Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America.
Chung, Sue Fawn
ANGEL ISLAND: IMMIGRANT GATEWAY TO AMERICA
By Erika Lee and Judy Yung (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010,
432 pp., $27.95 cloth)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
ANGEL ISLAND OFTEN mistakenly is called the Ellis Island of the
West, but the experiences of the immigrants were very different. When
people think of Angel Island, located near San Francisco, its
stereotypical image as the entry point of Asian immigrants comes to
mind. But as Erika Lee and Judy Yung have so carefully researched and
documented, in addition to Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Angel Island
Immigration Station, which operated between 1910 and 1940, processed
Korean refugee students, South Asian political activists, Russian and
Jewish refugees, Mexican families, and Filipino repatriates.
Using government documents, thousands of immigration records, oral
histories, and archival materials, Lee and Yung demonstrate that race
was a determining factor in how immigration officials treated the new
arrivals. They evaluated the different policies of the immigration
officials, many of whom were determined to keep the Asians out of the
United States. An estimated 70 percent of all passengers arriving in San
Francisco were brought to Angel Island, and nearly 60 percent were
confined in the detention barracks for up to three days. This was in
sharp contrast to Ellis Island, where 80 percent passed through with few
problems.
The two immigrant groups that suffered the most were the Japanese
and Chinese, and their stories and experiences stand in sharp contrast
to those of other immigrant groups. Because of federal, state, and local
attempts to exclude them, the Chinese had the hardest time and were
detained much longer than other groups, some remaining at Angel Island
for years. One hundred seventy-eight thousand Chinese men, women, and
children underwent a process of intense questioning, medical
examinations, crowded conditions, and terrible food. Many of their
complaints and sadness were expressed in poems written on the walls of
the barracks, some of which have been preserved. The Japanese also had
difficulties passing through Angel Island, but their stays were much
shorter and they left neither poetry on the walls nor stories about
their experiences.
When a fire damaged the immigration station in 1940, it was closed
clown and reverted to the United States Army. Community activists and
preservationists worked to save the station and success was achieved
when it was given National Historic Landmark status in 1997. Eventually,
a restoration project began that led to the public opening of the site
in 2009.
The book is very engaging in telling immigrants' stories
against the background of immigration policies and restrictive codes.
With the arrival of new immigrants in the early twenty-first
century--some 37-5 million foreign-born residents in 2007, comprising
12.5 percent of the nation's population--it becomes important to
know something about the history of immigration policies and treatment
of new arrivals. This book provides that information.
REVIEWED BY SUE FAWN CHUNG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS, AND AUTHOR OF IN PURSUIT OF GOLD:
CHINESE AMERICAN MINERS AND MERCHANTS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
