WEBVTT

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People from around the globe

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have been immigrating to America 
since it’s founding.

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It’s made up of immigrants.

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Many seeking greater opportunity
in pursuit of the American dream.

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No matter your background, chances are
you’re a descendent of an immigrant.

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You may have heard of 
New York’s Ellis Island,

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where millions of immigrants passed 
the Statue of Liberty to reach the U.S.

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But do you know Angel Island,
the Ellis Island of the West?

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Question, what is Angel Island?

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And what stories does 
this small island have to tell?

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So I’m going to Angel Island 
in San Francisco and meeting with Ben Lee…

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a Chinese American whose father
originally immigrated here in 1915.

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What is Angel Island?

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Angel Island is a multi-layer 
history of California.

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It’s Ellis island with a 
little asterisk, that it was really not

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for welcoming folks to enter in, 
but really say hey it’s a gate here.

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The first major wave 
of Chinese immigration

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occurred in the mid to late 19th Century,

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when over 300,000 people
crossed the Pacific to work as laborers,

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most notably on the transcontinental
railroad and in the mining industry.

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Well, the history of the Chinese coming
is long since they started in the 1820s.

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Subsequent was the gold rush, 
subsequently was the Chinese railroad.

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But by the late 1800s,

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racial discrimination began 
to infiltrate federal policy,

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as the American public rallied against 
the newest immigrants

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out of racist anxiety and job concerns.

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And then all of a sudden there was a big 
movement - the Chinese must go,

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and because we were taking away jobs 
and we were different. 1882 the only law

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in US government was passed 
that targeted a specific ethnic group

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the Chinese, from coming in to America.

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The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed
into law on May 6th, 1882 and was

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designed to restrict free immigration
and prohibit the Chinese.

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And by 1910, Angel Island had become 
a primary detention center

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for East Asian immigrants.

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Officers were tasked with 
enforcing the law and processing

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more than 300,000 people,
over 100,000 of them Chinese.

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But out of 300,000, it was very much 
the folks that were not Chinese

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had a much easier time coming,
very much patterned after Ellis Island.

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Whereas the Chinese, the saying goes
we were guilty until proven innocent,

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because of what we were considered 
as false identity.

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- You have a personal connection to this?
- Yes

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Can you tell me about that?

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My father when he was 15 years old 
thought he was coming

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for the Pan-Pacific Exposition 
in San Francisco.

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Little did he know, at 15 years old that

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he was gonna end up at Angel Island. 
And he was here under an assumed name,

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that we think is his name still, 
but he had a paper brother.

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A paper son or daughter is a term
used for Chinese born immigrants

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who used false papers stating that they 
were blood relatives to American citizens.

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To better understand
what they went through,

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I’m meeting with park ranger Ben Fenkell.

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So can you tell me, what were 
the conditions like for someone who

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crossed the sea and is detained here, 
living here?

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Conditions were really cramped. 
You picked a bed that was open.

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Intimidating. Scary, stressful place. 
You had people in here who didn’t speak

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the same languages as you so often
you were here feeling like you were alone

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even though you were in a space with
up to 60 people.

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Odors and smells and levels of hygiene.

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And people getting up in the middle of 
the night to use restrooms.

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There were no ladders to bunks, 
so people were climbing up and down

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to get to their bunks. 
It wasn’t a great place,

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but it was the only place they had
while they were being detained here.

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You see a lot of people come in, 
a lot of students.

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What do you tell them

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why this is important 
to understand what happened here?

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If they look at all the stories and things
they will find in the news today.

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Online, TV, newspapers. 


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If they look at those stories
and find stories of immigration,

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they are going to realize those stories
that they're reading about today

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are stories that basically happened here 
100 years ago.

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So hopefully they're making 
the connections of the past and present

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and making better choices for our country.

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To help cope, many detainees
carved poems in the walls.

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Even if it is built of jade, it is turned 
into a cage.

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This was behind a wall in a bathroom

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so no one really knew
this was here for like fifty years.

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And so to see this,

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you can kind of feel what it might 
have been like to some degree.

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I can’t possibly come here and 
really understand

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what it would have 
been like 100 years ago.

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Leaving your family, going across 
the sea for the first time,

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coming to a place and not 
knowing what’s going to happen.

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But the imprint of those words 
that tried to be hidden,

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but history had a way 
of finding them again.

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Officials here didn’t really want 
them to be seen, put putty in that.

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But over time that actually 
preserved them.

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Decades later, the paint peeled away

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and we see the thoughts and 
feelings that people had here.

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That’s what I’ll remember.