Angel Island

Ellis Island processed arrivals in hours. Angel Island detained them for weeks, months, occasionally years, because its purpose was the opposite, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made it a place designed to keep people out. Detainees carved poems into the barrack walls, which is how we know what it was like. Chinatown grew as both a refuge and a confinement, and in 1942 the city watched its Japanese residents removed to camps.

Part of San Francisco

88 moments in this segment.

  1. - Chinese miners washing gold sands with a rocker. An engraving of Chinese miners working a rocker, the hand-operated box used to separate gold from river sand, published in the French travel journal Le Tour du Monde. Chinese labourers arriving through San Francisco made up a large share of the goldfield workforce and were frequently pushed onto claims others had abandoned. Drawn by Gustave-Adolphe Chassevent-Bacques.
  2. - Chinese Mercantile Houses, Dupont Street, San Francisco LCCN2002723035. Title: Chinese Mercantile Houses, Dupont Street, San Francisco Abstract/medium: 1 photographic print: half stereograph, albumen.
  3. - Chinese Market, Sacramento Street, San Francisco LCCN2002724195. Title: Chinese Market, Sacramento Street, San Francisco Abstract/medium: 1 photographic print: half stereograph, albumen.
  4. - Interior of a Chinatown temple to Guan Yu. An engraved plate from The Pacific Tourist, a transcontinental railroad guide edited by Henry T. Williams and published in New York. The illustration takes visitors inside one of Chinatown's Chinese temples, a fixture of the guidebook itinerary for travellers arriving by rail. The San Francisco Public Library digitised the copy this plate comes from.
  5. - Chinatwn$disease-ghosts. Image representation of the dominant public opinion that persistent presence of these three diseases Malarium, Small Pox, and Leprosy were all the fault of the Chinese immigrants and their unsanitary living conditions
  6. - The Card Players, Wright visited gold rush California in 1857.. 1882, at the height of anti-Chinese sentiment. 24.25 in high by 29.5 in wide
  7. - Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. After a series of events including war, floods, droughts and crop failures drove tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants to San Francisco, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for a ten-year period. The Daily Dose provides microlearning history documentaries like this one
  8. - Chinese Musicians by Theodore Wores, 1884. Chinese Musicians [in San Francisco's China Town] by Theodore Wores, 1884, oil on canvas, private collection, photographed while on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
  9. - The front of a store building of Asian architecture.. 1891.
  10. - The front of a store building of Asian architecture.. 1891.
  11. - A Chinatown street photographed by Isaiah West Taber. The print carries a handwritten note on its reverse reading simply "China town in San Francisco, 1890". Taber ran one of the city's best-known commercial studios; this copy is in the Rijksmuseum collection.
  12. - Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Commissioner's private office. U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Commissioner's private office: From Photographs from the Hart Hyatt North papers: Angel Island
  13. - Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Approach from wharf to main building. U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Approach from wharf to main building.: From Photographs from the Hart Hyatt North papers: Angel Island
  14. - Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Bath room and lavatory. U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Bath room and lavatory: From Photographs from the Hart Hyatt North papers: Angel Island
  15. - Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Dining room. U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Dining room: From Photographs from the Hart Hyatt North papers: Angel Island
  16. - Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Examination room. U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Examination room -- main building: From Photographs from the Hart Hyatt North papers: Angel Island
  17. - Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Interiors of one of the wards. U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Interiors of one of the wards in the hospital: From Photographs from the Hart Hyatt North papers: Angel Island
  18. - 362 MSS P 24 B3 F2. A horse and cart in front of Colombo Co., a store in a building of slightly Asian architecture, (Chinatown, San Francisco). Back label- C.R. Savage, Art Bazar.
  19. - A horse and cart outside a Chinatown cigar dealer. The storefront of Colombo and Co., cigar manufacturers and dealers, occupies a Chinatown building trimmed with paper lanterns and Asian-styled detail. Charles Roscoe Savage made the photograph and issued it through his Art Bazar studio.
  20. - A building of Oriental architecture.
  21. - Chinese American men doing business on a Chinatown street. A street view of Chinatown showing the district's shopfronts and architectural detail, with Chinese American men conducting business in the roadway. Wilhelm Hester, better known for his photographs of sailing ships in Puget Sound, made the exposure around 1895. It records the business district a decade before the earthquake and fire.
  22. - The southern edge of Chinatown. Arnold Genthe photographed the boundary where Chinatown met the rest of San Francisco, part of the body of work he made in the quarter between 1896 and the 1906 earthquake. The negative is held by the Library of Congress in the Genthe Collection.
  23. - The sign of the pawn shop, Chinatown, San Francisco LOC agc.7a08895. Title: The sign of the pawn shop, Chinatown, San Francisco Abstract/medium: Genthe, Arnold, 1869-1942, photographer. Physical description: 1 negative:
  24. - A goldsmith at work in his Chinatown shop. Arnold Genthe photographed the interior trades of Chinatown as well as its streets, here a goldsmith's premises among the quarter's shops. The negative dates from his long Chinatown project, begun in 1896 and continued for decades. The Library of Congress holds the Genthe Collection from which it comes.
  25. - A grocery shop in Chinatown photographed by Arnold Genthe. A grocery storefront in San Francisco's Chinatown, from Arnold Genthe's long photographic study of the quarter. Genthe worked the Chinatown streets from 1896 onward, and much of the district he recorded was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. The image is held in the Genthe Collection at the Library of Congress.
  26. - The Apricot Spring Orchard drugstore in Chinatown. A Chinese pharmacy photographed by Arnold Genthe, who worked the streets of Chinatown from 1896 onward and left the fullest surviving picture of the quarter before the fire. The Library of Congress dates the negative to somewhere in that decade of work.
  27. - Chinese American men and a child beneath hanging lanterns. Arnold Genthe photographed this group standing in front of a Chinatown building strung with lanterns. Children appear rarely in his Chinatown work, which makes them a recurring point of interest in the series. The gelatin silver print is held by the Library of Congress.
  28. - Chinese American woman and child photographed in Chinatown. Arnold Genthe made this gelatin silver portrait in San Francisco's Chinatown in the years before the 1906 fire destroyed the district. His street work there is the fullest surviving photographic record of the old quarter and its residents.
  29. - A Chinese girl photographed in the streets of Chinatown. One of Arnold Genthe's Chinatown negatives, made in the decade before the 1906 earthquake destroyed the quarter he was documenting. Genthe worked with a concealed camera on the street, and his surviving plates form the fullest visual record of pre-earthquake Chinatown. The negative is held by the Library of Congress.
  30. - Chinese and American women passing on a Chinatown street. Arnold Genthe photographed the two groups of women in the same frame somewhere in San Francisco's Chinatown between 1896 and 1906. Such street encounters were a recurring subject for him, and the pictures document the quarter as an ordinary part of the city rather than a spectacle. Held by the Library of Congress.
  31. - A young Chinese girl photographed in Chinatown. Arnold Genthe made this portrait in San Francisco's Chinatown sometime between 1896 and 1906, during the years he worked the quarter's streets with a concealed camera. His Chinatown pictures are among the fullest surviving views of the neighbourhood as it stood before the earthquake and fire destroyed it. Held by the Library of Congress.
  32. - Men standing and walking along a Chinatown street. An unposed street view from Arnold Genthe's long photographic survey of San Francisco's Chinatown, made at some point between 1896 and 1906. Genthe worked with a concealed camera to catch the neighbourhood's ordinary traffic rather than arranged portraits. Everything he recorded here was destroyed in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake.
  33. - An arrest in Chinatown watched by a street crowd. An Edison company film showing a Chinese man being arrested and carried off through Chinatown as onlookers gather. The charge is not recorded; the Library of Congress notes it may relate either to the smuggling of immigrants barred by the exclusion quotas, or to the tong warfare that broke out after the killing of Fong Ching, known as Little Pete, in January 1897. The party climbs from the area around 830 Washington Street, an address then used to house new arrivals.
  34. - A Chinatown restaurant illustrated for railroad tourists. The plate comes from To California and back, a guidebook published in 1897 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad to sell rail travel west. Its Chinatown chapter walks readers through fortune-telling with joss sticks and the quarter's eating houses, treating the neighbourhood as a tourist attraction.
  35. - Book illustration of a Chinatown alley by George Roux. A plate drawn by George Roux for Jules Verne's novel The Will of an Eccentric, whose contest carries its players across the United States. The archive files the image among streets and alleys of San Francisco's Chinatown, a quarter that European illustrators of the period rendered largely from description.
  36. - The first Chinese telephone operator in Chinatown at the switchboard. A studio-quality print recording the first Chinese telephone operator working in San Francisco's Chinatown. The neighbourhood ran its own exchange, where operators were expected to handle calls in several Chinese dialects as well as English. The photograph comes from the George Grantham Bain news agency collection at the Library of Congress.
  37. - Midnight in Chinatown, a Willard Worden print. A gelatin silver print by Willard Worden, made in the Chinatown quarter three years before the 1906 earthquake destroyed it. Worden's San Francisco photographs were later gathered by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
  38. - Chinatown street life recorded by Frances Benjamin Johnston. A photographic print of Chinatown made by Frances Benjamin Johnston, one of the first American women to build a national career as a professional photographer. She worked in San Francisco three years before the earthquake and fire levelled the district. The print is in the Library of Congress collections.
  39. - Willard Worden's night view of a Chinatown alley. Willard Worden's gelatin silver print Midnight in Chinatown shows a San Francisco Chinatown street after dark, three years before the quarter burned in the 1906 fire. Worden was among the photographers who built a commercial market for atmospheric Chinatown night scenes. The print is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
  40. - Quong Lee and Sing Kee company buildings in Chinatown. Two merchant houses on a Chinatown block, photographed around the year of the earthquake. Business signage names both firms across the facades. The print is held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
  41. - Alley scene in Chinatown, San Francisco.. 1993.033 -- ALB:96 Digital ID: cubcic brk7484
  42. - Busy alley scene in Chinatown, San Francisco.. 1993.033 -- ALB:209 Digital ID: cubcic brk7595
  43. - Alley beside the Blanchard Building in Chinatown. A narrow Chinatown alley photographed the year after the earthquake, when the quarter was being rebuilt on its original ground. The Library of Congress catalogue records the building name only tentatively. Filed among its Chinatown street and alley views.
  44. - "Birthday party" c1913 Dec.. 4. 1 photographic print. Notes: Photo copyrighted by Mr. Mrs. Wong Sun Yue Clemens, San Francisco, Calif. Title from item. Photograph shows Chinese children posed with a birthday cake, probably in San Francisco, California. Subjects: B
  45. - Photograph of San Francisco' s Chinatown published in Old Chinatown.
  46. - A Chinatown street scene issued as a Phostint postcard. A view of Chinatown published by the Detroit Publishing Company under its Phostint colour process and sold as a postcard, with the copyright and trademark notices printed on the image and its reverse. Figures with parasols appear in the street. The card is part of the New York Public Library's Pacific Pursuits postcard collection and shows the quarter as it was rebuilt after 1906.
  47. - Chinatown bazaar scene from the Chamber of Commerce visitors' handbook. An illustration from the Chamber of Commerce handbook for San Francisco, a guide for visitors written by Frank Morton Todd and published by the city's Publicity Committee. The accompanying text steers tourists through Chinatown's bazaars and their goods in silver, lacquer, ivory and embroidered silk. The book was issued as the city prepared for the 1915 exposition.
  48. - Kisen Co. on Grant Ave., Chinatown, San Francisco. Kisen Co. on 157, 159 Grant Ave., Chinatown, San Francisco, California; image of Japanese store for the 1915 PPIE
  49. - Corpsmen demonstrate the French lift at the Angel Island station. First-aid instruction at the Naval Training Station on Angel Island, with hospital corpsmen showing the French lift for raising a casualty. Mrs. C. R. Miller made the photograph, one of a wartime series now in the National Archives. The station trained sailors in San Francisco Bay during the First World War.
  50. - Sailors demonstrate the French lift at the Angel Island naval station. A first-aid class at the Naval Training Station on Angel Island practises the French lift, a two-man carry for moving an injured man off the ground. The photograph was made on 1 September 1917 by Mrs. C.R. Miller and entered the Navy's unofficial collection of First World War photographs. The bay island served as a training and quarantine post through the war.
  51. - Navy hospital corpsmen drill with closed litters on Angel Island. A Hospital Corps company at the Naval Training Station on Angel Island practises stretcher work, the litters closed and draped as prescribed. The photograph was taken by Mrs. C. R. Miller and held in the National Archives series of unofficial World War One photographs. Angel Island served as a military station in San Francisco Bay through the war years.
  52. - Navy hospital corpsmen drilling with stretchers on Angel Island. A Hospital Corps company at the Naval Training Station on Angel Island practises unloading litters, two bearers to a stretcher. The station trained medical personnel for the fleet during the First World War, and the drill rehearsed moving wounded men off ships and ambulances. The photograph was made by Mrs C. R. Miller and is held by the National Archives.
  53. - Immigration Bureau letter on interned German alien Ernst Hamann. A letter from the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Angel Island station concerning Ernst Hamann, a German national who reached the United States days after President Wilson's enemy alien proclamation of 6 April 1917. Hamann was interned on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The document survives in a National Archives case file from the San Francisco immigration district.
  54. - Hospital letter about an interned German at Angel Island. Correspondence from a German hospital to the Commissioner of Immigration at the Angel Island station concerning Ernst Hamann. Hamann reached the United States days after President Wilson's enemy alien proclamation of 6 April 1917 and was interned in San Francisco Bay. The file sits in the National Archives series of San Francisco district investigations.
  55. - Army memorandum on a German internee held at Angel Island. A memorandum from Lieutenant H. Horn to the commanding officer of the Angel Island Station, drawn from the case file of Ernst Hamann, a German national who reached the United States days after President Wilson's enemy-alien proclamation of 6 April 1917. Hamann was interned on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The paperwork comes from the federal investigation files for the San Francisco district, now at the National Archives.
  56. - Angel Island station reports back on enemy alien Ernst Hamann. The Commissioner of Immigration at the Angel Island station writes to the Commissioner General of Immigration about Ernst Hamann, the German national interned on the island after arriving just after Wilson's April 1917 enemy alien proclamation. The exchange shows how the wartime alien machinery ran through the bay's immigration post. The letter is part of a National Archives San Francisco district case file.
  57. - Immigration Service letter on the Angel Island detainee. A letter from the Commissioner General of Immigration to the commissioner at the Angel Island station about the case of Ernst Hamann. His file sits in the National Archives series of San Francisco district investigations that never resulted in warrant proceedings, one of many wartime inquiries into German nationals that closed without charge.
  58. - Letter to the Seattle immigration office about Ernst Hamann. A second document from the enemy alien case of Ernst Hamann, this one addressed to the Commissioner of Immigration in Seattle. Hamann arrived in the United States days after Wilson's proclamation of 6 April 1917 and was held on Angel Island. The papers are preserved by the National Archives.
  59. - Letter from the German Hospital about interned enemy alien Ernst Hamann. A detail from a 1917 letter sent by San Francisco's German Hospital to the Commissioner of Immigration at the Angel Island station, concerning Ernst Hamann. Hamann was a German national who reached the United States days after President Wilson's enemy alien proclamation of April 1917 and was interned on Angel Island. The document is held by the National Archives among case files from the San Francisco district.
  60. - German Hospital letter about an interned enemy alien. Correspondence from the German General Benevolent Society's hospital to the Commissioner of Immigration at the Angel Island station, concerning Ernst Hamann. Hamann was a German national who reached the United States days after President Wilson's proclamation on enemy aliens in April 1917 and was interned on the island in San Francisco Bay.
  61. - Immigration Service date stamp on an enemy alien file. A detail of a letter to the Commissioner of Immigration at Angel Island, stamped as received by the San Francisco office of the U.S. Immigration Service. The file concerned Ernst Hamann, a German who reached the United States days after President Wilson's April 1917 enemy alien proclamation and was interned on Angel Island.
  62. - Inside a Chinese lodging house in San Francisco. A Library of Congress print showing the interior of a Chinatown lodging house, catalogued with the questioning note that it may be an opium den. That uncertainty in the archive record reflects how outsiders photographed and labelled the district's interiors.
  63. - Inside a Chinese lodging house in Chinatown. The Library of Congress catalogues this interior as a lodging house, with a questioning note that it may be an opium den. The caption reflects how outsiders labelled Chinatown's crowded rooming houses as much as it describes what is in the frame.
  64. - Scene from "East is West" a 1922 film.. 1923 and is in the public domain
  65. - Portrait of Donaldina Cameron as a young woman. A bust-length studio portrait of Donaldina Cameron, the Presbyterian mission worker known for her work among women and girls in San Francisco's Chinatown. The photographer is not recorded. She is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles.
  66. - Katharine Maurer, the deaconess of Angel Island. Maurer served as a Methodist deaconess at the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco Bay, where arrivals from Asia were held for inspection. The portrait ran in the Woman's Home Missionary Society journal Woman's Home Missions.
  67. - Postcard advertising Chinatown nightclub performer Mae Tai Sing. A colour linen-texture postcard published by the Tichnor Brothers, billing Mae Tai Sing as an elected queen appearing in person at a California statehood centennial celebration. It belongs to a run of Tichnor cards promoting musicians and performers working in San Francisco's Chinatown. The card survives in the Boston Public Library's Tichnor Brothers collection.
  68. - Health officers examining passengers aboard the liner Shimyo Maru. Public Health Service officers inspect passengers on the deck of the Shinyo Maru off Angel Island, where arrivals to San Francisco Bay were screened before landing. Shipboard medical examination was the first stage of the immigration process, ahead of detention at the island station. The photograph belongs to the Public Health Service historical file at the National Archives.
  69. - Immigration Service telegram sent during the waterfront strike. A wire from Commissioner MacCormack to the district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at Angel Island, dated 22 May 1934, during the San Francisco maritime and general strike. It belongs to the INS file on labour leader Harry Bridges, an Australian immigrant whom the service twice tried and failed to deport over alleged Communist Party ties. Held by the National Archives.
  70. - The immigration station buildings on Angel Island. A black and white view of the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The station processed arrivals from across the Pacific and became best known for the long detentions imposed on Chinese immigrants under the exclusion laws. The image is filed under the station's Commons category but carries no further detail about the specific buildings shown.
  71. - Rudolph Schaeffer School, St.. 1940. Rudolph Schaeffer papers, 1880s-1997. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  72. - Chinatown storefronts on the eve of Japanese American removal. Dorothea Lange photographed this pair of shops on Grant Avenue for the War Relocation Authority, contrasting the store at right, run by a proprietor of Japanese ancestry, with its neighbour. Lange's caption notes the shop was doing heavy trade as removal approached, after earlier losing custom to a boycott of Japanese goods; its owner faced confinement in a relocation centre.
  73. - Japanese-American Internment During WWII | History. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Government issued executive order 9066, which empowered the military to round up anyone of Japanese ancestry and place them in internment camps. #HISTORY #HistoryChannel Newsletter: Website -
  74. - Ugly History: Japanese American incarceration camps - Densho. Dig into the historic injustice of Japanese American incarceration camps, also known as internment camps, during World War II. -- On December 7, 1941, 16 year-old Aki Kurose shared in the horror of millions of Americans when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor. Unbeknownst to her, this shared e
  75. - This Man Filmed Life Inside an Internment Camp. Dave Tatsuno was one of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans rounded up in the U.S. in 1942 and placed in an internment camp. The home movie footage he captures of life within those fences is both moving and troubling. From the Series: America in Color: The 1940s
  76. - 1942 Internment of Japanese-Americans. TC IN: 014520 TC OUT: 014628 Military police patrolling and checking vehicles; Japanese-Americans being searched while they collect their belongings; men are frisked and trucks are loaded; a vast concentration camp for the interned people. Keyw
  77. - The History of Japanese Internment at Angel Island During World War II. Best known as being a U.S. immigration station from 1910-1940, Angel Island also housed a Temporary Detention Center in the first part of World War II, briefly housing about 700 Japanese "enemy aliens" from Hawai`i and the West Coast before they went to Department of Justice and U.S. Army camps thro
  78. - How WW2 Made Life A Living Hell For Japanese-Americans (PART 1) | Silent. This is the riveting, emotional story of Japanese Americans who were forced into encampments in the U.S. during World War II. Utilizing in-depth interviews with former internees, a rich collection of rare photos and film clips, and beautifully crafted recreations, Silent Sacrifice reveals the pain,
  79. - Why the US photographed its own WWII concentration camps. Dorothea Lange’s photos of the incarceration of Japanese Americans went largely unseen for decades. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, two months after Japan’s
  80. - Main Streets of America.. 1945. From the National Archives 111-SC box 692 329507.
  81. - Shopfronts along Grant Avenue in Chinatown. Roger Wollstadt's photograph of the main street of San Francisco's Chinatown, taking in the block around the Canton Bazaar in the six hundreds of Grant Avenue. Grant was the quarter's commercial spine and the stretch most visitors to the neighbourhood walked.
  82. - ASIANVOTERS. 2/C/12NOV99/NANCY WONG MAYOR WILLIE BROWN COURTS CHINESE AMERICAN VOTERS BY ATTENDING A GALA BENEFIT DINNER FOR CHINESE NEWCOMERS AT 838 GRANT AVENUE, AT THE EMPRESS OF CHINA RESTAURANT IN SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN. HERE HE POSES WITH SOME OF THE PAST EMPERORS AND EMPRESSES OF THE BENEFIT DINNER.
  83. - US Immigration History Preserved on Angel Island. The Angel Island Immigration Station, once known as the "Ellis Island of the West," is reopening after a multimillion-dollar restoration of the historical landmark. (Jan. 27)
  84. - Angel Island Immigration Station Tour - AIISF. Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Presents a tour of the historical venue that processed tens of thousands of immigrants traveling across the Pacific from 1910-1940. For more information please visit www.aiisf.org Executive Producer Eddie Wong Directed and Edited by Jeffrey Gee Chin Joh
  85. - Exhibit exploring Chinese Exclusion Act opens in San Francisco. California’s governor recently signed a bill that ensures students in the state will be taught about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 as well as the contributions made by Chinese Americans in establishing the Transcontinental Railroad. In San Francisco this week, a new exhibit opens that seeks to s
  86. - America: Promised Land: Rebuilding San Francisco’s Chinatown | History. After the 1906 earthquake destroyed the city, plans to rebuild didn’t include a place for Chinese immigrants. Faced with the prospect of resettling to Oakland, Look Tin Eli employed white architects to create an even grander Chinatown. #HISTORY #AmericaPromisedLand Find out more about the special
  87. - What was the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act? | The Chinese Exclusio. Chinese Exclusion Act was unlike any law enacted since the founding of the republic. Singling out as never before a specific race and nationality for exclusion, it made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America, and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become citizens of the United
  88. - San Francisco’s Chinatown and the Chinese Railroad Workers. What was San Francisco's Chinatown like in the 19th century, and what meaning did it hold for Chinese railroad workers? In this video, Dr. Gordon H. Chang, Professor of History at Stanford University, explores this question and provides expert insight into the history of San Francisco's Chinatown an
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