The First American-Born Chinese Woman Doctor

Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the eldest of 11 children in a Chinese immigrant family graduated from the University of Southern California Medical School in 1916, making her the first American-born Chinese female doctor. As a student, she was the only woman in her class, dressed in masculine clothing, and called herself ‘Mike.’ Chung was initially denied residencies and internships in hospitals, but went on to become an emergency surgeon in Los Angeles, which was extremely unusual for women at the time. In the early 1920s, she helped establish the first Western hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and led its OB/GYN and pediatrics unit, where she treated the local Chinese American community along with various celebrities as a surgeon. She became a prominent behind-the-scenes political broker during World War II, establishing a network of thousands of men in the military and navy, that referred to her as ‘Mom Chung’ and themselves as her ‘fair-haired bastards.’ Chung also helped establish WAVES, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services, the women’s branch of the naval reserves during World War II, which helped pave the way for women’s integration into the U.S armed forces, though she was rejected from serving in it herself, likely because of her race and her sexuality.

Interviewees: biographer Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Irvine and author of Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards; Esther Choo, emergency medicine doctor and researcher at Oregon Health & Science University, Co-Founder of Equity Quotient and Founding Member of Time’s Up Healthcare

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