Welcome to the angel island
Angel Island Immigration Station served as an entry point for immigration on the west coast from 1910 to 1940. The majority of immigrants that passed through Angel Island were primarily from China. In these years, San Francisco was the port of entry for approximately 90 percent of Asian-Pacific arrivals in the United States. Their experience was very different from that of the European immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. The Asian American experience at Angel Island was made very difficult by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and subsequent measures which barred immigrants on the basis of both race and class. Immigrants experienced detention, quarantine, interrogation, and even deportation.
Upon arrival to Angel Island, families were immediately separated by sex and not allowed to see each other during detention which lasted anywhere from a week to a few years. They spent most of their time inside the often overcrowded barracks waiting for the government to decide their cases.
Upon arrival to Angel Island, families were immediately separated by sex and not allowed to see each other during detention which lasted anywhere from a week to a few years. They spent most of their time inside the often overcrowded barracks waiting for the government to decide their cases.
Around the barracks of Angel Island Immigration Center, words expressing the varying emotions and experiences of the many immigrants who passed through the center are still "spoken" here for generations of visitors to see and "hear". These weighty words carved into slabs of granite echo the heartache, turmoil and triumph of the brave immigrants who landed on foreign soil hopeful for new beginnings on "Golden Mountain." While the trees in the summer breeze barely made a whisper, we walked the landscape appreciating the meaning of these words then, and now.