Vault #1: Immigrant Monument
Remembering the Courage of our Immigrant Ancestors
AIISF’s Connie Young Yu delivers a brief history of the Angel Island Immigration Station before the monument’s unveiling. Click here to view the event program. Photo credit: AIISF, 1979.
Donated by restaurateur, Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron, the monument honors not only the Asian immigrants who were detained on Angel Island but also memorializes those who suffered and died in their quest for a better life in America.
The eight-foot, three-ton granite monument was dedicated on April 28, 1979. Five hundred former Angel Island detainees attended the ceremony. The inscription on the monument was selected from a couplet competition co-sponsored by AIISHAC and the Chinese Times. Translated into English, the winning couplet by Ngoot P. Chinn reads,
“Leaving their homes and villages, they crossed the ocean only to endure confinement in these barracks. Conquering frontiers and barriers, they pioneered a new life by the Golden Gate.”
The monument was originally placed at the site’s WWII post exchange foundation. Two flowering cherries—visible behind the monument—were planted to mark the occasion. Click here to see this location today. The concrete foundation still shows a faded outline where the monument once stood. Photo credit: Ben Kong, 2003.
The monument stood outside the detention barracks for the next 28 years. It was later relocated to the hospital bluff when outdoor exhibits were installed in 2007. Today, the monument can be found near the Angel Island Immigration Museum, overlooking China Cove.
To map its current location click here.
‘Visitations stones’ were discovered around the base of the monument. Some stones featured messages addressed to Angel Island’s immigrants. Photo credit: AIISF, 2020.
A symbolic wreath was placed at the monument during a solemn ceremony marking the 140th year since the signing of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Photo credit: AIISF, 2022.
Click and drag the image below to view the monument in 3D.
Lee, Erika, and Judy Yung. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.