During the 1800s, millions of immigrants from around the world came to the United States. From January 1892 to November 1954, Ellis Island in New York City was the place where many immigrants first entered America. Ellis Island had replaced Castle Garden, Manhattan, as the New York immigration-processing center. In Ellis Island’s first year of operation, nearly 450,000 people were received and inspected there. On the West Coast, Angel Island, near Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, served as the point of entry for the majority of the approximately 175,000 Chinese immigrants who came to America between 1910 and 1940. Entry at Angel Island was particularly hard because most Chinese were detained for days, weeks, and even months in inadequate facilities that were closely guarded so the immigrants would not be able to escape. The following excerpts are about immigrants’ first thoughts of America.
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We were deathly seasick the first three days. During that period I was conscious, it seems to me, only part of the time. I remember that once when I opened my eyes I seemed to see the steamer turn to one side and then disappear under water. Then I heard voices screaming, entreating [begging], praying. I thought we were drowning, but I did not care. Nothing mattered now. On the fourth day, I became again interested in life.
From Castle Garden, we drove to our new home in a market wagon filled with immigrants’ bedding. . . . I looked about in bewilderment. My thoughts were chasing each other. I felt a thrill: “Am I really in America at last?” But the next moment . . . I felt a little disappointed, a little homesick. Father was so changed. . . . He told me he would take me to his own shop and teach me part of his own trade. He was a men’s coat finisher. He made me understand that if we worked steadily and lived economically we should soon have money to send for those at home. “Next year at this time,” he smiled, “you yourself may be on the way to fetch mother and the children.” So I too smiled at the happy prospect, wiped some tears away and resolved [decided] to work hard.
From Mrs. Felesberg we learned at once the more serious side of life in America. Mrs. Felesberg was the woman with whom we were rooming. . . . Perhaps it was due to these talks that I soon noticed how late my father worked. When he went away in the morning it was still dark, and when he came home at night the lights in the halls were out. It was after ten o’clock. . . . One night when he came home and as he sat at the table eating his rice soup, which he and Aunt Masha had taught me to cook, I sat down on the cot and asked timidly, knowing that he was impatient of questions, “Father, does everybody in America live like this? Go to work early, come home late, eat and go to sleep? And the next day again work, eat, and sleep? Will I have to do that too? Always?”
So, almost a week passed and though life was so interesting, still no matter where I went, what I saw, mother and home were always present in my mind. Often in the happiest moments a pain would rise in my throat and my eyes burned with tears held back.
—Rose Gollup, writing in 1891
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There was not much for us to do on the Island. In the morning, we got up and washed our faces. Afterwards, we had breakfast. After we ate, we napped or washed our own clothes. At lunch time, we had congee [rice porridge] in a large serving bowl with some cookies. Then at night we had rice with a main dish. You picked at some it, I picked at some of it, and that was that. We ate in a huge dining hall. After the woman ate, the men ate. As the women passed, the men teased us, whistling, saying this-and-that; they were so naughty. They allowed us to go outside to the yard or even out to the dock, where there were grass and trees, tall and fan-like. The women were allowed to wander around, jump around, and stick our hands or feet into the water to fish out seaweed. Otherwise, the day would have been hard to pass.
—Mrs. Chin, age 19, writing from Angel Island, 1913
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Quote by Rose Gollup from the “Autobiography of Rose Gollup” in Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773­1986, edited by Thomas Dublin. Quote by Mrs. Chin from “The Detainment” from Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910­1940 by Him Mark Lai, Gennry Lim, and Judy Yung. Copyright 1980 HOC DOI Project. Reprinted by permission of Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco and the University of Washington Press.
