May 1, 2022

By Lydia Lee

Mrs. Lee was one of an estimated 300,000 people who were detained on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, where an isolated immigration station was built in 1910 in part to screen out people of Chinese ancestry. This overtly racist chapter of U.S. immigration history, which was legally enshrined for decades and eventually included the restriction of people from all Asian countries, could easily have been relegated to a historical footnote. But the local Asian American community mobilized to rescue the Angel Island Immigration Station’s remaining buildings, several of which were slated for demolition.

Today, the 14.3-acre site is one of the country’s more unusual museums, bearing physical witness to a painful side of immigration and anti-Asian racism. In 2017, the National Trust, which had named the station one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 1999, identified it as a preservation success. (read more)