US History

The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)

Asian Americans

Migration

This collection uses primary sources to explore Asian immigration through the Angel Island Immigration Station between 1910 and 1940.

Teaching Guide: Exploring the Angel Island Immigration Station

A 1901 letter from a Los Angeles banker asking US Secretary of State John Hay to reconsider a portion of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

A letter from a Sing Fat & Company executive asking immigration officials to cancel sponsorship for two employees, 1905.

An excerpt from *Angel Island: The Ellis Island of the West* by Mary Bamford, 1917.

A photograph of immigrants arriving at Angel Island, 1939.

A photograph of young immigrants standing outside Angel Island’s hospital, 1923.

A photograph of an Angel Island dormitory room as it looked when the immigration station was in use, 2003.

A photograph of immigration officials interviewing an Angel Island detainee, 1923.

A photograph of a missionary conducting an English lesson for a group of immigrant women, 1933.

A photograph of a Chinese poem carved into an Angel Island dormitory wall by a detainee.

A photograph of the Lee family, including their “paper son,” in San Francisco, ca. 1920.

A photograph of the Angel Island administration building soon before the station’s closure, 1930s.

A photograph of the Angel Island administration building on fire, August 12, 1940.

A photograph of a note left by a Japanese prisoner of war held at Angel Island during World War II.

A poster advertising a San Francisco art gallery’s exhibition about the Chinese experience at Angel Island, 1976.

A photograph of a former Angel Island detainee returning with his family, 2003.

Resources

1. [Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation](https://www.aiisf.org/).
2. [Immigrant Voices Oral History collection](https://www.aiisf.org/immigrant-voices/), Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. 
3. “[The Lost Poetry of the Angel Island Detention Center](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-lost-poetry-of-the-angel-island-detention-center),” *The New Yorker*, February 22, 2017. 
4. [Angel Island: Immigrant Journeys of Chinese Americans](http://www.angel-island.com/). 

Overview

Angel Island Immigration Station was the entryway to America for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mainly from Asian countries, during its operation from 1910 to 1940. [Chinese immigration](https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/sets/early-chinese-immigration-to-the-us/) to the United States had increased steadily since the mid-nineteenth century, and some Americans worried that Chinese employment as low-wage workers threatened American jobs. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to reduce the number of Chinese immigrants entering the country and make immigration more difficult. Federal officials initially processed immigrants in San Francisco upon arrival but relocated the screening center to Angel Island, a strategically-ideal location north of the city in the San Francisco Bay. There, detainees had limited contact with other immigrants who might coach them on passing their interrogations, less risk of spreading infectious diseases, and fewer chances of escaping.

Although Angel Island is often called the “Ellis Island of the West,” the process for entering the United States was very different for Asian immigrants on the West Coast compared to the experiences of European immigrants in the East. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act’s rules about who was allowed to enter the country, immigration was a frustrating, expensive, and lengthy process for Asian, and specifically Chinese, immigrants. While a European immigrant might expect to spend a few hours at Ellis Island (or at any station on the West Coast), Asian immigrants spent weeks or months detained on Angel Island. 

The exact number of immigrants who passed through Angel Island is unknown; estimates vary between 300,000 and one million people. While Angel Island was most consistently processing Chinese and Japanese immigrants, immigrants also arrived from India, Korea, the Philippines, Russia, Mexico, and seventy-five other countries. In the 1970s, thirty years after the immigration station closed, Asian American communities and the State of California began working to preserve both the physical station and the stories it represented. Today, the immigration station is open to the public and reminds visitors of the bravery, despair, anger, and hope of the people who dreamed of coming to America.

English

Immigration through Angel Island

immigration-angel-island_06_3239507048ccf85353a2c7f5c2055871.jpg

Courtesy of University of Southern California Libraries.

Berndt, Jerry, “Angel Island Chinese immigrant detention center, dormitory room interior. San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, California, 2003,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/3239507048ccf85353a2c7f5c2055871. 

Immigrants were housed by nationality and gender at Angel Island, with as many as two hundred people in a dormitory at a time. Detainees played dominoes, read books, and wrote poetry while they waited for their cases to be approved. This photograph of the dormitory’s stacked wire cots was taken in 2003, almost sixty years after the Immigration Station closed. After years of activism within the Bay Area Asian American community and nearly a decade of restorations, some of the immigration station buildings opened to the public in 1983. For the first time in decades, the public could glimpse what accommodations were like for people waiting to enter America.

A photograph of an Angel Island dormitory room as it looked when the immigration station was in use, 2003.

Cite this item

Tips for Students

Item 6 of 15 in the Primary Source Set Immigration through Angel Island