Kazue Togasaki
Kazue Togasaki (June 29, 1897 – December 15, 1992)[1] was one of the first two women with Japanese ancestry to earn a medical degree in the United States.[2] The other such woman was Megumi Shinoda, and they both earned their medical degrees in 1933.[3] Togasaki earned her medical degree from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1933.[2][4]
She had earned a bachelor's in zoology in 1920 from Stanford University, and also studied at a nursing program, but could not work as a nurse due to anti-Japanese discrimination.[5] She worked as a fundraiser and secretary, and after that studied public health nursing at the University of California for one year, before enrolling in medical school in 1929.[5] During World War II she was detained for a month at the Tanforan Assembly Center, and while there she delivered fifty babies and led an all-Japanese-American medical team.[5][6] She was afterwards sent five times to other assembly and relocation centers (including Topaz, Tule Lake, and Manzanar) before being let out in 1943.[2][4][5][7] She then opened a medical practice in San Francisco, where she worked until she retired at age 75, having delivered more than ten thousand babies in all.[5]
References
- ^ Ware, Susan; Braukman, Stacy (2005). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary: Completing the Twentieth Century. Belknap Press. p. 639. ISBN 9780674014886.
- ^ a b c "Pioneering Japanese-American Doctor Remembers Quake, World War II, Her Neighborhoods".
- ^ Susan Ware (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press. p. 640. ISBN 978-0-674-01488-6.
- ^ a b Ware, Susan; Braukman, Stacy (2005). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary: Completing the Twentieth Century. Belknap Press. pp. 639–640. ISBN 9780674014886.
- ^ a b c d e "America Has a Long History of Pitting Politics Against Public Health". Bitch Media.
- ^ "Dysentery, Dust, and Determination: Health Care in the World War II Japanese American Detention Camps".
- ^ "National Archives: Kazue Togasaki". The National Archives. Retrieved January 15, 2016.