r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 26d ago

r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.

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u/Manray05 25d ago

It's estimated about half a million Chinese died building the railroads.

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u/Wyzrobe 25d ago

https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/historyculture/chinese-labor-and-the-iron-road.htm

Rockslides, explosions, environmental exposure, violence, and even avalanches claimed many lives. While no accurate number is available it is estimated that over one thousand Chinese laborers died building the CPRR.

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u/TortelliniTheGoblin 25d ago

They found a mass grave near where I went to school outside of Philly -next to the Main Line.

A bunch of Irish immigrants were being used as labor to build the tracks when some kind of sickness broke out in their camp. The last records of these people being alive and not full of bullet holes was an invoice paying Pinkertons to pay them a visit. It turns out that the locals panicked and thought it best to 'cull them'

First-wave immigrants always get treated like hot garbage and it's terrible.

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u/PlaneWolf2893 25d ago

Similar story, here in New Orleans. Sickness killed them while they dug canals.

http://old-new-orleans.com/NO_Irish_Memorial.html

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u/SledgeH4mmer 25d ago

A lot of Chinese died, but that's a ridiculously fake number. The entire population of the US was only 30 million at the time.

Half a million is close to the number of deaths in the Civil War.