Comprehensive Study Notes on Dr. Margaret Chung, Fictive Kinship, Wartime Mobilization, and Asian Pacific American Feminism

The Emergence and Architecture of Mom Chung's Surrogate Family

• 1931 Personal and Geopolitical Turning Point:

  • In 1931, Margaret Chung was in her early forties, practicing medicine in San Francisco for nearly a decade, yet experiencing deep dissatisfaction and lacking personal and professional fulfillment.
  • Chung expressed that she "had been too busy in a struggle for a mere existence to laugh or to have fun," reflecting distress over her marginal standing within Chinatown, her personal isolation, and internal quandaries regarding both marriage and lesbianism.
  • Concurrently, Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and launched an attack on Shanghai, igniting widespread patriotic mobilization among Chinese in the United States to support China.
  • Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalist government, initially prioritized campaigns against Mao Zedong and the Communists, but full-scale Japanese invasion in 1937 prompted a united front in the Sino-Japanese War ($1937-1945$).
  • These global conflicts reshaped American domestic perceptions, shifting public views of Chinese people from "alien and diseased" to sympathetic, courageous allies, especially following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.

• Origins of the "Fair-Haired Bastards":

  • Following Japan's 1931 aggression, Steven G. Bancroft, an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserves, sought Chung's help to secure a commission in the Chinese military, declaring his desire to "bomb Tokyo out into the middle of the Pacific."
  • Although Chung possessed no military influence, she was moved by Bancroft's passion and invited him and his six housemates—all unemployed pilots, recent graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, and former college football players—to dinner.
  • Bancroft and his companions dined with Chung almost every night for months, frequently joining her for hunting and camping excursions.
  • During an after-dinner conversation, Frank Fulgham "Red" Gill remarked that Chung was as understanding as a mother and proposed adopting her, while joking about her unmarried status; Chung retorted that this made them a group of "fair-haired bastards," a title the men enthusiastically embraced to spread her fame globally.

• Numerical Growth and Media Sensation:

  • The surrogate family expanded from the initial seven members to over $500$ individuals by the onset of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
  • Extensive coverage in regional and national publications—including Life, National Geographic, and Christian Science Monitor—propelled the family size to approximately $1,500$ members by the conclusion of World War II.

• Structural Branches of the Kinship Network:

  • The Fair-Haired Bastards:
  • The oldest, largest, and most renowned division, ultimately encompassing approximately $900$ aviators (almost exclusively male).
  • Admission required being "a good guy, who can fly, who's not afraid to die, a courageous man who is loyal, tolerant, a 'square' man who contributes to the progress and glory of aviation, who makes the world a better place because he lives."
  • Chung designated this elite aviation cohort as the "Phi Beta Kappa of Aviation."
  • The Kiwis:
  • Established prior to official U.S. entry into World War II for individuals considered "good bastard material" who did not fly, named after the flightless kiwi bird.
  • Numbered roughly $300$ members, incorporating politicians, entertainers, and non-aviation military personnel.
  • Due to male dominance in flight, female inductees ("daughters") entered this branch; Chung designated herself as Kiwi Number 1, though she subsequently learned to pilot airplanes.
  • The Golden Dolphins:
  • Founded in the spring of 1943 following a formal request by a naval lieutenant representing submariners.
  • Sized comparably to the Kiwis (approximately $300$ members).
  • Rigid admission prerequisites required candidates to have sunk at least "five enemy ships" or a minimum of $100,000\,\text{tons}$ of enemy shipping.
  • Chung highlighted the psychological contrast between branches: whereas aviators displayed extreme self-assurance verging on cockiness, submariners exemplified profound interdependence and a "very democratic spirit."

• Aviation, Modernity, and Platonic Fellowship:

  • Interwar aviation represented masculine romance, technological progress, and freedom, underscored by Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo transatlantic flight and Amelia Earhart's 1928 Atlantic crossing and 1935 Hawaii-to-Oakland solo flight (Earhart disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 and was claimed by Chung as an adopted daughter).
  • The San Francisco Bay Area was an aeronautical center: Crissey Field dedicated its airport in 1919, welcomed the first transcontinental airmail flight in 1920, developed at least six operational airports by the late 1920s, and launched the China Clipper transpacific airmail route in 1935.
  • Katherine Cheung operated as the first licensed Chinese American female aviator out of Los Angeles.
  • Excluded from the athletic aviatrix archetype due to middle age and stout physique, Chung engaged vicariously through her pilot sons, hosting "hangar flying" storytelling sessions at the bar inside her residence.
  • Son Number 149, Captain John F. McGinty, praised her bar as a domain of pure fellowship, reinforcing the widespread fraternal verdict: "Mom, she's a great guy!"

Fictive Kinship, Domestic Logistics, and Gender Negotiation

• Inversion of Maternal and Racial Models:

  • Chung's fictive family inverted the maternal dynamics of her personal heritage: her mother, Ah Yane, had been adopted as an adolescent rescue ward by white female Presbyterian reformers, and Chung's medical mentor, Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen, had adopted multiethnic female surgical protégées.
  • Chung reversed the racial and gender hierarchies by positioning herself as an authoritative nonwhite mother adopting predominantly white, adult male elites.
  • The maternal status shielded her from moral and racial scandal, enabling an unmarried Chinese woman in her forties to socialize intimately with young, white servicemen without romantic or marital expectations.

• Adoption Ceremonies and Fictive Rituals:

  • Formal adoptions occurred on Sunday evenings post-dinner, mirroring solemn quasi-matrimonial and fraternal rites.
  • Chung initiated proceedings with an invocation prayer, recounted the formal history of the family, and detailed each candidate's accomplishments.
  • Inductees were invested with individually engraved silver rings bearing their specific numerical sequence in the family order, formalizing lifelong devotion.
  • The humor inherent in the term "Fair-Haired Bastards" neutralized racial miscegenation and illegitimacy anxieties by accentuating the biological impossibility of their parent-child bond.

• Dual Gender Roles and Domestic Care:

  • Chung simultaneously occupied the maternal role of domestic caregiver and the traditionally masculine patriarchal role of financial breadwinner.
  • Son Number 3, Pan American pilot H. Joseph Chase, sought refuge with Chung after contracting malaria and blackwater fever in Haiti; Chung nursed him back to health, waking at 3:00 or 4:00 AM to cook filet mignons, thick vegetable soup, mashed potato patties, and fried rice with ham, green onions, and eggs, before departing for her hospital rounds at 7:00 AM.
  • Chung praised her sons' athletic masculinity—noting her original seven sons averaged well over $200\,\text{lbs}$ each—while infantilizing them to reinforce their reliance on her maternal and financial protection.

• Economic Dynamics during the Great Depression:

  • During the early 1930s, the California medical profession saw average net annual incomes decline from approximately $\$6,700$ in 1929 to $\$3,600$ in 1933.
  • Chung's financial position remained comparatively solid due to her celebrity clientele, lower Chinatown clinic fees, police union patronage, birth control consultations, and municipal welfare reimbursements.
  • Her initial sons faced dire deprivation, surviving exclusively on eggs on credit for six straight weeks; Bancroft once utilized a military Hell-diver training flight to Livermore to capture fresh bullfrogs in a slough, presenting frog legs to Chung to repay her hospitality.
  • Chung insisted that feeding her sons was not an act of charity, calling it "the most selfish thing I've ever done because it was more fun than I had ever known in all my life."
  • The surrogate structure paralleled traditional Chinese American immigrant bachelor societies, which relied heavily on surname associations, fictive lineages, and mutual aid rather than nuclear households.

Wartime Mobilization, Propaganda, and the Home Front Base

• Total War Demands and Bay Area Transformations:

  • Nearly $16.5\,\text{million}$ Americans—over $10\%$ of the national population—entered the armed forces during World War II, resulting in $300,000$ to $400,000$ casualties and $700,000$ wounded.
  • An estimated $350,000$ women served in military auxiliary branches, while $6\,\text{million}$ women joined the $12\,\text{million}$ already active in the civilian workforce.
  • The San Francisco Bay Area became a vital military hub, encompassing key naval operating stations (San Francisco-Alameda alongside San Diego and Long Beach-San Pedro), the Kaiser shipyards in the East Bay (employing close to $100,000$ workers by 1944), and securing over $\$4\,\text{billion}$ in defense production contracts during the "Second Gold Rush," drawing approximately $500,000$ migrants.

• Masonic Avenue Residence as Home Base:

  • Between 1942 and 1943, Chung's sons collected funds to pay the down payment on a three-story residence on Masonic Avenue in San Francisco's predominantly white Western Division, bypassing restrictive wartime racial covenants.
  • Weekly Sunday night dinners regularly hosted $75$ to $100$ servicemen, celebrities, and political figures, establishing an artistic salon and domestic haven.
  • Chung donned a traditional gingham apron to cook meals, personally preparing requests such as red beans for Son Number 632 ("Tex") and preparing alternatives to military rations for Son Number 640 ("Rascal").

• Food Politics and Cultural Diplomacy:

  • Anti-Chinese labor agitations historically utilized food symbolism to demean immigrants, such as Samuel Gompers's 1902 tract Meat versus Rice: American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism—Which Shall Survive?.
  • Chung leveraged wartime Sino-American camaraderie following the 1943 repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act to integrate Chinese culinary elements into American menus, blending soy sauce, ginger, ketchup, honey, and mustard for barbecue ribs served alongside fried rice.
  • Red Gill analogized Chung's correspondence to "an October day in San Francisco with chop suey" and the excitement of a Berkeley-Stanford kickoff.
  • Chung distributed jade and ivory Buddha charms as protective talismans, which flyers utilized as kinship identification markers worldwide.

• Frontline Correspondence and Care Packages:

  • Chung maintained rigorous epistolary schedules, personally drafting $14$ letters per day; mail addressed simply to "Dr. or Mom Chung, San Francisco, U.S.A." consistently reached her.
  • Holiday care packages assembled with volunteers contained scarce comforts: scotch, Blum's confections, chewing gum cartons, dried noodle soup, shaving cream, razor blades, cigarettes, coffee candy, fruitcake, sardines, and toilet paper.
  • Servicemen across branches and ranks identified each other globally via Chung's engraved silver rings, wallets, and miniature Buddhas.
  • Kiwi Number 234, war correspondent Bill Baldwin, secured immediate torpedo bomber transport off a carrier by citing Mom Chung to Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., scooping rival journalists covering General Douglas MacArthur's Philippine landings.
  • Vincent Turner (son of Golden Dolphin Number 111) noted that the family circumvented rigid military rank divides, enabling enlisted men, junior officers, and commanders to fraternize on equal footing.

• Recruitment Operations and Chinatown Clinic Trophy Room:

  • Chung functioned as an unofficial, highly effective one-woman recruiting station, vetting prospective pilots before dispatching them directly to sympathetic general officers.
  • She curtailed daily medical clinic operations to two hours per day, converting her Chinatown practice into a war trophy room lined with battle relics:
  • Shrapnel from a Japanese bomb striking the USS Astoria during the Battle of the Coral Sea, gifted by Rear Admiral W. W. Smith (Bastard Number 52).
  • Dented cans of Spam and Planters Peanuts salvaged from the sinking aircraft carrier USS Lexington by Lieutenant Commander Frank "Red" Gill (Bastard Number 4).
  • The red tin Rising Sun insignia retrieved from the first Japanese aircraft downed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, donated by Marine Corps Captain L. W. Ashwell (Bastard Number 509).
  • To finance operations, Chung managed the House of Chung art and curio retail store and received private gifts, though she exhausted significant personal savings.

• Subversion of Domestic Hierarchies:

  • While female guests assisted with meal preparations, Chung mandated that high-ranking officers execute all kitchen clean-up duties.
  • Commanders, captains, commodores, and admirals washed dishes and cleared tables, while lower-ranking lieutenants emptied ashtrays and vacuumed.
  • Navy Reserve Commander Eleanor Rigby recalled witnessing Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester W. Nimitz rolling up his trouser cuffs to swab Chung's kitchen floor.

Racial Politics, Selective Inclusion, and the Vilification of the Enemy

• Rejection by the Chinese Nationalist Government:

  • Seeking to serve her ancestral homeland, Chung volunteered as a medical officer to the Republic of China in 1933 and 1937.
  • In 1933, Dr. J. H. Liu, head of the Chinese National Health Administration, rejected her application via the San Francisco consulate, citing non-urgent conditions in North China, lack of state salary, and her lucrative California practice.
  • Her 1937 application was similarly rebuffed under the pretext of avoiding U.S. diplomatic entanglements.
  • These rejections occurred despite Nationalist recruitment under the banner "National Salvation through Aviation" (originating in 1917), which trained $150$ to $200$ Chinese American male pilots while categorically excluding female aviators who volunteered alongside them.

• Marginality in San Francisco Chinatown:

  • Chung remained alienated from the seven dominant women's wartime relief associations in Chinatown, such as the New Life Association (composed of elite wives allied with Madame Chiang Kai-shek) and the Fidelis Coterie.
  • Younger second-generation groups like the Square and Circle Club awarded her only honorary membership, kept at distance by generational divides and rumors regarding her sexuality.
  • Chinatown print media like the Chinese Digest ($1936-1939$) rarely highlighted Chung's solo endeavors, featuring her only when escorted by high-status Caucasians, such as Captain Jim Musick of the China Clipper.
  • Writer Gertrude Atherton summarized contemporary white perceptions: "The fluid in her body may be Chinese but her brain cells are American."

• Cultural Brokerage and Civic Pageantry:

  • Chung co-founded the Rice Bowl Parties alongside Chinatown Six Companies president B. S. Fong and San Francisco Chronicle editor Paul C. Smith (an adopted son).
  • Staged in over $700$ cities, San Francisco's three multi-day celebrations featured carnivals, parades, and street fairs, collecting $\$235,000$ in Chinese humanitarian aid while invigorating local retail commerce.
  • Major James Marshall McHugh, assistant naval attaché in China, covertly solicited Chung to recruit $200$ American reserve aviators for China at $\$650.00\,\text{gold per month}$ plus travel, explicitly noting the U.S. would disavow her as an independent Chinese partisan if detected.

• Anti-Japanese Sentiment and Racial Warfare:

  • Chung extracted promises from departing pilots to exterminate enemies, stating: "Bring me back seven Jap scalps. Get seven for yourself."
  • The Navy fighter squadron VF-2 ("Fighting Two" or the "Grim Reapers") pledged to destroy $200$ Japanese aircraft as a Christmas gift for Chung, achieving their target five months early in July.
  • Correspondence from her sons contained vicious dehumanization, branding Japanese adversaries as "monkey like creatures," practicing cannibals, and subhuman entities requiring annihilation, while contrasting them with respected, professional German pilots.
  • Anti-Japanese sentiments were embraced across Chinatown communities, where nine-year-old Lorena How boycotted Japanese toy imports and protested Japanese-owned curio bazaars.
  • Pseudoscientific wartime media like Time magazine's December 1941 guide "How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs" attempted to distinguish Chinese from Japanese individuals via anatomy, posture, and gait.
  • These racial caricatures created dangerous collateral consequences: an adopted serviceman once accosted Chung's biological nephew, Clifford Yip (son of her sister Anna), mistakenly assuming he was Japanese.

• The Oriental Mammy Paradox:

  • Chung's wartime public persona evoked the cultural archetype of the self-sacrificing domestic "mammy," reminiscent of Hattie McDaniel's portrayals in David O. Selznick's Gone With the Wind (1939) and Since You Went Away (1944).
  • In California, Asian American labor historically occupied domestic positions as cooks, houseboys, and servants.
  • Chung complicated this subservient stereotype by maintaining absolute domestic authority, managing elite white military officers, and asserting independent leadership.

The Legislative Founding and Administrative Exclusion of the WAVES

• Military Gender Exclusions:

  • Women's military service prior to World War II was largely restricted to civilian status without rank, benefits, or pensions.
  • The Naval Reserve Act of 1916 allowed "any citizen" to enlist, permitting approximately $13,000$ white women to serve as yeomen in World War I; however, revisions in 1925 and 1938 explicitly restricted naval reserve enlistment to men.
  • In early 1942, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers sponsored legislation establishing the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), which the Senate approved as a civilian auxiliary rather than full military status, capping African American recruitment at a segregated $10\%$ quota.

• Chung's Lobbying for the Women's Naval Reserve:

  • In March 1942, Chung approached Captain Irving McQuiston (Son Number 465) in the Navy Department to enlist as a surgeon; upon learning a legislative act was required, she mobilized her kinship network.
  • Chung enlisted Representative Melvin Maas (Son Number 447; Colonel, Marine Corps Reserve; ranking member of the House Naval Affairs Committee) to author and introduce House Bill 6807 on April 15, 1942.
  • The House Naval Affairs Committee approved H.R. 6807 within thirty minutes, and the House passed it the following day in twenty minutes; Maas credited the reserve directly as Chung's "brain-child."
  • For Senate sponsorship, Chung secured Senator Raymond Willis (Kiwi Number 124) via his executive secretary, Ailene Loveland (Kiwi Number 120), alongside Senate Military Affairs Committee chair Senator Albert "Happy" Chandler (Golden Dolphin Number 98).
  • Bipartisan support was solidified through Alice Roosevelt Longworth (Kiwi Number 49) lobbying conservative Republicans, and Mary Early Holmes (Kiwi Number 130; sister of presidential press secretary Steve Early) hosting a dinner party with House Speaker Sam Rayburn and key New Deal leaders.

• Legislative Compromises and Bureaucratic Hostility:

  • The Navy Bureau of Navigation and Bureau of Personnel initially rejected women's enlistment, while Joy Bright Hancock and the Bureau of Aeronautics coordinated an under-the-table effort with Chung to force the Navy's hand.
  • Congressional conservatives vehemently contested the measure: senators argued that disabled men should be mobilized rather than women, and Willis's niece warned of southern opposition to African American enlistment.
  • To appease critics, the final WAVES bill, signed into law on July 30, 1942, imposed strict statutory limitations:
  • Restricted service exclusively to shore duty within the continental United States to release men for sea combat.
  • Barred female officers from exercising command over male personnel.
  • Capped the highest possible rank at Captain.
  • Disqualified any woman married to military personnel or possessing dependent children under 18 years of age.

• Systemic Rejection of Chung's Commissions:

  • Chung applied for a naval commission in April 1942, supported by Maas's personal recommendation, but received routine administrative brush-offs from the Bureau of Navigation.
  • When Senator Willis urged the Navy to install Chung as a director or planner in June 1942, highlighting her surgical talent and leadership, the department dismissed the appeal.
  • The Navy established an Advisory Council dominated by elite white female academicians, appointing Wellesley College President Mildred H. McAfee as the first director of the WAVES, accompanied by deans from Barnard, Radcliffe, Sweet Briar, Duke, Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Unlike the Women's Army Corps (WAC), the WAVES cultivated an elite, upper-class image, featuring college campus training sites, Elizabeth Arden cosmetic salons, tailored department-store uniforms, and maid service.
  • In late 1942, Chung applied through San Francisco Navy Procurement Officer Tova Petersen Wiley, seeking a direct senior commission; McAfee rejected her application on the grounds that Chung, born in 1889, was 51 years old, exceeding the statutory maximum age of 50 by over one year.

• Racial and Sexual Barriers:

  • The Bureau of Naval Personnel instituted a strict "racial replacement" doctrine, dictating that female reservists could only replace shore-duty men of identical racial backgrounds; because the Navy relegated African American and Filipino men primarily to messman and steward branches, Black women were completely barred from the WAVES until January 1945.
  • In November 1943, Captain Darden recommended admitting native-born Chinese American women; Wiley endorsed the measure, but overall numbers remained low, prompting some to enlist in the WAC instead.
  • Federal surveillance records dated as early as 1940 revealed that Chinatown informants had reported rumors of Chung's homosexuality to Naval Intelligence, which also noted her forced resignation from the Professional Women's Club of San Francisco in early 1943.
  • Edith Stallings, WAVES Director of the Naval Air Operational Training Command in Florida, uncovered through Maas that the presidential administration had issued a quiet directive forbidding any public association between Chung and the founding of the WAVES.
  • By the war's conclusion, approximately $350,000$ women served across the U.S. military—$140,000$ in the Army and $100,000$ in the Navy—yet Chung received zero institutional recognition from the service she helped establish.

Asian Pacific American Women, Stereotyping, and Feminist Politics

• The Politics of Invisibility and Stereotyping:

  • Asian Pacific American (APA) women encounter pervasive social invisibility, routinely forced to confront the entrenched stereotype of the passive, docile, and sweet "Oriental" woman.
  • Mainstream audiences systematically sanitize presentations by women of color, embracing performances that charm or entertain while rejecting analyses that confront systemic white privilege or institutional oppression.
  • White audiences frequently respond to radical critique with dismissive, patronizing appraisals, such as, "That was lovely my dear, just lovely," leaving foundational preconceptions undisturbed.
  • Dominant liberal culture perpetuates the fallacy that Asian women represent the "least political, least oppressed, or most polite" demographic, or that they are naturally content within traditional domestic roles as wives and mothers.

• Documented History of Activism:

  • Defying myths of political passivity, historical records demonstrate continuous resistance: in 1942, a young Japanese American woman in Seattle was one of only two individuals who formally mounted legal challenges to the constitutionality of the federal Evacuation Order.
  • Grassroots radicalism expanded through seminal publications and organizations:
  • The 1971 publication of the treatise Asian Women, featuring incisive political analyses and poetry.
  • The Basement Workshop community collective in New York City.
  • The Unbound Feet feminist performance and literary ensemble in San Francisco.
  • Historic regional gatherings showcase continuous grassroots mobilizing, such as the Asian Pacific Women's Conferences held across California, New York, and Hawaii.

• Critiques of Mainstream White Feminism:

  • Established feminist organizations solicit women of color merely to "join" or provide "input," functioning as superficial tokenism rather than genuine partnership.
  • At a Workshop for Third World Women held at the San Francisco Women's Building, Cherrie Moraga challenged the dynamic where white feminists demanded that women of color educate them, asserting: "What each of us needs to do about what we don't know is to go look for it" (reported in Plexus).
  • Mainstream feminist organizations remain primarily oriented around middle-class white interests, imposing external priorities rather than restructuring their goals to dismantle systemic racism alongside sexism.
  • While white feminist leaders transitioned smoothly from 1960s civil rights activism into institutional sexual politics, Asian Pacific American women dedicated their organizational energies to ethnic community centers, university Ethnic Studies departments, and grassroots advocacy.
  • Activists reject the artificial binary demanding a "loyalty oath" favoring ethnicity over gender liberation, asserting that ethnic survival and women's rights are inextricably linked.

• Generational Trauma and Immigrant Realities:

  • Grassroots initiatives directly address community survival, such as the Pacific Asian American Center (established in 1975 as the sole Asian American employment center in Orange County, California).
  • Immigrant maternal histories illustrate survival amid isolation: a mother married at age 19, uprooted from an extended family network, was brought to the United States to raise four children alone while her student husband maintained a detached, bachelor lifestyle.
  • Suffering profound isolation, the mother frequently contemplated suicide as an escape from misery, demonstrating that surviving solely "for the sake" of one's children demanded extraordinary courage and resilience.

The Personal as Political: Structural Racism, Selective Acceptance, and Tenuous Belonging

• The Inseparability of Racism and Sexism:

  • For women of color and children of immigrant families, personal survival is directly political; systemic oppression cannot be neatly compartmentalized into abstract, isolated theories.
  • Mainstream society consistently dismisses systemic critiques leveled by racial minorities as mere personal bitterness, resentment, or vindictiveness against the dominant order, asking: "If they hate it so much here, why don't they go back?"
  • This pattern mirrors the invalidation experienced by lesbians, whose opposition to patriarchal institutions is often trivialized as spiteful score-settling rather than legitimate ideological critique.

• The Illusion of Assimilation and Conditional Hospitality:

  • Faith in the American Dream and cultural assimilation provides no security against state-sanctioned persecution during geopolitical crises.
  • Prior to 1941, many second-generation Japanese Americans pursued full cultural assimilation, actively disavowing Japanese foods to assert their American identity; nevertheless, the federal government forcibly interned over $120,000$ Japanese Americans in concentration camps in 1942 without regard to citizenship.
  • During the 1960s civil rights movement, active advocacy for the Fair Housing Bill by a Japanese American family provoked a white church companion to ask: "Why are you doing this to us? Haven't you and your family been happy with us in our church? Haven't we treated you well?"
  • This reaction underscores that racial minorities in white institutional spaces are regarded merely as temporary guests whose welcome depends on deferential behavior.
  • Analogous patterns recurred during the 1979-1981 Iranian hostage crisis, where college students distinguished between Iranian immigrants who minded their own business and "ungrateful ones" who demonstrated and criticized the U.S. government.
  • True political solidarity requires white feminists and mainstream institutions to dismantle systemic racism through collective education, building coalitions that link domestic women of color to Third World anti-imperialist struggles globally.

Questions, Dialogue, and Recorded Exchanges

• Oral History Interview: Tova Petersen Wiley on Margaret Chung's WAVES Application (1969):

  • Interviewer: "Didn't you often have to get in touch with Washington to say here's this situation, what do I do about it?"
  • Wiley: "That's right."
  • Interviewer: "Do you remember any of those?"
  • Wiley: "… I remember we had a request from a very prominent woman Chinese doctor in San Francisco to become a WAVE. She felt that she had started the whole program by recommending it and she felt very close to it."
  • Interviewer: "What do you mean—recommending it?"
  • Wiley: "She said that she was very close to the Navy and knew a good many high ranking officers. She had suggested that women would be well able to handle many of these jobs. Whether or not she was the one who had sparked-plugged it or not, I don't know. She thought that she was."
  • Interviewer: "Did she ever say who she had suggested it to?"
  • Wiley: "No, not that I know of. She thought that she should go into the WAVES with a high rank right then and there without any indoctrination, as I had done. I didn't know quite what to do about that one. So, I wrote a letter back to Miss MacAfee and sent her the outline of her background and her career. I was so stirred up about it that I had neglected to notice her birthdate. Miss MacAfee wrote back and said, 'She's not qualified. She's fifty-one years old.'"

• Poetry Reading Dialogue: Mitsuye Yamada and Audience Member:

  • Audience Member: Expressed being deeply moved by Yamada's tragic but unbitter internment poems in Camp Notes and Other Poems (1976), but reacted defensively to the confrontational poem "To A Lady": "Why are you, at this late date, so angry, and why are you taking it so personally? We need to look to the future and stop wallowing in the past so much."
  • Mitsuye Yamada: "This poem is not at all about the past. I am talking about what is happening to us right now, about our nonsupport of each other, about our noncaring about each other, about not seeing connections between racism and sexism in our lives. As a child of immigrant parents, as a woman of color in a white society and as a woman in a patriarchal society, what is personal to me is political."

• Housing Rights Exchange: Mitsuye Yamada and Church Member (1960s):

  • Church Friend: In response to Yamada's public campaigning for the Fair Housing Bill: "Why are you doing this to us? Haven't you and your family been happy with us in our church? Haven't we treated you well?"
  • Significance: Exposed that regardless of Christian fellowship, Asian Americans were viewed as conditional guests expected to maintain docile gratitude rather than full citizens entitled to demand structural equity.

• The Christening of the Fair-Haired Bastards (1931):

  • Frank Fulgham "Red" Gill: "Gee, you are as understanding as a mother, and we are going to adopt you; but, hell, you are an old maid, and you haven't got a father for us."
  • Dr. Margaret Chung: "Well, that makes you a lot of fair-haired bastards, doesn't it?"
  • The Sons: "Swell! We'll call ourselves your fair-haired bastards from now on, and we'll spread your fame into every corner of the world!"

• Late-Night Caregiving Dialogue: H. Joseph Chase and Margaret Chung:

  • H. Joseph Chase: (Standing over Chung's bed at 3:00 or 4:00 AM while recuperating from tropical fevers) "Mommie, I'm hungry."
  • Dr. Margaret Chung: Routinely arose without complaint to prepare full courses of vegetable soup, steaks, potato patties, and fried rice, conversing until 7:00 AM before tucking him in and departing for hospital surgery.

• Clandestine Military Recruitment: Major James Marshall McHugh and Margaret Chung:

  • Major McHugh: "We do not dare send out the regular men from the aircorps of the Army, Navy, and Marines, for Japan would use that immediately as an incident. If you are willing, you could do a great service to America and China by getting two hundred of your aviators and sending them out to the Orient a few at a time. The pay will be $650.00 a month gold, and the round trip passage. Here is the address of the people who will arrange for their transportation and their salaries. But of course, if the Japanese hear about this and try to make an incident of it, we will simply shrug our shoulders and say, 'Well, what the hell! We know nothing about it. She's a Chinese woman with her own private army of aviators, and we know nothing about it. After all, you have been attacking the land of her forefathers for several years.'"

• Congressional Initiation of the WAVES Legislation:

  • Dr. Margaret Chung: (To Captain Irving McQuiston in the Navy Department, March 1942) Offered her personal medical services, asking how to navigate the legislative barrier.
  • Captain McQuiston: "Well, Mom, you will have to get a Bill drafted, and have it brought before Congress for discussion and passage."
  • Dr. Margaret Chung: "How are such things arranged?"
  • Captain McQuiston: "Do you know anyone in Congress who can introduce a Bill for you?"
  • Dr. Margaret Chung: "Well, I have a son…. Congressman Melvin Maas, of Minnesota, who is a Colonel in the Marine Air Corps, and my 447th son. He is on the House Committee of Naval Affairs, and I am sure he would be happy to introduce a Bill for me."

• Bipartisan Capitol Hill Dinner Dialogue: Mary Early Holmes, Sam Rayburn, and Guests:

  • Mary Early Holmes: (Addressing the House Democratic leadership after the soup course) "Mom, tell these Gentlemen about your Bastards Club."
  • Dr. Margaret Chung: Recounted the colorful history and origins of her surrogate pilot fraternity to the assembled legislators.
  • Mary Early Holmes: "Mom, tell these gentlemen what you are here in Washington for right now."
  • Dr. Margaret Chung: Explained her mission to pass legislation authorizing women to enlist directly in the Navy and serve their country.
  • Mary Early Holmes: "Don't you think that's a good idea?"
  • Speaker Sam Rayburn and Lawmakers: Concurred that the measure was sound.
  • Mary Early Holmes: "When Mom's Bill comes up before you in the House and the Senate, would you all vote for it?"
  • Congressional Leaders: Pledged their full legislative backing, guaranteeing passage through the Democratic majority.