When was Ellis Island active?
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During and immediately following World War II, Ellis Island was used to hold German merchant mariners and "enemy aliens"—Axis nationals detained for fear of spying, sabotage, and other fifth column activity. In December 1941, Ellis Island held 279 Japanese, 248 Germans, and 81 Italians removed from the East Coast. Unlike other wartime immigration detention stations, Ellis Island was designated as a permanent holding facility and was used to hold foreign nationals throughout the war. A total of 7,000 Germans, Italians and Japanese would be ultimately detained at Ellis Island. It was also a processing center for returning sick or wounded U.S. soldiers, and a Coast Guard training base. Ellis Island still managed to process tens of thousands of immigrants per year during this time, but many fewer than the hundreds of thousands per year who arrived before the war. After the war, immigration rapidly returned to earlier levels.
Ellis Island
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Ellis Island: The Dream of America is a work for actors and orchestra with projected images by American composer Peter Boyer, composed in 2001-02, commissioned by the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Connecticut. The work combines first-person narrations of seven immigrants who entered the United States through Ellis Island between 1910 and 1940, selected by Boyer from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, with Boyer’s original orchestral music. The work has received over 170 performances by more than 75 orchestras. A recording of the work released on the Naxos record label was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in the 48th annual Grammy Awards. In April 2017, performances by Pacific Symphony of "Ellis Island: The Dream of America" were filmed for broadcast on PBS’ "Great Performances" series in the 2017-18 broadcast season.
Ellis Island: The Dream of America
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Between 1905 and 1914, an average of one million immigrants per year arrived in the United States. Immigration officials reviewed about 5,000 immigrants per day during peak times at Ellis Island. Two-thirds of those individuals emigrated from eastern, southern and central Europe. The peak year for immigration at Ellis Island was 1907, with 1,004,756 immigrants processed. The all-time daily high occurred on April 17, 1907, when 11,747 immigrants arrived. After the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, which greatly restricted immigration and allowed processing at overseas embassies, the only immigrants to pass through the station were those who had problems with their immigration paperwork, displaced persons, and war refugees. Today, over 100 million Americans—about one-third to 40% of the population of the United States—can trace their ancestry to immigrants who arrived in America at Ellis Island before dispersing to points all over the country.
Ellis Island
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Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, was the gateway for over 12 million immigrants to the U.S. as the United States' busiest immigrant inspection station for over 60 years from 1892 until 1954. Ellis Island was opened January 1, 1892. The island was greatly expanded with land reclamation between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the site of Fort Gibson and later a naval magazine. The island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965 and has hosted a museum of immigration since 1990.
Ellis Island
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Some films have focused on the immigrant experience, such as the 1984 TV miniseries "Ellis Island". The IMAX 3D movie "Across the Sea of Time" incorporates both modern footage and historical photographs of Ellis Island. The 2006 Italian movie "The Golden Door", directed by Emanuele Crialese, takes place largely on Ellis Island. "Forgotten Ellis Island", a film and book, focuses on the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital. "The Immigrant" is a 2013 American drama film directed by James Gray, starring Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jeremy Renner. "Ellis", a short, premiered in November 2015.
Ellis Island
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An Ellis Island Special is a family name that is perceived or labeled, incorrectly, as having been altered by immigration officials at the Ellis Island Immigration Station, when a family reached the United States, typically from Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In popular thought, some family lore, and literary fiction, some family names were seen as having been shortened by immigration officials for ease of pronunciation or record-keeping, or lack of understanding of the true name—even though name changes were made by the immigrants themselves at other times. Among the family names that are perceived as being Ellis Island Specials are some that were supposedly more identifiably Jewish, resulting in last names that were not identifiably so.
Ellis Island Special
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Ellis was invited to stay, and he arranged for his family to come to Hawaii, where they arrived on the "Active" on 4 February 1823. In June 1823 Ellis joined American Missionaries Asa Thurston, Artemas Bishop, and Joseph Goodrich on a tour of the island of Hawaii, to investigate suitable sites for mission stations. On the way he stopped at Maui and met and baptized Queen Keōpūolani. Their first stop was Kailua-Kona, where they met the Governor of the island Kuakini, known as "John Adams".
William Ellis (missionary)
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Ellis Island is a television miniseries, filmed in the United Kingdom, broadcast in three parts in 1984 on the CBS television network. The screenplay was co-written by Fred Mustard Stewart, adapted from his 1983 novel of the same title. The series tells the story of several immigrants from the late 19th century until the early 1910s, trying to achieve the American Dream and arriving on Ellis Island, hoping for a better life. "Ellis Island" highlighted numerous important events which occurred up to and during World War I, and many of the characters are based on real persons, such as Irving Berlin. The series marks the final appearance of Richard Burton, and was dedicated to his memory.
In 1907 Jacob Rubinstein, a Russian Jew leaves his village after it is attacked by cossacks and his father, the local Rabbi, is murdered. While he was fleeing he is shot in the leg by the same cossack who killed his father. Jacob though, scares the cossack's horse, causing the horse to throw the cossack off. Jacob takes his revenge, shoots the cossack and takes the horse. He arrives in Hamburg, Germany, with the aim of emigrating to America. Even after selling the horse he is still short of the cost of a steerage class ticket. Depressed, Jacob walks around Hamburg docks and is persuaded into a brothel after hearing piano music. When inside, he meets an African American called Roscoe Haines, the piano player. Jacob is impressed by the Ragtime that Roscoe is playing and asks if he can try to play. Jacob is, to Roscoe's surprise very good at it. Roscoe organises a collection from everyone inside the brothel to raise the money Jacob needs for his ticket. Roscoe also tells Jacob to go and see a music publisher called Abe Shulman when he gets to New York City.
Ellis Island (miniseries)
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Now discredited, eugenic beliefs played a small role at the hospital. Dr. Henry H. Goddard established an intelligence testing program on Ellis Island during 1913. Doctors would use metal calipers to measure the circumference of immigrants’ heads, and immigrants of “superior racial stock” were often favored when entering the United States. Additionally, many immigrants were detained at Ellis Island for mental illness and placed in the hospital's psychiatric ward. Some of the contemporary clinical classifications for mental illness are now archaic: idiot, imbecile, moron, or feeble-minded. It is likely that many of these immigrants were not actually mentally ill, but that cultural differences and a language barrier, as well as the immigrants’ anxiety about a new country, made them appear mentally ill. More objective testing methods were developed by Dr. Howard Andrew Knox to determine with increased accuracy whether an emigrant was mentally deficient. The Knox tests were effective in that they did not require specific cultural knowledge for successful performance. The Daughters of the American Revolution provided a robust occupational therapy program for immigrants detained at Ellis Island. They also worked with U. S. servicemen, merchant seamen, and members of the U.S. Coast Guard. Some were suffering from shell shock.
Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital
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In the 35 years before Ellis Island opened, more than eight million immigrants arriving in New York City had been processed by officials at Castle Garden Immigration Depot in Lower Manhattan, just across the bay. The federal government assumed control of immigration on April 18, 1890, and Congress appropriated $75,000 to construct America's first federal immigration station on Ellis Island. Artesian wells were dug, and fill material was hauled in from incoming ships' ballast and from construction of New York City's subway tunnels, which doubled the size of Ellis Island to over six acres. While the building was under construction, the Barge Office nearby at the Battery was used for immigrant processing.
Ellis Island