How you can support this project About Lydia Lum Reviews Men and women were housed separately. Detainees spent much of their time in the barracks, languishing between interrogations. The immigrants expressed their fears and frustrations through messages and poems written or carved into barrack walls.
Some poems are still visible at the museum today.
Like people of other ethnicities, the Chinese immigrated to the United States for better lives. Before 1900, their work included farming, mining and building railroads. Men sent money home to their families in China. But American laborers resented the Chinese because the latter were willing to work for cheap wages. Americans accused the Chinese of monopolizing jobs.