increase in numbers in the United States. Many of them re destined to ranches in California, Oregon, and Washington, really to engage as farm laborers. This fact, however, does not make them any less the housewives that they say they are to be, and practically all such applications are flawless under the immigration laws."

From such a statement as this, however, one may easily see that a Japanese young woman coming here has no life of ease awaiting her. "One day they're picture-brides,' and the next day they're digging potatoes on a ranch," said an employee at Angel island.

It is interesting to note that in the Atlantic for May, 1917, an article written by K. K. Kawakami, a prominent Japanese residing in San Francisco, refers to "picture-brides." He claims that there have only been a few instances in which such marriages have proved unsatisfactory. "Indeed," he says, "it seems to be the opinion among the more experienced, conservative Japanese residents in America that marriage following the exchange of photographs results in more felicitous unions than those in cases where the young men go over to Japan and find the brides themselves; because in the former case the precaution, wisdom, experience, and good judgment of the parents are fully utilized."

The Economic Problem -
Whatever the gloomy prophecies indulged in by officials or by persons interested in economics, the Japanese men and women admitted to this State go on with their hard, unremitting work here. Sometimes the result of the hard work is a prosperity at which some Americans look askance. One day when I was traveling by train toward the Santa Cruz mountains, an American woman became my seat-mate. She told me of the success of two Japanese families who had rented a strawberry ranch at a certain place.

"The women worked in the field like the men," said my informant, "and in one year those Japanese made seven thousand dollars. Then they bought an automobile."

She also told me that she had been in Japan the previous year and had talked with a Japanese who said he should think that with all the thousands of uncultivated acres in California, the Californians would be glad to have Japanese develop the land.

"If we had an inch of land in Japan with no one to cultivate it, we would be glad to have anybody come in and do it for us," said the Japanese.

She replied to him that in California the Japanese were different people from what they were at home.

"In California, the Japanese want two dollars a day."

"They're spoiled!" said he.

Among the occupations carried on by the Japanese in California is that of mending shoes. One may look in at the diligent Japanese cobbler's window, and find him working by lamplight in the evening. Another business that Italians might look askance at is Japanese macaroni-making. In Oakland, where an open upper window admitted the dust raised by frequently-passing electric cars, I have seen inside a "Japanese Macaroni Factory" many strings of the yellow paste hanging to dry. Japanese bath-houses and cleaning establishments for clothing are a common industry. Even Japanese women may furnish novelty in labor. One day on a street in san Francisco's Chinatown, I saw, through the window of a barber-shop, two Japanese women barbers. An Oriental, presumably a Japanese, was stretched ina barber's chair, while a Japanese young woman was carefully shaving him.