Imagine this - you’ve just left your home country to live in the United States. You’re coming to your first stop and you see a beautiful green island. Looks great right? That’s what you’d think. Until you got on the island, you didn’t realize you would stay there for months, and at some point you would be deported and sent back to your country in shame. Starved, tired, and lonely is how all the immigrants felt who passed through Angel Island, which was an immigration station from the years 1910 through 1940. Though it was torturous, it helped thousands of people rebuild their lives. Angel Island was founded in 1775 by Don Juan Manuel Ayala. He was a Spanish Explorer who sailed into a cove now called Ayala Cove. He and his men went to explore the island. They found 1.18 miles of pure, beautiful island. They named it “Isla de Los Angeles” meaning “Island of the Angels”. They believed the
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Sometimes, it took weeks just to be called to be questioned. It took a long time to be called for questioning. Many of the questions tried to trick the Chinese. They asked very detailed questions like name, age, home town, who relatives in United States were and relations to them, and who they came with. After that, they had to wait for the workers to look over the questions and make sure they weren’t lying. For example, Show Nam Lee and his mother came to America at only 14 years old to live with his father in California. He was detained on Angel Island for over 18 months fighting a legal battle to prove that he was actually his father’s son. Back then, bribing was common and Lee and his father could have avoided the whole mess if his father gave the officers $500. Lee’s father did not want to pay the guards because a small merchant could not afford that. The trial took 18 months when Lee and his mother finally won the battle. Lee’s story is one of many battles that immigrants who passed through Angel Island had to deal
Sometimes, it took weeks just to be called to be questioned. It took a long time to be called for questioning. Many of the questions tried to trick the Chinese. They asked very detailed questions like name, age, home town, who relatives in United States were and relations to them, and who they came with. After that, they had to wait for the workers to look over the questions and make sure they weren’t lying. For example, Show Nam Lee and his mother came to America at only 14 years old to live with his father in California. He was detained on Angel Island for over 18 months fighting a legal battle to prove that he was actually his father’s son. Back then, bribing was common and Lee and his father could have avoided the whole mess if his father gave the officers $500. Lee’s father did not want to pay the guards because a small merchant could not afford that. The trial took 18 months when Lee and his mother finally won the battle. Lee’s story is one of many battles that immigrants who passed through Angel Island had to deal