Escape from Alcatraz: Part 2

(The first half of my Alcatraz experience is here.  The post was getting as long as a prison sentence hence the 2 part post.)

After discovering the Battle of Alcatraz, it was time to move away from the darkness and violence from within the cellblock, and we started to head towards the administrative offices and the outside of the building.  I chuckled as a former inmate explained that he had never seen the Warden's office while he was incarcerated there - it was only when he returned as a tourist later that he got to see it.  Because I have an entirely bizarre sense of humor, I wondered if he had to stand in line and buy tickets.

We got outside in to the very strong wind (thank goodness I had bought that hairbrush!), and while prisoners would not have been at this particular part of the island, the view was similar to what we had seen elsewhere.  There was freedom, only about 1.5 miles away.  It looks so close!  Really, in desperation, I probably would have tried to swim for it too, though logically I knew that with the wind as cold as it was, the water was an invitation to frostbite.

It was up here where the Warden's mansion once stood, which was sadly destroyed by a fire during the Native American occupation of the island a few years after the prison closed.  What was left had been taken over by birds (I love the seagull on the fireplace), which was fitting for in island named for its sea birds.  I'm always sad to see something of historic value destroyed, which is why I was glad to see the parks employees and volunteers working so hard to preserve the other aspects of the island, and present them as we might have seen them 60 years ago.  There were even gardeners working to restore parts of the islands that you might not pay attention to - to make them accurate to their former glory.  Amazing.

We enjoyed the freedom outside for some time, earning me a spiffy sunburn, before the tour brought us back in the the walls of the prison.  There was a moment of emotional reaction - "go back IN to the prison?  But...we're out here!"  Many thought the same thing, except didn't have the possibility of hopping on a boat back to Pier 33.  Some got to the point of desperation, of not having any hope for the future, of not wanting to spend one more day in those walls.

Some made their own plans.

There are no confirmed escapes from Alcatraz.  There were 2 instances where people got off Alcatraz and were never found (neither dead nor alive), and while Alcatraz's official stance is that they're all presumed dead, that is quite a biased stance!  They had reason to keep reporting that Alcatraz was inescapable, both for their current and future inmates.  You can't have people thinking they can just leave, right?

However (there I go with the howevers), the famous escape ("attempt") in 1962 is believed by many to have been successful.  Even the Mythbusters found it to be plausible!  As we were led back in to the prison, the story turned to the 1962 escape of Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin.  This is the escape that was immortalized in a Clint Eastwood movie years later, and even now is fascinating to us!  On that night in 1962, the 3 men escaped from their cells through the air vents on the back - these air vents had been dug out and enlarged with spoons over a loooong period of time!  Behind the vents is a utility corridor, and the men made it through there, up to the roof undetected (where they had a raft made of raincoats waiting for them) and off the island they went.  To this day they have not been found, though a paddle and parts of the raft were found on Angel Island.  Who knows!  Maybe they got off the island and changed their identities and lived a crime-free life, perhaps fleeing the country to further avoid detection.  Maybe not.  It can be fun to cheer for the underdog, though.

With this, it was time for us to plan our escape, and as we headed back down the hill (stopping to see little corners that we missed on the way up), we saw that our boat was there and was getting ready to head out.  We ran for it and hopped on, and made a dumb joke about how "it sure is easy to get off this island!"  But really, the experience has stayed with me.  It's not really something you can...escape.

The BirdPeej of Alcatraz: Part 1

If you disobey the rules of society, they send you to prison; if you disobey the rules of the prison, they send you to Alcatraz.

As we sailed toward the island, I excitedly took out my camera and braced myself against the edge of the boat to keep from getting thrown around by the rough waters.  The wind was strong and despite the cloudless day it was not especially warm.  I was excited to explore such a historic landmark, a place with so much history and legend.  I commented that there was once a time when people wouldn't have been so excited to be on a boat bound for Alcatraz.  We thought about that quietly and prepared to disembark on the island.



The dock was the same one that prisoners would have first set foot on when they reached the island, and we were greeted by a lone watchtower that would have overlooked the unloading of inmates some 50 to 80 years ago.  The prison itself was over the hill and out of sight, but there was plenty to see on the way.  We started following one of the "experts" of the island, who explained buildings on the way and told us incredible stories of attempted breakouts.  I found the story of John K. Giles especially clever (despite the fact it didn't succeed).  Over several years, he had managed to pick out of the laundry a complete Sergeant's uniform - Alcatraz was contracted to wash the laundry for some nearby military bases, including Angel island right across the bay.  One day he decided the time was right, and wearing his new uniform, he walked on to the military boat that was dropping off the laundry and set sail.  However, this boat was not headed to San Francisco as was often the case - this one was going BACK to Angel Island.  He was recaptured shortly after walking on to Angel Island, and sadly for him, his defense that he had "never left federal custody" (being on a federal boat, then another federal island) did not get him very far with the judge.

We began our climb up the steep hills to the cellhouse, passing dilapidated offices and guard quarters on the way.  I'm not sure what they were thinking when they originally thought they would level the whole island, because there is a LOT of elevation change heading up to the prison!  Obviously they didn't succeed in leveling the island, and the cliffs around the island ironically provided both a natural defense against escapes, and an easy hiding place for inmates to stash the tools they would need to escape.  Even the "paths" down to the water did not look especially friendly or safe - many of them were blocked off to the crowds of today.

Finally, at the top of the hill were the walls that kept in some of the most dangerous criminals of years past, and we entered in a similar fashion that an inmate would have - first being paraded by the office where they would have had their possessions from "outside" kept for them, and issued their prison essentials.

We were also issued something in this room - the earphones for our audio tour.  Now, I tend to not be the biggest fan of audio tours.  I prefer to read and discover and learn at my own pace, so I took it and figured I could listen to see how terrible it was, and just turn it off and walk around on my own.  However, I turned it on and was not greeted by some guy that studied Alcatraz in school - the tour was narrated by former guards and inmates of The Rock.  People that had witnessed momentous events in the prison's history, that were able to convey emotion about the events because they HAVE real emotions about the things that had been a part of.  There were easily 1000 other people in the cellblock, and we all quietly hung on every word that they had to share with us.

The men that resided here directed us through the cellblocks, describing the day to day life and telling stories about things that weren't quite the norm in the prison.  One former prisoner talked of spending much of his spare time doing crochet, and that he taught other prisoners to do so as well.  The thought made me smile - a bunch of hardened, convicted felons having a crochet night!  As we moved along, another prisoner spoke of New Years Eve, and when the wind was *just* right you could hear the music, the laughter, the voices enjoying the parties carry across the bay from San Francisco.  I can't imagine what that must have felt like - what a stark contrast that must have struck for the prisoners.  And that the "voices" from San Francisco saw no such contrast.  They never knew that their parties affected those at Alcatraz.

After moving through the D-block ("isolation") where Al Capone once spent some time, we stopped in the library to rest our feet and process what we had seen so far.  It was now that we REALLY realized how quiet everything was, and I appreciated the audio tour even more.  Everyone was glued to their headphones and this kept the ambiance as it should have been.  After a 5 minute break we continued, and learned about the Battle of Alcatraz - a breakout attempt that resulted in a deadly standoff between inmates and guards, and that lasted for several days before the guards finally gained control again.  I won't attempt to tell the story here - my voice is no where near as strong as the voices that played on that recording, that lost friends or fought for their own lives or heard the bombing from their cells.  The story they told was so powerful, and I found myself fighting back tears.  I won't tell the story, but it was an incredible and violent time in the history of the prison.  I would recommend taking the time to read about it, but nothing can really compare to hearing it firsthand.

At this point it was time to head outside and to think about escape - check back for Part 2...

Photos from Alcatraz

I'm recovering from a weekend in San Francisco, and am still amazed by a visit to Alcatraz Island, a now-defunct prison that is legendary for housing some of the most dangerous criminals at the time, and for being "inescapable" (though to this day we don't know if that's true).  I'll have a big post coming up when I'll talk about the visit much more in detail (I could go on for DAYS, it was so cool), but for now as I try to get back to normal, I'll leave you with some of my favorite pictures of the day.  They're a little out of context for now but won't be for long.