"Sitting alone in the customs office,
How could my heart not ache?
Had my family not been poor,
I would not have traveled far away from home.
It was my elder brother who urged me
To embark on a voyage to this shore.
The black devil here is unjust-
He forces the Chinese to clean the floor.
Two meals a day are provided,
But I wonder, when will I be homeward bound?"
- Lee from Toishan, September 4, 1911. One of roughly 200 poems written at Angel Island from 1910 to 1940.
"The movement is contagious, and the people in it are the ones who pass on the spirit."
- YURI KOCHIYAMA (a famous Asian American activist)