Ghosts of Angel Island

Angel Island Detention Center, 1910

Many early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco and beyond were processed at Angel Island, now a state park in San Francisco Bay; more than 97 percent of the immigrants processed on Angel Island were Chinese. Unlike Ellis Island in the East where prospective European immigrants might be held for up to a week, Angel Island typically detained Chinese immigrants for months--sometimes up to two years--while they were interrogated to validate their papers. Some detainees expressed their feelings in poetry carved into the wooden walls of the detention center; some of these poems may still be seen by visitors today.
In 1940, a fire that destroyed the administration building caused the government to decide to abandon the Immigration Station on Angel Island. The "Chinese Exclusion Acts," which were adopted in the early 1880's were repealed by Federal action in 1943 (by that time, China was an ally of the US in World War II); in conjunction passage of the War Brides Act, Chinese-American veterans began to bring their families to American outside of national quotas, leading to a major population boom during the 1950s.

80 Years of Exclusion

Chinese emigres aboard ship, from Harper's Weekly, 1876

From 1882 to 1965, only diplomats, merchants, and students and their dependents (such as Shaketown's Wo Sam and Wo Li) were allowed to travel to the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act greatly reduced the numbers of Chinese allowed into the country and the city, and in theory limited Chinese immigration to single males only. Exceptions were in fact granted to the families of wealthy merchants (hence the inflow of "wives" and "sisters", brought in for the purpose of prostitution), but the law was still effective enough to reduce the population. All Chinese were confined to rigidly defined areas ("Chinatowns") in major cities across the country. Chinese were deprived of their democratic rights: By congressional and judicial decisions, Chinese immigrants were made ineligible for naturalization. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, particularly the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought in a new period in Chinese American immigration. In 2009, the California Legislature passed a Bill, apologizing to Chinese Americans for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and other unjust discriminatory laws that resulted in the persecution of Chinese living in California.