Group items tagged

I'm posting this site for a number of reasons. The first being that it relates directly to the Takaki chapter we read this week. Angel Island was a sort of "Ellis Island" for west coast immigration, and this is their historical website. I wanted to find images of picture brides, and this site came up as having a lot of images from that period of japanese immigration. So this website could be very useful for those teachers who want to incorporate images as primary sources in teaching this part of American history. Additionally, my friend's mother had recently been to Italy and came back with a number of ancestral records she has asked me to translate. This led me to question what sources Asian Americans can use to trace their own ancestry in this country - though unfortunately Angel Island does not offer resources similar to that of Ellis Island.

This is the second part of my Angel Island posting. I find this document fascinating; it is a complete reproduction of a 1917 pamphlet produced by The Women's American Baptist Home Missionary Society, and includes interesting - and sometimes offensive - first hand accounts of immigrants coming through Angel Island at the time. The non-secular language cannot be denied as well, but it still makes for a fascinating glimpse into the perceptions of asian immigrants during this period of our history.

Densho is an organization that is dedicated to "preserving the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during WWII before their memories are extinguished." The website does offer a great deal of information and document to support this mission; however, there is much more! There is a huge archive with photographs, newspaper articles from around the country, immigration documents, proof of citizenship documents, photographs of artifacts, and videotapings of interviews with the grandchildren of the first generation of immigrants. Many of these archived documents date back to the late 1800s. There is also a filter with a timeline and a glossary that is useful in understanding the events during the period of immigration through WWII and the period of incarceration. The site is a great resources for teachers and students alike!

I discovered this website while looking for information on Chinese and Japanese immigration. This website supports the newspaper Harper's Weekly that was published from 1857 to 1912. The publication reported on the relevant issues of the day such as immigration, slavery and presidential elections. Not only do they have the actual papers in their archive, they also provide summaries of some of the articles. There is a section dedicated to Immigration and Ethnic America. While there is a great deal of information on the site that is fee to all, one must subscribe to gain access to the entire site. The site also provides links to many other websites that support learning such as lessons, activities, and games. Some of their links are oriented around subjects that were relevant during the time the papers were published. There is also a featured "cartoon" of the day that is taken from the period of 1857 to 1912. It is a great resource for teachers!