A visit to Alcatraz - much more than I expected

As I had suspected from the beginning, travelling in a group makes it much more difficult to keep up with the blogging. I’m now sitting at my desk at home, with a view of the tops of the evergreens veiled by snow. Spring, though officially here, seems to have got lost somewhere along the way. What better way to try and regain it than going back to San Francisco, where I left off a good while ago?

 

Our boat to Alcatraz was due to leave from Pier 33 at 10:30 on Wednesday morning, and after breakfast at a corner bistro close to the hotel we had enough time to walk along the wharf and take in the sights. 

There were more seagulls than people this early in the day, and it was still cool, the sky cloudy, but so far dry. Closer to our destination the sidewalks became more crowded, and once we arrived at the pier people were milling around, the atmosphere charged with excitement. 

Alcatraz! We had glimpsed its lit buildings from the wharf the night before, the lighthouse blinking its slow rhythm, but now we would get a close-up view of this most famous prison in American history. I had not been too eager to come here, never too keen on big crowds, but now I, too, was drawn in. The slow progress through the queue was made more interesting by information panels along the dividers. ‘Scarface’ Al Capone, featured on one of them, was quoted to have said,‘Alcatraz got me licked.’ Another panel talked about the California Western Gulls abundant both in the harbour and on the island where they now breed undisturbed on the west side below the prisoner’s quarters, living out their life span of 15 to 18 years in a monogamous relationship. The gardens - gardens?! - were mentioned, how they became the pride and joy of some of the prisoners privileged to tend them. 

This was not what I would have thought of in connection with ‘the rock’. My curiosity was piqued.

During the short boat ride clouds hung low and revealed Oakland Bay Bridge intermittently only, just like the downtown skyline of San Francisco a bit further to the right, while the island of Alcatraz slowly came closer. What might prisoners have felt like approaching this place as we did now, knowing what expected them there? Were they quiet, subdued? Or defiant, confident they’d do what no one had been able to do so far - escape? 

 Even amidst the bustle of modern tourism I felt the forbidding presence of the stark yellowish-white buildings when we landed, shuddered slightly when I read the sign at the dock.

The crowds soon dispersed somewhat, some heading as quickly as possible for the audio tour of the prison itself. Our group, too, split up, since it would be difficult to stay together and take it all in at the same pace. We’d meet at the hotel again.

Johann and I started out with a video of the history of Alcatraz. We learned that it housed a military garrison starting in the mid-1800s; its location was deemed ideally suited to protect the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Later, it served as a military detention centre for about fifty years before it became a federal penitentiary in 1934. For the next thirty years it served the purpose that made it most famous. In 1963, it closed, due to the high cost of maintenance, buildings deteriorating rapidly due to salt water saturation, and environmental concerns because of raw sewage being released into San Francisco bay.

News to me also was the occupation of Alcatraz by a group of Native American activists for nearly two years from 1969 to 1971 to protest federal policies regarding American Indians. This was at least in part responsible for President Nixon’s establishing a new policy of self-determination.

Shortly after the end of the occupation the island became a national recreation area and is now operated by the National Parks Service. While there are no brown pelicans breeding there now – a Spanish explorer gave the island its name because of them: ‘La Isla de los Alcatraces’ – it has again become a haven for other seabirds, from gulls to cormorants and egrets, their shrill cries audible even through the windows of the main prison. 

Once we had looked at several exhibits on the ground floor we slowly climbed the hill to the cell block where we would start the 45-minute audio tour of the prison.

The tour, very cleverly set up to accommodate a large amount of listeners without making it too difficult for everyone to see the station being talked about, led us through the daily lives of the prisoners. Accompanied by realistic background noises – distant voices echoing through the hallways of the cell blocks, the clatter of metal, the loud bang of closing doors - the story, stories of Alcatraz was told by a narrator, with frequent comments from former inmates and wardens. Looking at the cells, bare and open, we could soon imagine the complete loss of privacy, could appreciate the fact that prisoners transferred here were indeed no longer anything but a number. “If you don’t behave in society, you go to prison; if you don’t behave in prison, you go to Alcatraz; if you don’t behave in Alcatraz, you go into solitary confinement.” While regular cells contained nothing but a metal cot, a shelf, a toilet and a sink, at least they allowed for a view of the hallway, the cell across, conversation, though forbidden, a possibility between adjacent cells or at mealtimes. Solitary confinement in the ‘D-block’, prescribed for misbehaviour in prison, took away even that, and for the worst offences prisoners were put in the ‘hole’, cells only about 2x3m in size that were totally darkened by a double-door system, with only a sliding window allowing the guard to check on the prisoner. 

A special section of the audio report dealt with the most famous escape attempt by three prisoners in 1962, on which the movie ‘Escape from Alcatraz’, starring Clint Eastwood, is modeled. While it is unclear if it was indeed a success – and it would be the only successful attempt in the whole history of the prison – none of the escapees was ever found. 

Still under the influence of what we had just heard, almost feeling like prisoners ourselves, we stepped out into the drizzle again, breathed the fresh, salt-tinged air, looked out towards the mainland as the prisoners would have done, only a little over 2 km away, yet unreachable for them. I was glad to look at the gardens, shake off the gloom of prison life. 

Here, volunteers have worked for the last twelve years or so to restore the former beauty of the gardens with their amazing variety of plants. Started during its time as a military garrison, kept up by the wives of the wardens, it was – and is, again – a place to enjoy, the brick walls beautified by calla and iris, roses and perennials of all sorts. 

But this was only one part of the garden. Walking on, we reached the so-called prisoner garden. Starting in 1941, a counterfeiter named Elliot Michener, with the help of other inmates allowed the privilege to work here, developed the slopes under the guard tower into a flowering garden, hauling compost, building a greenhouse with window panes salvaged by guards. “This one thing I wanted to do well,’’ he is claimed to have said. I’m sure he made life a little more bearable not only for himself, but also for the prisoners who came by here on their daily walk to the Industry Building.

  

 We had missed the ‘ranger talk’ on the mechanism of the prison doors earlier, so decided to spend an extra hour and stay for the next one instead of returning to the mainland right away. To fill the time we looked at the exhibition on site at the moment, ‘Prisoners of Age’. For me, this was the part of the whole visit to Alcatraz that left me most deeply moved. Here, photographer Ron Levine’s photographs of prisoners aged and ageing in the prison system today are on display, their life stories told by themselves, simply, without an attempt at glorification. While it is moving and heartbreaking to read these accounts, the admissions of guilt as much as the remorse and resignation, their effects go much further, bringing up questions regarding the treatment of geriatric prisoners as well as the prison population in general, laws and law enforcement, the way American society – or any society, really – addresses its problems. What the whole tour hadn’t managed to do, the half hour in the exhibition hall was sufficient to achieve: I felt real heartache, was moved to tears. 

Here is a link to the exhibition and comments by the photographer:

Prisoners of age at Alcatraz 

We attended the special talk about the doors, learned that, unlike the scene in the film, the doors never opened all at once to let the prisoners step out, but only in small sections of thirteen or fourteen cells at a time, the intricate mechanism necessary to open one, two or multiple cell doors, and listened to the characteristic clang of them slamming shut. It was time for us to leave, after four hours of intense immersion in the history of this famous, infamous place. I’m glad we came.