May 28, 2020
Until very recently, Angel Island’s Japanese internment history eluded even the island’s park rangers and tour guides. I met with Grant Din, a researcher and former volunteer with the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, who is virtually the only expert on the topic.
Through a National Park Service grant, Din spent about five years digging into Angel Island’s role in the internment of Japanese people during World War II. Many are already familiar with this dark chapter of American history, which remains to this day one of the most egregious examples of large-scale, federally sanctioned racial profiling.