Alcatraz Island Prison and the Men Who Live There

CHAPTER I

The Rock

Alcatraz Island is the most striking natural object in the bay of San Francisco. In its commanding position between two great bridges it impresses with its boldness and its beauty.

Three miles in from the Pacific Ocean where the Golden Gate marks the beginning of the bay and one mile and one half from the nearest landing dock in San Francisco Alcatraz is close to Fort Mason, Telegraph Hill, Yerba Buena, Treasure Island, Angel Island and Paradise Cove. It is only 12 acres in extent and in shape it is an irregular oblong, rocky and precipitous. Its composition is sandstone and the top soil for the gardens has been brought from the mainland. Swift cold tides of choppy waters and a zone marked by buoys two hundred yards off shore are warning to trespassers. It has grown to be an object of keen interest and speculation to travelers who refer to it as The Rock.

To bay area residents viewing it at night from hilltop homes it looks like a huge ship at anchor. To ocean travelers approaching it through the Golden Gate it looks like a stern sentinel thrust up by nature to protect the treasures of the inner harbor. Soldiers on army transports and naval vessels returning from the South Seas and the Orient give it a good look and a megaphone hello and the outward bound sometimes go around the island for a close-up.

Men of the sea regard its circling light as a beacon to signal and guide ships safely into the docks that project out from the embarcadero and its bellowing buoy and blasting fog horns as warning to avoid the rocks.

The perpendicular cliffside of the Island, exposed to the Golden Gate, is rough, barren, jagged and scarred, showing erosion from the lashing and thrashing of incoming tides, but above the water line there is a profusion of plants and flowers to which the moisture in the air gives luxuriance.

Most of the time the weather is fine and the ocean breezes give the air a tang and zip that is refreshing and invigorating. Then there are days when a filmy, wispy fog comes and goes around it like a gossamer veil, and nights when wet, cold fog envelopes it like a shroud.

Law officers and law breakers see the Federal Penitentiary atop the impregnable rock as a symbol of strength, security and strictness. To the men confined there, it is not only the ultimate in isolation but the most ironic because they are there in the midst of the activity of a busy harbor with small craft darting to and from San Francisco, Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Richmond and Sausalito; within sound of the honking horns of a ceaseless procession of automobiles crossing the bridges; within sight of ocean liners as they glide through the Golden Gate to far away ports in the vast Pacific, and within sight and sound of air clippers and their buzzing motors, all reminding them that life is near but freedom far.

The first recorded history of San Francisco Bay by the Spanish explorers indicates that Don Gaspar De Portola and his scout Jose Francisco Ortega saw it in 1769. Portola and Ortega left San Diego July 14, 1769 in search of Monterey Bay but did not recognize it when they were there on October 3 so they proceeded northward and by accident discovered the Bay of San Francisco. Father Palou, who was with Father Junipero Serra and made the Anza expedition accompanied by Rivera and four soldiers, saw it in 1773. But the entrance into the bay did not occur until 1775. On August 5, of that year Lieutenant Don Juan Manuel de Ayala in command of the San Carlos undertook to survey the bay. Don Jose Canizares, as sailing master in command of a launch, with ten men, went in through Golden Gate to make a survey and select anchorage for the three larger ships of the expedition that remained in the Pacific Ocean. Later that day the San Carlos picked her way through the uncharted current of the Golden Gate and anchored close to what is now Sausalito.

Ayala and Canizares saw the Island but did not explore it because it was steep, rough and barren and afforded no shelter for a launch. But what they saw of the Island furnished the reason for giving it a name. The Island was covered with birds—Pelicans—and so they named it Isla de Alcatraces—Island of Pelicans. Other islands and inlets and points of land were given distinctive Spanïsh names but only two still retain the names given by Ayala—the beautiful Isla de Neustra Sonora de Los Angeles (Our Lady of the Angels), the present Angel Island, and Isla de Alcatraces, the present Alcatraz.

Spanish land grants that clouded titles and clogged the courts in early days as California was getting out from under Mexican rule played a part in building up legendary stories about Spanish forts and Spanish dungeons on Alcatraz that have no support in history.

Apparently Ayala and Canizares were satisfied to leave Alcatraz to the Pelicans because there is not a map or plan or scrap of paper in the archives to indicate that they ever set foot on the island. But like so many choice locations in California under Mexico it was made the subject of barter by those who claimed it under Spanish grants.

Alcatraz and other islands and part of the mainland bordering on the bay were claimed under Spanish land grants by Jose Yves Limtour and by Julian Workman. Jose Yves Limtour laid claim to some 600,000 acres including the Farallones, Alcatraz, Yerba Buena and the site of the present town of Tiburon in Marin County, also four leagues of land in San Francisco, all under a grant signed by Governor Micheltorena in 1843 for aid furnished the Mexican government. In a court proceeding Limtour’s claim was pronounced illegal, the grants forgeries, the testimony of witnesses perjury.

Julian Workman claimed Alcatraz under a grant given by Pio Pico, Governor of California under Mexico in 1846.

On April 30, 1846 Workman addressed his petition to Governor Pico in which he referred to a small island called Alcatraces, or Bird Island, which has never been inhabited by any person, nor used for any purpose. After receiving a report from J. De Jesus Noe, Prefecture Second District, Governor Pico acted favorably on the petition June 8, 1846. He referred to the small island called Alcatraces, or Bird Island as petitioned by Workman, then made the grant in these words: Declaring him by these presents owner in fee of said small island, in order that he may occupy, possess and dispose of the same as he may see proper, under the sole condition that he cause to be established as soon as possible a light which may give protection on dark nights to the ships and smaller vessels which may pass there.

In his petition Workman had included reference to the need for a light and it appeared to have been persuasive with Governor Pico when he issued the grant. Workman may have had good intentions but the Island remained dark until 1854 when the Army Engineers got busy with fortifications and erected a lighthouse with a lantern 160 feet above sea level. Like so much of early California history, under so many flags and so many rulers, in which fact gets fogged with fiction, it is difficult to follow the exact course of the Workman claim. One version is that he turned it over to his son-in-law Temple who conveyed it to Governor Fremont in March 1849 for a consideration of $5,000. Governor Fremont took the title as agent and legal representative of the United States. A suit for payment of the $5,000 was disallowed. It has also been said that Workman, in a gesture of generosity, waived his claim. At any rate the island passed into possession of the United States.

On November 6, 1850, Millard Fillmore, President of the United States, issued an executive order reserving for public purposes Yerba Buena Island, Angel Island, Alcatraces Island and many tracts and parcels of land in San Francisco and bordering bay shores from the Presidio to Mare Island. The order was modified by President Fillmore December 31, 1851, probably for purposes of clarification.

Soon after President Fillmore’s order the United States Board of Engineers began the work of making the Island part of the military fortifications for the defense of the Pacific Coast. The Army Engineers arrived on the Island early in 1853 to make their survey and draw plans. In the first report made by Brevet Colonel J. L. Smith to Chief of Engineers, May 6, 1853, he stated: The Island of Alcatraces is a mass of rock with a very thin crust of soil and of bird manure on the surface. Brevet Major L. B. Tower, who was in charge of the erection of fortifications on the Island wrote in his report to the Chief of Engineers on August 15,1853: The island is rougher than I had anticipated, very rough, steep and broken on the Eastern portion of the North West Battery and where the three gun battery is designed to be placed. On September 29,1853 Major Tower made another report as follows: During the month of October I expect to finish all the temporary buildings required for the rapid progress of the work, including water tanks—to build the wharf—to prepare the road at least as far as the guard house and to make good progress on the ditch of the South East Battery. The reports rendered in 1854 indicated that temporary buildings, roads and two docks were built and excavation for north and south batteries completed. By July 1,1855 the funds were exhausted and the Engineers asked Congress to appropriate $400,000 to be expended in building the north battery and gun batteries in the barracks, and $200,000 to continue the defensive line from the north caponiere to the wharf and to erect barracks for officers and enlisted soldiers.

Study of the reports indicates that considering all the difficulties work progressed so rapidly that in 1858 Alcatraz could lay claim to being the first United States fortification and to having the first light house on the West Coast. There were three batteries of heavy guns, a shot proof guard house, bomb-proof magazines, a furnace for heating shot and cannon-balls, a drawbridge and gate, and on top of the Island 135 feet above the water, a citadel designed so that every visible point could be brought under effective fire observation.

In June 1866 the Engineers were able to show additional fortifications built so as to furnish quarters for the garrison, provide storage for military supplies, three magazines for powder and to increase the fire by thirty guns. That structure with its eight to twelve-foot-thick walls still stands and serves as foundation for a three story building superimposed on it in 1905. During World War II we piled bagged sand in the deep recessed windows, fitted air pipes through the interstices, equipped the place with mattresses, benches and tables, put in first aid cabinets, fresh water and toilet facilities, and prepared ourselves to use it as an air raid shelter in the event the Japanese fondness for islands prompted them to wing over and bomb us.

What had been the officers quarters in the underground portion of the civil war citadel was used as foundation for the present prison building erected by the Army as a Disciplinary Barracks in 1909. The use of the solid citadel masonry and the water cisterns as a foundation, plus imagination and the persistence of legendary error, has kept alive the myth of dark, damp, Spanish dungeons chiseled out of solid rock.

Most of the original construction was brick, but granite brought across the Pacific as ballast for sailing ships was used for the entrance to the citadel and still stands as the entrance to the Warden’s office. Hinges, pulleys, eyebolts and fittings for the draw bridge are still in place and there is a corner stone in one of the old buildings with the inscription Alcatraces 1857.

From all accounts the military experts of that time regarded the Island as a strategic spot from which to pour a devastating fire of shot and shell at any enemy vessel daring to brave a crossfire from Fort Point on the San Francisco side, Lime Point on the Marin Shore and the islands down the middle. Primarily a fortification for defense the Island maintained its military character from the 1850’s to the turn of the century.

But even when it was called Fort Alcatraz it took on the coloring of a prison by confining some military offenders under the necessity of expediency.

During the Civil War the lure of privateering enmeshed several southern-born gentlemen and their friends then living in California. Ridgeley Greathouse, Asbury Harpending, Alfred Rubery, Lorenzo L. Libby and William C. Law fitted the schooner J. M. Chapman with two brass-rifled 12 pounders with shells, fuses, powder, muskets, pistols, lead for balls, percussion caps, knives and other ordnance equipment. They conspired to harry the commerce of the Union and to get some gold for themselves. They had the ship docked at San Francisco the morning of Sunday, March 15, 1863. During the night she had settled to the bottom at low tide. Robinson’s history, The Confederate Privateers* gives this graphic description of the Chapman aground at the wharf and then sailing: Presently the tide ran strong and the rocking and thumping of the schooner told them she was lifting. Then she swung free. The mooring lines were cast off, the jib hoisted, the mainsail loosed, and the ship swung into the stream. But she didn’t get far. The official records of Union and Confederate navies relate how Lieutenant Commander Paul Shirley had the Chapman under surveillance and when she was getting underway he dispatched two armed boats under Lieutenant Yates to seize her. The schooner was taken in tow and the seventeen persons found in her hold were confined in Fort Alcatraz.

The history of California contains a lively chapter about the political campaign of 1864 in which the Democrats charged that the Republicans conducted the Civil War to revolutionize the Government. General McDowell, in command of U. S. forces for keeping peace, thought the harangues smacked of treason and on his order a number of speakers were sequestered in Fort Alcatraz for a month when they were released on bond to bear true allegiance to the United States Government.

In 1868 the War Department designated Alcatraz as a place of confinement for military prisoners having long sentences. Post Commanders began transferring those that could not be held in reservation guard houses. The first received under the order were twenty from Fort Point and over one hundred arrived during the first year. In the early seventies the Government commenced the practice of sending troublesome Indians from the Territory of Arizona and from Alaska.

The Rock—in background, yachts race between the Island and San Francisco

The Spanish-American War and its aftermath produced more offenders. In 1900 a great many prisoners were sent from the Philippine Islands to Alcatraz. In February of that year one transport brought one hundred and twenty-six and in April two hundred and seventy arrived and the prison part of the fort became crowded. Presidential pardons soon reduced the number to normal capacity.

It is interesting to note that in 1900 Alcatraz was also regarded and used as a health resort. Many soldiers returned from the Philippine Islands suffering from dysentery and diseases of the tropics. At first they were sent to the General Hospital at the Presidio. While convalescing they were organized into companies and Convalescent Company Number Two was sent to Alcatraz.

The earthquakes and fire that destroyed San Francisco April 18, 1906 broke the cable between San Francisco and Alcatraz but there are no records indicating any specific damage on the island. That it was considered a safe haven is evidenced by the fact that on April 19th, the officials of San Francisco moved one hundred and seventy-six prisoners from the City jail to Alcatraz for safe-keeping.

During and following the first World War Army officers in charge of the island had to cope with the regular run of military offenders augmented by enemy aliens, espionage agents, and conscientious objectors.

Franz Bopp, German Consul General in San Francisco was indicted for war time offenses and during the conduct of two long trials, the first from December 4, 1916 to January 10, 1917 and the second from November 20, 1917 to April 23, 1918, he was kept under military guard at Alcatraz.

Examination of the documents in the archives show that actually, even though only incidentally, Alcatraz has been used to hold prisoners of one kind or another since the days of the Civil War. Even before that our military offenders were confined on the Island from the time of its establishment as a military reservation in 1859.

The transition from a fortress, with housing for special types of offenders, to a Military Prison, to a Disciplinary Barracks to a Federal Penitentiary took place gradually.

The suitability of islands as places of exile or incarceration for civil and political prisoners has long been recognized though not always approved. The very thought of the word island has a fascination and carries with it a connotation of isolation, separation, security and seclusion. England endeavored to solve her prison problem by putting 10,000 miles of ocean between the homeland and the expatriated criminal. The previously invincible Napoleon was deflated by depositing him on the tiny island of St. Helena. Later the French disposed of criminals by sending them to Devils Island in French Guiana a place of much notoriety since the days of Dreyfus. Mexico transfers her dangerous incorrigible prisoners to Les Tres Marias, a colony of three small islands named Maria Madre, Maria Magdalena and Maria Cleofas, located about seventy-five miles off the mainland in the Pacific Ocean. The Lipara, off the Coast of Italy and the Solovetskiye in the White Sea have been publicized as abiding places of exiled political prisoners. Dry Tortugas, with its brick fort built upon a coral reef sixty miles from the tip of Florida, makes a dramatic page in our own history.

In 1933 Attorney General Cummings was confronted with the growing seriousness of the problem of suppressing and controlling dangerous types of organized criminals falling within the Federal jurisdiction. When he announced that he had determined to sort and screen the gangsters and send the toughest of them to Alcatraz press and public cocked their ears for all the whys and wherefores.

*The Confederate Privateers by William M. Robinson, published by Yale University Press.

CHAPTER II

The Gangster Era

Law enforcement was at a low ebb in the United States in the prohibition era. It was at its very worst in the early nineteen thirties. Public apathy had permitted mob rule to defy authority, to override law and order, to challenge civilization. Organized gangsters commanded the headlines. They had the country by the throat. Good citizens were terrorized and peace officers were panicked. Trigger men took rivals for a ride, riddled them with bullets and dumped them out to die in roadside ravines. Crooked lawyers were in the pay of mobs retained not only to defend them after arrest, but to advise them in advance how to arrange alibis and avoid arrest.

One night 75 Colt Army automatic pistols, the gangsters favorite weapon, disappeared from a National Guard Armory. The Barrows Brothers, Southwestern outlaws, robbed a government arsenal in Oklahoma. Police departments lost pistols, high-powered rifles and sawed-off shotguns. One Michael Shine operated a store in San Francisco and in his stock were weapons and ammunition stolen by soldiers and sold to Shine who supplied gangsters. Thus were citizens being murdered by weapons made for their protection.

Al Capone organized rackets, levied tribute, corrupted officials, ruled gangsters, rubbed out rivals, dominated the beer business, fixed up bootleggers and zoned their territory, left a trail of blood and boodle from Chicago to Miami, fixed and fought his way out of bouts with the law and laughed off many arrests in a long criminal career until the Federal Government brought him to trial for Income Tax Violations.

The Touhy Gang went in for mail truck, mail train and post office robberies, deploying their forces on big haul jobs as far apart as St. Paul, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; and Charlotte, North Carolina; and a major kidnapping, the Factor Case, in Chicago.

Machine Gun Kelly, Harvey Bailey and Albert Bates turned from bootlegging, burglary and bank robbery to combine with in-laws and associates in kidnapping.

The Karpis-Barker gang with many members, some of them A.W.O.L. from prisons to which they had previously been sentenced, and all of them with criminal know how, specialized in bank robbery and kidnapping for ransom.

Roy Gardner, devil-daring western bandit who had a long record of spectacular crimes, mysterious escapes and bizarre behavior, succeeded in getting firearms into Atlanta Penitentiary and, with four convict conspirators, made an unsuccessful attempt to shoot a guard and go over the wall.

On December 11, 1931 seven long term convicts, all armed with guns that had been sent into the prison concealed in a barrel of shoe paste that was part of a shipment of supplies, kidnapped the Warden and made a sensational escape from the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

On Decoration Day, 1933, as American Legion teams were playing a game of baseball for the inmates of the Lansing, Kansas Prison, eleven convicts with smuggled firearms went over the wall. They were led by Harvey Bailey and Wilbur Underhill and they took the Warden and a guard with them. In an automobile they sped toward the Oklahoma line where the Warden and guard were set out to walk back.

John Dillinger, who had been released on parole in May, 1933, engineered the escape of ten desperate long term convicts who shot their way out of the Michigan City, Indiana State Prison, September 26, 1933. All were later returned to prison or killed.

Dillinger, after a series of bank robberies was caught in Dayton, Ohio and lodged in the jail in Lima, Ohio. Three of the men whose escape he engineered from Michigan City went to the jail, posed as officers, told the Sheriff they had come to return Dillinger to the State Prison. When the Sheriff asked to see their credentials, they shot him in cold blood and took Dillinger from the jail. Captured again and placed in jail in Crown Point, Indiana Dillinger again escaped March 3, 1934. The F.B.I. located him in Chicago; laid for him as he was leaving a motion picture theater; called him to surrender. He pulled his .38 automatic but was shot before he could fire it and died in an ambulance on the way to hospital on the night of July 22, 1934.

June 17, 1933 the nation was alarmed by page-wide newspaper headlines that screamed the news of the Kansas City Massacre when a band of bold gangsters attempted to take Frank Nash, an escaped convict, away from officers who were taking him back to prison. Machine-gunning the car containing the party they killed four officers—Frank Hermansen and William Groom, both Kansas City detectives, Otto Reed, Chief of Police at McAlester, Oklahoma, Raymond J. Caffrey, a special agent of the F.B.I.; wounded two others—R. E. Vetterli and F. J. Lackey, special agents of the F.B.I. and also killed Nash whom they were trying to rescue.

Bank bandits, hijackers, hold-up men, machine-gunners and murderers joined forces. They organized. They had handled big money and they wanted more money. They heard and they read about large family fortunes and they turned to kidnapping. Rich persons were checked; their homes were surveyed; their movements were traced; their habits were noted; their comings and goings were recorded; their friends were listed and soon members of prominent families were being seized and held for ransom. When the Lindberg baby was kidnapped March 1, 1932, anguished mothers listened to the radio broadcasts and read the newspapers anxiously, with hope that the baby had been found. Their hearts were heavy; their nerves were on edge; they were frightened universally and when the baby was found dead they were terrorized. They suffered in agonizing dread for the safety and lives of their children.

It was a desperate situation. Police Chiefs and Sheriffs were baffled and they were handicapped by limited jurisdiction. Prison boards, wardens and guards employed new mechanical aids and set up strong barriers to prevent mass escapes.

Congress passed Federal laws to cope with the mobs which defied the States by committing crimes in one locality and fleeing to a prepared hide-out in another State. The F.B.I., strengthened by new laws, enlarged powers, more agents, improved facilities and unhampered by State lines, began a relentless, continuous campaign against the gangsters, their trigger men, their gun molls and their satellites of high and low degree. They captured them, convicted them and landed them in prison.

CHAPTER III

The Department of Justice Takes Control

Homer S. Cummings, Attorney General of the United States at that time, surveyed the situation. He backed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its incessant pursuit and apprehension of the gangs they labeled as public enemies. He supported the United States Attorneys in fair, but vigorous prosecutions. He encouraged the Federal Bureau of Prisons to classify and segregate the varied types of offenders. Mr. Cummings was idealistic in his desire to help the impressionable and possibly reformable young offenders. Mr. Cummings also was realistic and he realized that trained officers, firm discipline, defensive equipment, positive purpose and a secure institution would be required for the control and custody of the non-reformable, the interstate racketeers, kidnappers, murderers, mail train robbers, machine gun bandits and organized gangsters that were being rounded up by the F.B.I., following the passage of new Federal laws. The Attorney General was concerned about the big shots and the other hard to manage prisoners—the agitators, disturbers, plotters and hell raisers—who were making it difficult for the Wardens to maintain discipline and help the better behaved prisoners.

Mr. Cummings consulted with Sanford Bates at that time Director of the Federal Prisons and with James V. Bennett, then Assistant Director, about the classification and segregation of offenders and the kinds of institutions necessary for housing them. He began to figure on the idea of having one institution specially designed for the safe custody of the most difficult to manage federal prisoners. Because the matter was of such grave concern to the country Attorney General Cummings discussed it with President Roosevelt. Then he began a search for a site for a maximum security prison. While he was engaged in the study of suggested sites he heard that the War Department had decided to abandon Alcatraz Island, having reached the conclusion that it was no longer necessary as a military fortification. The Government had several million dollars invested in the property and improvements. It fitted in with the Attorney General’s idea of a maximum security prison. It would enable the Department of Justice to carry out the declared policy of Congress to develop an integrated Federal penal and correctional system with proper classification and segregation of the various types of offenders. It was natural, therefore, that when the War Department was ready to leave the island, Attorney General Cummings should see its possibilities of providing safe custody for the fortunately small number of worst type prisoners.

After Secretary of War Dern agreed that the Army would turn the island over to the Department of Justice, Attorney General Cummings authorized Sanford Bates to plan a safe, secure, maximum custody prison. He then asked me to be the Warden and I accepted the appointment in October, 1933. I surveyed the island, inspected the existing buildings, sized up the general situation, figured on what would be needed to make it secure, sent my suggestions to Washington and prepared to take up my duties as Warden of Alcatraz.

I assumed office January 2, 1934. Hour after hour, day after day, I walked back and forth, up and down and around the island, from the dock to the administration building, from the office to the power house, power house to shops, shops to barracks, into the basements, up on the roofs, across the yards, through the tunnels: I sent more suggestions to Washington.

The prison building that we took over was built as I stated before by the War Department in 1909. It was a disciplinary barracks for Army violators—minor offenders in comparison with the men we would have to house and guard. We tore out the soft steel cell fronts and put in tool proof steel—money was scarce, appropriations were hard to get at that time, so we could afford tool proof steel for only half the cells. Across the east and west ends of the cell building we constructed galleries for armed guards. Towers were erected high above the dock, on the hill controlling the double gate entrance to the work area, over the roadway nearest to the yard wall, on top of the shop building so as to enable the guard to see the loading and unloading of trucks, back of the power house for sight of the shore line and passing boats, on the roof of the administration building for view of the yard, wall and main roads.

We enclosed the work area with a cyclone wire fence topped with barbed wire. Barbed wire barriers were placed in irregular manner across the rocky shore line near the dock. The entrances to utility tunnels and sewer lines were blocked. Gates to the work area were equipped with electric locks controlled by the tower guards.

The main entrance to the prison was designed so that two officers would have to identify and cooperate in order to pass any person into or out of the prison. Officers or other persons going into the prison step through one door, approach a gate and stop there until identified by the Officer in the Armory who views them through a vision panel. When satisfied the armorer operates the electric device that slides the shield plate from over the lock, the gate keeper uses his key to open the door, admits the visitor inside the first door and the shield slides back over the lock. The gate keeper then takes his visitor to the first of two inner doors, one of solid plate steel with a vision panel eye high, the other of steel bars. The gate keeper takes a look through his vision panel, scans the long corridors and the cross corridor of the cell house and if all is clear he may open the solid door, take another look and open the grated door.

When a person inside the cell house desires to pass out he must approach the inner gate; be identified by the gate keeper who may open the vision-paneled solid door, take another look, then open the grated door for the person to step out. The gate keeper then closes the two inner doors. The person wanting to get out waits behind the door with the slide over the lock. The gate keeper presses a buzzer to attract attention of the armorer. The armorer looks through his vision panel, glances in the mirrors, angled so as to reflect the entire space between the gates, and when satisfied operates the device that slides the shield from over the lock. Then the gate keeper uses his key and opens the door. In the event of trouble—prisoners hiding behind the gate-keeper or trying to get the inner gate open—the armorer leaves the shield over the lock and from his station pulls a lever that closes an additional emergency steel door.

We installed gun detectors at the dock so that every person landing on the island passed through them—at the entrance of the administration building where prisoner’s visitors went through to the visiting room—at the rear door of the cell house and at the stairway from the work shops to the yard so that prisoners passed through two sets of detectors going to and from work shops. The detectors, designed to prevent smuggling of knives, pistols and steel tools, caused a lot of comment. Prisoners called them mechanical stool pigeons.

The government, having sole ownership and control of the island, exercised its right under the law to zone the waters of the bay for a distance of two hundred yards from shore; marked the area with buoys and warned all concerned that only government boats would be allowed inside the buoy-marked area.

I was busy improvising and devising ways of strengthening old structures for new uses. While Colonel Webb, Commandant of the Post, was doing the work necessary to get the Army out, I was doing the work necessary to get the island prepared for the prisoners. There was much detail in both jobs. The War Department appointed a Board of Survey and Sanford Bates sent his Assistant Director, William T. Hammack, from Washington to assist me in checking the property we agreed to take over from the Army.

When we got close to completion of the contracts we had made for improvements and much of our steel work had been