When an Archive Closes, a Community Loses Its Memory

I'm Stacey Carter, an artist and shipyard historian who has worked out of a studio at Hunters Point Shipyard since 1998. Through my years there, the site has become the foundation of my entire body of work.

When most people hear that the National Archives in San Bruno is scheduled to close, they probably picture boxes of old paperwork moving from one building to another. After nearly thirty years researching the history of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, I know it's far more than that.

For me, and for thousands of Bay Area families with ties to Hunters Point, this archive is where history comes alive. It's where forgotten stories resurface, where families reconnect with their past, and where communities finally find proof of experiences too often left out of the official record. Closing San Bruno isn't just closing a building. It's closing local access to one of the Bay Area's most vital historical resources.

For three decades I've walked into that research room not knowing what the next folder would hold: a photograph unseen in seventy years, a forgotten engineering drawing, a shipyard newspaper with a worker's name in it, a report that rewrites our understanding of an event. That kind of discovery can't be predicted, and it can't be replicated by a keyword search from a database thousands of miles away. It takes time, patience, and the archivists themselves, who have spent years helping me and countless others find collections we never knew existed.

Nearly everything I've made — museum exhibitions, guided tours, educational programs, my historical research for the award-winning multi-media news story EXPOSED, and the CRANE: A Shaping Legacy Temporary Monument public art project — was built on records found in San Bruno.

As the historical and archival image researcher for EXPOSED, I worked alongside a team of journalists whose reporting on the shipyard's radiological history, contamination and environmental cleanup relied on original Navy correspondence, engineering reports, and photographs that exist nowhere else. Without direct access to the records held in San Bruno, that reporting couldn't have happened.

Nowhere does this matter more than for Bayview–Hunters Point's Black community. During the Great Migration, the shipyard became one of the West Coast's largest employers of African Americans. I've watched people recognize a parent in a seventy-year-old photograph, watched veterans find records of ships they served aboard, watched children discover grandparents in a shipyard newspaper. For families who have already faced displacement and erasure, these records aren't just paper. They are identity, pride, and belonging — and they exist nowhere else.

That history doesn't feel fully in the past. Even now, as we work to bring new public art and public memory back to this same shipyard, this community keeps running into the same guarded, arm's-length treatment that met earlier generations here. It raises a hard question: are we actually moving forward, or quietly walking backward through the very history we're trying to preserve?

This is bigger than one building or one historian. It's about whether public history stays publicly accessible — to descendants, teachers, journalists, artists, and anyone trying to understand where they came from. The farther these records travel from the communities they document, the harder they become to reach.

• If San Bruno must close, the public deserves real answers:

• Will these collections stay together, and remain in Northern California?

• Will access be interrupted for months — or years?

• Will collections be digitized before they're moved?

• Has every alternative to removal truly been explored?

History belongs to the people who lived it, and it belongs to those who still need to learn from it. Join us in demanding that the National Archives keep these records within reach — so our future can learn from and be better informed by our past.

Stacey Carter, Artist and Shipyard Historian

My name is Jeanie Chooey Low. I am a genealogist, author, and educator with a degree in Library Technology. I worked for 10 years for the library at the University of California, San Francisco in circulation and cataloging. I also have a BA in Chinese Studies, and I am currently a fiber artist based in San Francisco, CA. 

Since 1992, I conducted research in records at the National Archives at San Francisco (NARA-SF), including immigration case files, Chinese business partnership case files, and Chinese mortuary records created by the Immigration and Naturalization Service; San Francisco gold deposit ledgers from the U.S. Mint; census records; WWI and WWII draft registration cards; and Alien Case Files (A-Files) for individuals with birth years more than 100 years ago. 

I aim to teach others to do genealogical research at NARA-SF. Many are the descendants of first generation immigrants who were subjected to discrimination during the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943) and the Joseph McCarthy era. It is my goal to help the descendants understand why those family members would not talk about their immigration experiences. I have accessed and reviewed original documents in case files for individuals, with the help of the “Index to Certificates of Identity Books, 1909-1938.” This index is contained in two binders compiled by volunteers and located at NARA-SF. 

The staff at NARA-SF have the expertise as historians to help researchers locate family records.  For instance, the “Index to Certificates of Identity Books, 1909-1938” is arranged alphabetically, listing each Chinese immigrant who was issued a Certificate of Identity upon arrival in the United States. The physical binders make it easy to locate their immigration case file, listing their Certificate of Identity number, ship and date of arrival.

The “Registers of Chinese Certificates of Identity Issued by the San Francisco” are available on the National Archives online catalog, but finding specific individuals proves almost impossible because you need to know what year the person arrived. Those records are arranged numerically and chronologically. Finally the microfilm images online are difficult to read. In fact, in the introduction to these records on the microfilm, it specifically notes: “Due to faded ink - or light colored ink - many pages contain information that is difficult to read.”

It is difficult to find exact records using NARA’s online catalog. The National Archives website even states that not all individuals with federal records are listed in its catalog: “A common challenge reported by catalog users is searching for names of ordinary people. While catalog descriptions may mention public figures or people who figure prominently in the records, they cannot list every person's name…”

Many records are not listed in the National Archives online catalog. For example, one immigration case file contains a fragile 1909 Chinese wedding scroll that is 4 feet wide and is handwritten on red & gold paper. It is a rare document that lists three generations of the bride’s family. The name of the immigrant and this rare wedding scroll are not in the online catalog.

In my opinion, once records that are not listed in the National Archives online catalog found at NARA-SF are packed and shipped to other locations, there is little hope of ever finding those case files again. Shipping records may also damage records such as the wedding scroll mentioned above. This move will result in the loss of United States history that goes against the National Archives’ mission to preserve our nation’s history through its federal records.

I oppose the National Archives’ plan to close the National Archives at San Francisco, ship all its records to undetermined locations and to sell the building. There were no public announcements nor were public hearings held.

I am a historian. I researched at the National Archives at San Francisco in 2016-18 when I was writing my dissertation at Stanford. I was so thrilled to find partnership agreements among Chinese enterprises in the 1870s. There was no SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) a century ago. These immigration records provide critical documentation of how business was conducted and how kinship influenced business.

The National Archives at San Francisco provides historians with documents that convey a sense of immediacy - an unaltered connection to our past - and preserve our collective history as a nation, a nation of immigrants.

Joseph Ng, PhD

When I wrote my 2026 book Ancestoring, a majority of the records I used were originally housed at the NARA facilities in the Chicago, San Bruno, and San Francisco regions. These collections are widely appreciated but are also nuanced, and realizing their full value requires the patience, dedication, and record-specific knowledge of highly-skilled researchers. My personal genealogy has relied on these records to understand ancestors from Hawaii to the United States, from Japan and China, and their military service. So much of my own family’s stories and proof of life are in these records. 

My first reaction to the news of shuttering these three NARA facilities, with records moving to temporary locations, their final destinations still unknown, was personal. It felt like splitting up a family and sending the children to friends or strangers to be fostered for an undetermined time, likely with poor outcomes. But with time to reflect, there is a deeper reason why the decision bothers me: when political appointees use budget constraints to rationalize collection management choices, the records of ethnic minorities are always the first to go. The records at these facilities are my ancestors: Hawaiians, Polynesians, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and other ethnic groups that came to the United States on the West Coast. This is the current administration’s way of saying that our ancestor’s lives, documented in these records, are not important enough to be kept available to the public. 

This is the disappearing of my ancestors and ultimately, of large sections of my pedigree because these records are no longer available. My known and unknown ancestors are being evicted from their record-homes under the guise of real estate transactions and cost savings. This is the internment of the physical archives that have our ancestor’s information. Do we (Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, and others who have ancestors in these records, known and unknown) cease to exist in America if these records are gone? 

Why are they choosing now to hide our ancestors in an unavailable storage facility? Will our descendants be able to prove citizenship without these records? These choices typically begin with small groups of people and then get bigger. Your ancestors may be next.

Darcie Hind Posz, CG, FASG

The National Archives facility in San Bruno was the single most reliable source in helping me uncover my family roots—a journey that fundamentally transformed my sense of belonging as an American.

At eleven years old, after being picked up by truant officers, I was placed in a residential institution (The Ming Quong Home) as a Chinese American half-orphan. Though I went on to achieve academic and professional success, I never felt a compelling need to look deeply into my heritage—until early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was verbally assaulted and told to "go back to China" in the most painful and mean spirited terms.

That traumatic incident sparked my search for my history. Guided by my birth certificate and my mother’s death certificate, I uncovered my grandparents' names and past address. Months of researching census data eventually led me to the National Archives in San Bruno. There, the dedicated staff and volunteers located habeas corpus records proving that my grandfather was born in San Francisco in 1880 and was a lawful United States citizen.

Because of the San Bruno Archives, I now know that I am a third-generation Chinese American, my daughter is fourth-generation, and my granddaughter is fifth-generation.

The archivists and volunteers at San Bruno provided invaluable help in researching and accessing these critical files in a timely manner. They did more than locate paper documents—they provided the proof that I am not a "perpetual foreigner," but a proud American citizen whose family has belonged to this country for five generations.

Closing this facility would deprive countless other families of the ability to reclaim their histories and prove their rightful place in our nation's story. Please keep the National Archives in San Bruno open to the public.

Dr. Elena B. Wong Viscovich, Ed.D., Educator and Alumna of the Ming Quong Home

For 19 years I have volunteered at the National Archives (NARA) in San Francisco/San Bruno, indexing handwritten records that date from the 1850s to the early 1900s. This facility and the one in Chicago are now slated to close. There is no specific timeline for closure. We don’t know where the records will go. 

My work has been with admiralty, criminal, common law, equity, and civil law cases in northern California and on the high seas. These records are not digitized. I have also created an extensive index for Committee on Fair Employment Practice records from World War II.

The National Archives at San Francisco has incredibly significant records for local and national history, such as legal documents involving land ownership in early California statehood following the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, customs inspections and collections files, cases relating to patent infringement, documents about Civil War piracy and treason, maps of early Chinatown maps, and more.

These records are now available within close range to researchers and genealogists exploring local and state history. I am disheartened to think of this resource being taken away from the San Francisco Bay Area. The staff who know the records will be gone. The irreplaceable institutional knowledge will be gone.

The closure of this facility and the one in Chicago means a major loss in accessibility to these records which document wide-ranging components of our history. Digitizing these records is not a good alternative. I have encountered records that are tightly folded, soot-stained, or stapled or glued together. The best way for researchers to access many of these records is in-person. 

We must stop the closures of the National Archives at San Francisco and the National Archives at Chicago.

Martha Wallace, Retired Educator and Volunteer for National Archives at San Francisco (2007-Present) 

The National Archives at San Francisco was a godsend to me when I did a deep dive into my parents' immigration history, which resulted in Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America (Temple University Press, 2024), which I have labeled an "illegal immigration success story."

My parents were a "paper son" and a "paper daughter" who legally entered America during the Chinese Exclusion era. I detail their journey in Sons of Chinatown, concluding that despite official anti-Chinese legislation, Pop and Mom's children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have become lawful, taxpaying contributors to an America that provides freedom and uncommon opportunities for destitute people from everywhere else who seek a better life.

I would not have been able to tell that positive story without the extensive immigration files held at the National Archives at San Francisco. The proposed closure of this facility will make such files -- and many more -- essentially inaccessible to descendants of immigrants like me who yearn to learn about our parents' sacrificial struggles to enable us to realize the American Dream.

I urge the National Archives to reconsider its decision and keep the National Archives at San Francisco open so that more stories of America's greatness can be told.