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

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

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.

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Citation Information
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.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of University of Southern California Libraries.

Tips for Students

For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

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

Previous ItemNext Item
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.

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