History Review

Chinese American Women Defense Workers in World War II Author(s): Xiaojian Zhao Source: California History, Vol. 75, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 138-153 Published by: University of California Press in association with the California Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25177576 . Accessed: 10/07/2013 13:20

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Before the Second World War it was difficult for Chinese American women to get jobs outside Chinatown because of racial and gender

discrimination. However, the nation's wartime needs required that every able-bodied per son be mobilized, including

women and racial minorities. The result was an unprecedented hiring

of Chinese

American women in the Bay Area's wartime industries. This picture shows Nancy Lew Mar

working as a riv

eter at the Pan-American Airways on Treasure Island. Nancy Lew Mar Collection.

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Chinese American Women

Defense Workers in World War II

by Xiaojian Zhao

In February 1945, Fortune Magazine published an article on the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, Cal

ifornia, including eight photos of the shipyards workers. One of the captions for the photos says, "Chinese Woman: she hasn't missed a day's work in

two years." 1

This woman was Ah Yoke Gee, a

welder in Kaiser Richmond Shipyard Number Two.*

The weekly magazine of the Kaiser Richmond ship

yards, Pore 'N'Aft, described her as one of the oldest

crew members of Richmond shipyards. From July 31,

1942, when she started to work in the shipyard, to

April 20,1945, Ah Yoke Gee had missed only one day of work to spend time with her oldest son,

a ser

viceman who was passing through San Francisco on

his way to the Pacific front.2 At a time when there was a

shortage of labor, Ah Yoke Gee's story was

apparently useful for the Kaiser company's public relations. Here, a middle-aged Chinese American

woman was being recognized

as a patriotic, hard

working defense worker, who was

doing her best to

contribute to the nation's war effort.

Ironically, this model shipyard worker had been

deprived of citizenship by her own government.

Born in 1895 on the Monterey Peninsula in Califor nia, Ah Yoke Gee was a second-generation Chinese

American for whom U. S. citizenship was a

*The real names of some of my informants are not given in

this essay upon their request. I use the pinyin system in translit

erations, except for names of well-known persons. If a person's

name has been printed in English sources before, I follow the way it was in print to avoid confusion.

birthright. Her legal status changed, however, after

she married a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong.

During the period of Chinese exclusion from 1882 to 1943, Ah Yoke Gee's husband, an alien from China,

was racially ineligible for naturalization.3 Moreover,

the Cable Act of September 22,1922, stipulated that women citizens who married aliens ineligible for cit

izenship could no

longer be citizens themselves.4

Though Ah Yoke Gee worked for the nation's defense

industry, she could not vote as a citizen. Her daugh

ters recalled that she had been very upset about los

ing her citizenship because she always considered

herself an American. At age forty-six, she finally had the opportunity to work in

a defense industry to

demonstrate her patriotism to her country. It was also

during the war that Congress repealed the Chinese

exclusion laws and made it possible later for Ah Yoke Gee to regain her citizenship through naturalization.

Unfortunately, her husband, who died before the

war, did not live to see the happy day.5 Ah Yoke

passed away in 1973.

World War II marked a turning point in the lives of Chinese Americans. For the first time, Chinese

Americans began to be accepted by the larger Amer ican society. Chinese American

women not only had a chance to work at jobs traditionally held by men, but were also allowed to show their loyalty to their

country. Although scholars have long recognized the

importance of World War II in the lives of American women, and there has been increasing popular inter est in the topic since the release in the late 1970s of a

documentary?"The Life and Times of Rosie the

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Riveter"?the existing literature has overlooked the

profound impact of the war on Chinese American

women. Partly because of

a scarcity of English-lan

guage sources on this topic, some scholars simply

have assumed that Chinese American women did

not share the experience of "Rosie the Riveter."6

Based on sources from Chinese-language news

papers and reports, company documents, and oral

history interviews, this essay focuses on the unique

experience of Chinese American female defense

workers in the San Francisco Bay area. It examines

the racial discrimination and prejudice that had

forced Chinese Americans to isolate themselves in

their ethnic communities, and explores how second

generation Chinese American women, together with men of their communities, grasped the wartime

opportunity to enter the larger American society. I

chose the San Francisco Bay area as the setting of this

study because the area had both the largest

concen

tration of defense industries and the largest con

centration of Chinese American women during the war.

The war created a favorable climate for Chinese

Americans to be accepted by American society, but

looking back, many Chinese Americans have mixed

feelings about the war. The bombing of Pearl Har

bor was one of the most tragic incidents in the his

tory of the United States. Without it, however, Chinese Americans would not have been able to

enter defense industries or the armed services. Since

the United States and China were allies against com

mon enemies during the war, American images of

Chinese began to change from negative to positive ones. Whereas, once, negative stereotypes of the

Chinese had dominated popular culture, the Amer

ican mass media now described the Chinese as

polite, moderate, and hard-working. On December

22, 1941, Time magazine, for example, published a

short article to help the American public differenti

ate their Chinese "friends" from the Japanese. The

facial expressions of the Chinese, according to the

article, were more "placid, kindly, open," while those

of the Japanese were more

"positive, dogmatic, arro

gant."7 Also, because World War II was considered

by the American public as a

"good war" against fas

cists who had launched a racist war, it was impor tant for the United States itself to improve its domestic race relations. Chinese Americans, too,

recognized the racial dimension of this war. "It is for

tunate," said an editorial in the Jinshan shibao (Chi nese Times), a San Francisco-based Chinese-language

daily newspaper, "that this war has the white race

and the yellow race on both sides and therefore will

not turn into a war between the two."8

Moreover, Chinese Americans were needed for the

nation's armed forces and defense industries. In

May 1942, Bay Area defense establishments began to advertise jobs in local Chinese newspapers. Rich

mond shipyards, in particular, announced that they would hire Chinese Americans regardless of their cit

izenship status or their English skills. In

a recruitment

speech, Henry Kaiser, president of Kaiser Industries, which operated four shipyards in Richmond, called

upon Bay Area Chinese Americans to work in his

shipyards to support the war effort. The Moore Dry

Dock Company hired Chinese-speaking instructors in their Oakland welding school and started

a spe cial bus service between the shipyard and Chinatown

for Chinese American trainees.

After decades of isolation imposed by the larger American society, the Bay Area Chinese American

communities lost no time in seizing this opportunity. In various meetings and social gatherings,

commu

nity leaders and organizations urged Chinese Amer

ican residents to participate in the war efforts.

Because military service would qualify immigrants for U.S. citizenship and

some Chinese immigrants had been granted citizenship while in the Army, it was considered a breakthrough in challenging the

exclusion acts. Jinshan shibao published a number of

articles regarding the advantages of defense jobs. First, defense jobs

were well paid. Second, these jobs could be used for draft deferment. Third, defense

employees could apply for government- subsidized

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housing, which provided a great opportunity for

Chinese Americans to move out of their isolated eth

nic ghettos.10 Because few companies recorded the number of

their Chinese American employees, the existing lit

erature tends either to overlook them or give inac curate estimates of them. In The Chinese Experience in America, Shih-shan Henry Tsai estimated that in

1943, Chinese Americans "made up some 15 percent of the shipyard work force in the San Francisco Bay area."11 Since in 1943, the Bay Area had about 100,000

shipyard workers, Tsai's estimate suggests that

15,000 were Chinese Americans.12 However, given the fact that the Bay Area's entire Chinese American

population, including all age groups, was

only about

22,000 in 1940, and only a small number of Chinese

Americans migrated to the West Coast during the

war, it was very unlikely that 15,000 of them (over 68 percent)

were defense workers.13 On August 21,

1942, the Chinese Press, a San Francisco Chinatown

based English-language newspaper, reported that

1,600 Chinese Americans worked in Bay Area

defense industries.14 This was one year before the

peak of the war, before several of the Bay Area's

major wartime shipbuilding establishments, includ

ing Richmond Shipyard Number Three and Marin

ship in Sausalito, began production. The number of

Chinese American defense workers would increase

significantly a few months later, after major defense

establishments ran their ads in Chinese community newspapers. Marinship alone, according to Jinshan shibao, employed 400 Chinese Americans in March

1943. At the launching ceremony of Sun Yat-sen, a Lib

erty Ship named after the leader of the Chinese Rev

olution of 1911, Marinship invited all the yard's Chinese American employees and members of their

families. The ship was christened by Mrs. Tao-ming

Wei, wife of the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., and

Madam Chiang Kai-shek was the guest of honor.15

Based on these scattered pieces of information and

interviews with old timers of local Chinese com

munities, a reasonable estimate is that by 1943, about

Born and schooled in Oakland, Elizabeth Lew Anderson, shown here, worked as a metalsmith

at Alameda Naval Air Station during

the war. Eliz

abeth Lew Anderson Collection.

5,000 Chinese Americans were working (or had

worked) for defense-related industries in the Bay Area, and between 500 to 600 of them were women.16

For a number of reasons, there were fewer female

than male Chinese Americans in defense industries.

The Chinese population in the United States histor

ically has had an unbalanced sex ratio. Most of the

early Chinese immigrants were male, and the Exclu

sion Act of 1882 also forced male Chinese immigrants who had married women in their native provinces

SUMMER 1996 141

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to leave their wives and children in China. Only reg istered merchants and their families, students, teach

ers, diplomats, and travelers could be exempted from the exclusion. In order to bring their wives to

the United States, many Chinese laborers were eager to change their status

to merchants. Some of them

accomplished this by saving a small amount of

money and then raising capital through a hui to start

their own businesses.17 Others listed their names as

partners in businesses of relatives and friends. In

exchange for such privileges, they sometimes offered

years of free labor. The 1906 earthquake in San Fran

cisco to some extent facilitated the immigration of

Chinese. Since birth records of the city were

destroyed during the earthquake and fire, many

Chinese grasped the opportunity to claim U.S. citi

zenship and used their new status to send for their

sons and daughters.18 Not until after 1910 did fam

ily-oriented life begin gradually to replace the old bachelor society. By 1940, Chinese American citizens

finally outnumbered alien residents in Chinese

American communities.19 Nevertheless, that year there were still 285 Chinese American men for every one hundred Chinese American women.20

The precarious economic situation of immigrant Chinese families compelled the majority of Chinese American women to help

earn an income, no mat

ter whether they were wives of business owners,

wives of laborers, or daughters of immigrants.21 Women's work in Chinese communities was often

integrated with family life and family businesses. In small shops,

women worked alongside their hus

bands, between their households chores. Children of

shop-owners often worked from an

early age, begin

ning by folding socks in laundry shops or cleaning vegetables in restaurants and moving

on to more dif

ficult tasks as they got older. While women and chil

dren did not earn wages, their work was

indispensable to the family business since few

busi

nesses could afford to hire extra hands.22

Women whose families were not wealthy enough to own businesses found employment mostly

as

cannery workers, shrimp cleaners, or garment work

ers. Cleaning shrimp

was a common job for

women

with young children. During the shrimp season, some women would bring shrimp home and sit

with their children shelling the shrimp from morn

ing till night, sometimes under candlelight. Wages were based on the weight of the shrimp that they shelled daily. The most

common employment for

Chinese American women was in the garment indus

try, which made up 58 percent of all industrial

employment in San Francisco's Chinatown in the late

1930s. In the early 1940s, there were more than sev

enty garment shops, most of which had fewer than

fifty employees. At a time when unionized garment

workers received $19 to $30 a week, workers in Chi

natown's garment shops received only $4 to $16. A

typical garment shop was located at the owner's

home, where family members of the shop-owner and

employees often worked together.23

During the war, in contrast to Chinese American

men, who were more likely to be encouraged to join the military or defense work, women's primary

duties still consisted of being wives and mothers.

Throughout the war years, there were no articles or

editorials in Chinese newspapers specifically calling on Chinese women to enter defense industries. "It

is the servicemen who will do the fighting for us," Madame C. T. Feng, chairman of the American

Women's Voluntary Service (an overseas Chinese

organization) told Chinese American women. "We

must show our fighting men that we are...absolutely

behind them."24 As part of its war effort, the China

town branch YWCA in San Francisco started a spe cial weekly class for

women to learn time-saving

ways for preparing nutritious food. In a

speech delivered to a YWCA open house meeting, the Y's

administrator, Jane Kwong Lee, called upon Chinese

American women to support the country by giving their families "the right nutritional food."25 What

open support existed for defense employment for women came mostly from the American-educated

second generation. As a matter of fact, only the Eng

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After the war, Elizabeth Lew Anderson married a Cau

casian merchant seaman. Most of the time she accompa nied him when he traveled and worked outside California, but she returned to work at the Naval Air Station during both the Korean and Vietnam wars. This 1983 photograph captures her

at work. Elizabeth Lew Anderson Collection.

lish-language Chinese Press occasionally reported activities of Chinese American women defense

workers. In contrast, Jinshan shibao, a major local Chi

nese-language newspaper that had a

larger circula

tion, paid little attention to the subject. On April 16, 1943, Jade Snow Wong,

a San Francisco-born young Chinese American woman, christened a Liberty

Ship at a Richmond shipyard and made the news in

the San Francisco Chronicle, but there was no cover

age of the event in Jinshan shibao. Not until three days later, after friends and relatives of the Wong family

made complaints, did the newspaper print Wong's story and offer a public apology.

2?

It was difficult for many Chinese American women to go outside their communities to work, even when they wanted to. Jobs in ethnic factories

were low paying. Nevertheless, the piece-work sys tem and the flexible working hours made it possi

ble for women to combine wage-earning with their

family obligations. Before the war, 80 percent of the women who worked in San Francisco's Chinatown were married and 75 percent of them had children.

Married garment shop workers could take time off to cook meals, shop, and pick up children from

school. Garment shops also allowed women to

bring their small children with them to work. It was

very common to see babies sleeping in little cribs next to their mothers' sewing machines and toddlers

crawling around on the floor.27 Jobs outside the eth

nic community, however, did not allow such prac tices.

The ethnically exclusive working environment, moreover, provided

a place where immigrant Chi

nese women could socialize. A married Chinese woman with children did not have much time for

social life. At work, however, she could chat with

friends. Since everyone at work spoke Chinese, women found the working environment agreeable, and intimacy in sharing experiences of life in the

United States developed naturally. The relationship between shop-owners and workers, if often eco

nomically exploitative, was nonetheless friendly.

Family members of the shop-owners often worked

side-by-side with the workers. Their children were

told to respect the employees, often addressing older workers as 'Auntie" or "Uncle." Garment fac

tory jobs, therefore, were in great demand in Chi

nese American communities. Even the wives of

bankers or small merchants sometimes sought

employment there.28

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Thus, although most Chinese American women

were compelled to

earn money to supplement their

family income, they did it while taking care of their husbands and children. Since the exclusion acts

made it difficult for Chinese women to immigrate to the United States and those who made it often did so after years of separation from their husbands, it

was extremely hard for them to take jobs that con

flicted with their household duties. Childcare was one of the major problems. Nursery schools were not

available in San Francisco's Chinatown until the

early 1940s, and Chinese American women were not

accustomed to the idea of leaving their children at

childcare facilities. Since very few Chinese immi

grated to the United States with their parents, they usually did not have their parents helping out with childcare.29

The decades-long isolation had also limited the

ability of immigrant Chinese working women to

communicate with the outside world. Since they often worked between household chores, they had no time to participate in mainstream cultural activ

ities and little chance to speak English. After years of working at Chinatown jobs, they found the out

side world too remote from their daily experience.

They did not have any non-Chinese friends and did not know whom to trust outside their ethnic com

munities. For wives of shop-owners, their departure for outside jobs would harm the family businesses that depended

on the free labor of family members.

Transportation was also an almost insurmountable

problem. Since very few Chinese families had cars

at the time (4 percent in the late 1930s in San Fran

cisco), the majority of Chinese immigrant working women were familiar only with the

area within

walking distance from their homes. To these women,

commuting from one city in the Bay Area to another

was no different from traveling from one state to

another.30 Given the social isolation of the immigrant gen

eration, it is not surprising that the Chinese Ameri

can women who worked in defense industries were

mostly the second-generation daughters of immi

grant women.31 Among the eighty-two Chinese

American women about whom I found information

in various sources, and the twenty-seven women

whom I was able to locate to conduct oral history interviews, only four

were over the age of forty at

the time they worked.32 Few of them were married

with children. Most of these women had gone to Cal

ifornia's public schools; they had at least a high school education, and quite a few of them had

attended college. With relatively few household

responsibilities, in contrast to their mothers, they had

the freedom and independence to work outside the

home.

Since most of them were already living in the Bay Area before the war, these younger Chinese Ameri can women were among the first American women

to join the Bay Area's defense labor force. As early as May 1942, the Chinese Press reported that young Chinese American girls

were working in most of the

defense establishments in the region. At the Engineer

Supply Depot, Pier 90, eighteen-year-old Ruth Law was the youngest office staff member in the company. Her co-worker, Anita Lee, was an assistant to the

company's chief clerk. Fannie Yee, a

high school

senior at the time, won top secretarial honors for her

efficiency at work at Bethlehem Steel Corporation in

San Francisco. She worked with two other young women, Rosalind Woo and Jessie Wong. The major defense employers in San Francisco for Chinese

American women at the time, according to the Press, were the Army Department and Fort Mason. In

Oakland, the Army Supply Base recognized Stella Quan as a very capable clerk. The first two Chinese

American women who worked at Moore Dry Dock

Company were

Maryland Pong and Edna Wong. The

State Employment Bureau also had Chinese Amer

ican women on its staff. Before Kaiser's Richmond

shipyards and Marinship began production work,

many young Chinese American girls worked at

Mare Island Navy Shipyard. Among them were

Anita Chew, Mildred Lew, and Evelyn Lee of Oak

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Pearl Wong (second from the right) worked at the Oak land Draft Board during the war. Third from the right is _

Army Major Farington. Pearl Wong Collection.

land. Both Jenny Sui of San Francisco and Betty Choy of Vallejo started

as messenger girls in the yard, but

they were soon

promoted to clerk-typists.33 Some women even left their professional training

or occupations for defense-related work. Miaolan Ye,

an Oakland-born Chinese American girl, was a col

lege student majoring in agriculture at the time. She

left school during the war to work as an inspector

in a defense establishment in San Leandro. Hon

olulu-born Betty Lum had been a nurse before the

war. She, however, thought "shipbuilding is the pre sent must industry of America" and resigned from

her nursing job to learn acetylene burning at a Rich

mond shipyard. According to Fore 'N' Aft, there were three reasons for Betty to support the

war effort:

she was an American citizen, she was Chinese, and

she had a nephew who was killed during the attack

on Pearl Harbor. It is unclear when Betty Lum

moved to the Bay Area, but the Kaiser company used

her voice to urge other Chinese women to partici

pate in defense work. Betty also had two sisters

working in defense industries, one of them at Rich

mond Shipyard Number Three. Her brother, a den

tist at the time, was prepared to join the Army.35

Unlike single young women, it was much

more difficult for married Chinese American women to take defense jobs unless they did

not have small children at home. After she married, Ah Yoke Gee spent most of her time at home tak

ing care of her six children. She kept her sewing

machine running whenever she was free from

household chores. One of her daughters remem

bered that sometimes she woke up at two o'clock in the morning and could still hear her mother

sewing. By the time the war started, Ah Yoke was

widowed. Two of her older children had left home

and the rest of them were in either high school or

college. Although she still cooked for her family, her children had their own routines and did not expect to be served in a formal way. Every morning before

leaving for her swing shift job in the shipyard, Ah Yoke would cook enough food for the whole fam

ily for the day. On weekends she shopped, washed, and cleaned.36

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A few married Chinese American women man

aged to find defense work alongside their husbands.

In late 1942, the Mare Island Navy Shipyard decided to select a Chinese female employee to christen

a Lib

erty Ship. Among the eight Chinese American nom

inees, two were married. The honor went to Mrs.

Yam, a Shop 51 electrician's helper. Mrs. Yam had just

graduated from San Jose High School. Her newly

wed husband, Fred Yam, was the yard's pipe-fitter.

Having joined the shipyard in June 1942, the young couple took the bus

to work together from San Fran

cisco's Chinatown to Vallejo. On December 18,1942, Mrs. Yam, accompanied by six young Chinese Amer

ican girls, smashed a bottle of champagne

at HMS

Foley's launching ceremony and became the first

Chinese American woman in California shipyards to receive this highest wartime honor. She said she

felt like "the proudest and happiest girl in the world."37

Other married Chinese American women joined defense work while their husbands were away from

home. Jane Jeong, a burner at Richmond Shipyard

Number Two, started her job in the shipyard only four months after her wedding. Before the war, Jane

Jeong had been a dancer and a nightclub manager.

She had also accumulated two hundred flying hours

and dreamed of being a pilot fighting against the

Japanese in China.38 After the United States officially entered the war, however, she realized that she could

support the war effort both in China and in the U.S.

by building ships. Since her husband was a merchant

seaman who was away from home most of the time,

Jane Jeong took a job at a Richmond shipyard.39 Coming from

a farming community

in Fresno, Mannie Lee moved to Richmond along with her hus

band and children. At a Kaiser shipyard, her husband

Henry Lee was a

graveyard-shift welder, while Man

nie worked with her two daughters, Henrietta Lee

and Hilda Fong, and a

daughter-in-law, Lena Lee, in the yard's electric shop.

In addition to the five ship

yard workers of the family, Mannie Lee's two sons

and her son-in-law were all in the Army. Although

born in America, it was a big change for Mannie to

move from her vegetable farm to Richmond. But at

least the family still worked and lived together. The difference was that everyone worked fewer hours

and made more money. Moreover, they enjoyed the

publicity from the company. Mannie and her family had never received any recognition

as hard-work

ing farmers.40

Although the majority of the Chinese American defense workers had grown up in the United States, racial discrimination and prejudice before the

war

had prevented their participation in many areas of

American society. Since sons in Chinese American

families usually had priority over

daughters in

receiving family support for higher education, Chi nese American girls had to work harder than other

students to save money or win scholarships to go to

college. And despite the fact that these women were

educated in the United States and had a good com

mand of English, Chinese American children in

racially integrated public schools in San Francisco were excluded from most of the extracurricular

activities. They could not dance with white children

and few were invited to parties organized by peo

ple other than Chinese. The way they were treated

in the job market was even worse: engineering grad

uates of Chinese descent from the University of Cal

ifornia, Berkeley, were

frequently rejected by American firms. While white women with college

degrees and special training worked as teachers,

nurses, secretaries, and social workers, similarly educated Chinese American women could only find

service jobs as elevator operators, waitresses,

dancers, and maids. Outside Chinese communities

their professional degrees were

meaningless, for

few people wanted their services.41 It was the war that opened the door to better-pay

ing jobs for Chinese American women. Aimei Chen,

who came to the United States shortly after she was

born, had grown up in a small Chinese community in Stockton. Before the war, she had worked as a

waitress in a Chinese cafe while attending junior col

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lege. Some Caucasian girls her age got jobs in local

dime stores, ice cream parlors, and department stores. Aimei, however, had never applied for those

jobs because she knew no Chinese would be hired.

While in college taking business classes, Aimei was

very pessimistic about her future. As a Chinese

American woman, it was unlikely that she could find a

job outside Chinatown. Moreover, Stockton's Chi

natown was very small and could not provide full

time employment for most of the women in the

community. But, shortly after Pearl Harbor, Aimei

learned from friends that defense industries were hir

ing, regardless of the applicants' ethnic backgrounds. She went with a friend to the Stockton Army Depot and was hired on the spot as

a secretary.42

Yulan Liu, an Oakland-born Chinese American

girl, had just graduated from high school in the summer of 1942. Her father, who had come to the

United States as a "paper son" in 1915, worked seven

days a week in a grocery store in Oakland's China

town.43 Yulan's mother worked in a laundry shop, where her four children spent most of their child

hood. Yulan also started to work in a laundry shop at age twelve. She did not have time to play with

other children, and she did not recall ever being invited to a Caucasian's house. After she graduated from high school, Yulan began to work full-time. She

did not like the laundry shop job, but there were few other alternatives. Most of the girls in Chinatown

were waitresses and garment workers. Some of her

friends worked as maids in private homes. One day, her brother got a job at Moore Dry Dock Company in Oakland and told Yulan that there were many

women shipbuilders there. Yulan went to the yard

the next day and got a

job as a welder.44

Being employed in a defense industry gave

some

Chinese American women a sense of belonging?of

finally being accepted by American society. At Marin

ship in Sausalito, Jade Snow Wong was happy that she was employed by

an 'American" company. A San

Francisco-born Chinese American girl, Jade Snow was the fifth daughter of

a garment shop-owner. She

In the summer of 1942, Jade Snow Wong, above, grad uated from Mills College. When she sought advice at the college placement office for

her job search, she was

told not to expect any opportunities in 'American busi

ness houses," and to look only for work within her eth

nic community. U.S. involvement in World War II,

however, provided new

employment situations for

women of all ethnicities. Hundreds of Chinese Amer

ican women found work in Bay Area shipyards and

defense plants. Among them, Jade Snow Wong worked

in a Richmond shipyard. After the war, in 1945, Wong published Fifth Chinese Daughter, one of the first books about what it was like growing up

as a Chinese Amer

ican woman. Jade Snow Wong Collection.

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started to work in the shop when she was ten, help

ing her parents load garments on

pick-up days. At

eleven, she learned to sew and worked next to her

mother. Although living in an ethnic community, she

was quite

aware of the differences between white

Americans and people from her own ethnic group

and was eager to venture into the outside world.

Because of the financial difficulties of her family and her parents' belief that it

was unnecessary for girls to obtain a college education, she could not get fam

ily support to go to college as her brother had. With

determination, however, Jade Snow studied very hard and finally went to Mills College

on a scholar

ship. In the summer of 1942, she graduated from

Mills College. As she stopped at the college place ment office seeking advice for her job search, she

was

told not to expect any opportunities in 'American

business houses," and to look only for places within

her ethnic community. Jade Snow was stunned; an

honor student, she felt "as if she had been struck on

both cheeks." She was, however, determined to get a

job in a non-Chinese company. Her younger sister

at the time worked at Marinship in Sausalito. Jade Snow wanted to support the

war effort as a citizen, so she went with her sister to Marinship. Twenty-four hours after she submitted an application, she

was

hired.45

Maggie Gee, Ah Yoke Gee's daughter, was born

in Berkeley. In a

community where Chinese Ameri

can families were relatively few, Maggie grew up

among children from various ethnic backgrounds. As a teenager, Maggie delivered newspapers and

helped Caucasian women with their babies and

cooking. She thought the people whom she worked

for were nice to her. Nevertheless, as a Chinese, she

was not allowed to join white students' clubs and she

could not swim in community pools. After she grad uated from high school, Maggie entered the Uni

versity of California, Berkeley. She paid the $28 tuition each semester out of her own earnings and

bought books and clothes with her own money. Her

mother had supported Maggie's older brother in col

lege and had no money left for Maggie's education.

But Maggie did live and eat at home while in col

lege. Maggie was a

good student in school, but she

did not know what she could do with a college degree. She heard that many Chinese American

male college graduates, let alone Chinese American

women, had difficulties finding jobs in the fields in which they had been trained.

Pearl Harbor finally brought Chinese Americans

and white Americans together on new com

mon ground. On December 7, 1941, Maggie

was spending the afternoon studying in the campus

library. She found many students there talking very

emotionally. Maggie sensed that something unusual

had happened. To Chinese Americans, World War

II had begun on

September 18,1931, when the Japan ese invaded Manchuria in northeastern China. Mag

gie had been in the fourth grade at the time. Her

mother had planned to send her and her sister to

China to study, and they had to cancel the trip after

the Japanese occupied Chinese territory. After July 7,1937, when the Japanese attacked Chinese troops at Lugou Bridge

near Beijing, the

war against Japan

became a nationwide effort in China. Overseas Chi nese were actively involved in supporting their fel

low countrymen. Maggie often went with her

mother to San Francisco's Chinatown to attend ral

lies and fund-raising activities. She remembered

how badly she felt when she learned about the out

rageous atrocities during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, but she was surprised to notice that her American

classmates knew very little about what had hap

pened in China. Not until Pearl Harbor did every one seem involved in the war effort. The Berkeley

campus offered classes for defense employment, in

which Maggie and many other students received

training. While still a full-time student at Berkeley,

she got a graveyard-shift job at Richmond Shipyard

Number Two.

Wartime employment provided tangible benefits

to many Chinese Americans. "For people who used

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to have very little money," recalled Aimei Chen, "the war was a time of great economic opportunity." She

started to buy things for her family?food, kitchen

ware, and other household items. Aimei's mother

also got a job in a cannery in Stockton, where many

former employees had left for defense jobs. Yulan Liu, meanwhile, made $65 a week, four times more

than she had made before the war. She gave some

money to her mother and saved the rest for herself.

On her day off, she went to the movies and bought herself candies and pastries. As for Ah Yoke Gee, her

family endured great difficulties for many years after she lost her husband. During the war, with both

her and her daughters working in the shipyard and

her son in the service, the living standard of the fam

ily improved significantly. Jade Snow Wong, for her

part, contributed part of her income to her parents and saved money for her future education.

The ethnically diverse working environment pro vided an opportunity for

women such as Ah Yoke

Gee to meet people about whom they had known

little before the war. For over forty years, ever since

her birth, Ah Yoke had lived in the United States, but as she moved from the Monterey Peninsula to San

Francisco and then to Berkeley, she had little con

tact with people other than Chinese. It was at work

that she met all kinds of people and gained respect as one of the oldest crew members of the yard.46 Yulan Liu was also very popular among her team

mates. A small figure weighing only eighty pounds at the time, she not only worked hard but was also

the only one of the team who could handle welding

jobs in narrow areas of the ships. Her teammates

liked to hear her stories about people living in Chi nese American communities. Upon their request, she

led a tour of the group to San Francisco's China

town.47

Defense industries provided an

opportunity for

Chinese women to put to good use their knowledge

of the world beyond school. After months of

research, Jade Snow Wong produced a paper on the

absenteeism of shipyard workers. The paper won

first prize in an essay contest sponsored by the San

Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area defense industries.

In addition to a fifty-dollar war bond, she was

offered the privilege of christening a Liberty Ship at a Kaiser shipyard. When her picture appeared in

both English and Chinese newspapers, she gained respect from members of her family and from peo

ple in the community. Many people in Chinatown came to congratulate her parents for their daugh ter's success in the 'American world."48

Although some women were

doing traditionally male jobs, compared to what they had done before

the war, most of them did not think defense work was that hard. Joy Yee,

a San Francisco-born high school graduate,

was the second daughter of a gar

ment shop-owner in Oakland. Although Joy had

tried to sew with her mother and sisters in the shop, her mother thought that Joy

was not good at sewing and that she would never make it as a seamstress.

During the war, however, Joy got a

job as a mechanic at Alameda Naval Air Station. Excited at having "a

real job" in a defense industry, she learned to

use dif

ferent tools and became very efficient at work.49

Before the war, Yulan Liu had worked ten hours a

day, seven

days a week, at a laundry. "There

was

nothing heavier than the iron," she said. "Sometimes

my arm was so sore at night that I could not hold

my chopsticks." On the other hand, "the welding torch," as she remembered, "was lighter," mainly

because she did not have to hold it for hours. Even on an

assembly line, she was able to work in differ

ent parts of the ships and she always had a chance

to chat with people between assignments. In the

laundry shop, no matter how fast she worked, there

was always

more to be washed, ironed, and folded, and she could hardly find any time to rest.50 The big change for Ah Yoke Gee was that she did not have to sew late at night any

more. She worked eight hours a

day for most of the days and had Sundays off.51 For some women, however, a defense job

was not

easy. Maggie Gee, for example, found working at

night in the shipyard to be tiring. Welding itself was

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Maggie Gee worked as a welder at a Richmond shipyard

and then as

a draftswoman at the Mare Island Navy Shipyard during the war. In

1944, she joined the Women's Air force Service Pilots (WASPs) where she was one of only

two Chinese American women. Because Chinese

families did not value the education of their daughters

as much as they

did of their sons, Maggie had to pay her own way through the Uni

versity of California at

Berkeley. After the war she earned a Ph.D., and,

continuing her tradition of unprecedented accomplishments among Asian American women in the United States, she worked for many

years as the only woman

physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory. Maggie Gee Collection.

not bad, but at night she did not have people around to talk to. It was difficult to stay awake at work, since

she was still attending school during the day and

could not get much sleep. When the job was slow,

she sometimes fell asleep, but it was so cold at night

in the shipyard that she could never

sleep well. A

year later, when she graduated from college, Mag

gie decided to do something different for a

change. She got a new job at Mare Island Navy Shipyard as a draftswoman.

It was the job at Mare Island that led Maggie to the most exciting adventure of her life. Working in

a big

office with over thirty people, she and two young women, one a Caucasian and one a Filipina, quickly became close friends. At lunch time, the three of them

would meet in the rest area adjoining the ladies' room.

They would chat, eat their lunches, and drink

coffee. They all liked the idea of helping the country fight the war, but at the

same time, they all wanted

to do something more

exciting. The Filipina had

taken some flying lessons before the war, and the

three of them decided to save money for aviation

training. When Maggie finally saved enough money for a training program, she

was so overjoyed that she

tossed the money into the air. Although as a child

Maggie had enjoyed watching airplanes at the Oak

land Airport, she had never dreamed of flying

an air

plane herself. After she graduated from an aviation

school in Nevada, she interviewed with the Women's

Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). When she returned to her drafting job at Mare Island, waiting for

a call

from the Army, Maggie realized that her life had

changed. Everyone?mostly men?in her work area

was interested in what she and her friends had done.

Some people were envious. A few months later,

Maggie was called by the Army and became

one of

only two Chinese American women in the WASPs.

Her mother saw her off at the train station. Ah Yoke

Gee was proud of her daughter. She wished that she

herself were twenty years younger because she

would have liked to fly too. Maggie remained a

WASP until the unit was disbanded in late 1944. While in the service, she transported military sup

plies throughout the country.52

Although Chinese Americans were

accepted in

defense industries, they had little chance to be pro moted to supervisory positions. Many companies

simply assumed that white employees would not fol

low orders given by Chinese. For those who had

upgraded their skills over the years (usually male

workers), this could be very frustrating. One male

Chinese American worker at a Richmond shipyard had years of working experience with

an excellent

performance record. But he, too, saw several less

qualified white workers promoted to foreman posi tions with no chance being given to him. Although

he complained, no one listened. Finally he got

so

angry that he quit his job.53 Because women were not expected to work in

defense industries after the war, they were not in a

position to compete with male employees for super

visory positions. Therefore, unlike the Chinese Amer

ican men, very few Chinese American women had

direct conflict with other workers or their supervi sors. Some women recalled that better jobs usually

went to Caucasian women. On the other hand, except for the few immigrants who did not speak English,

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most of the Chinese American women had at least a

high school education, and therefore did not work as

janitors.54 They were

mostly employed as office

clerks, draftswomen, welders, burners, and in other

semi-skilled positions. Since not many defense estab

lishments employed large groups of Chinese Amer

ican women, it was hard for these women to socialize

exclusively among themselves. This, in fact, gave Chi nese American women opportunities to meet people from different ethnic backgrounds.55 Other workers

also showed a great deal of curiosity about Chinese

American women, for few of them had met Chinese

American women before the war. Leong Bo San, a

middle-aged Chinese American woman from San

Francisco, was described in Fore 'N'Aft as "a tiny, doll

like figure" who "walks with the dainty, mincing gait of the upper class Chinese lady whose feet

once were

bound" in her "flat rubber-soled shoes of the ship

yard." According to the report, Leong Bo San had

drawn attention from "everyone" who rode "the

graveyard ferry boat." At Assembly Line 11, the

report went on, Leong Bo San was

"everybody's favorite," for she often came to the yard with Chi

nese shrimp, fruit, and cake to share with other

workers. Although she looked tiny and delicate, she

worked with "an energy that amazes people twice her size." Her boss, James G. Zeck, reportedly said that "I wish I had a whole crew of people like her."56

Nevertheless, some women did find themselves

trapped in a

place where the future was dismal. For

example, Jade Snow Wong's talent and ability were

recognized by her boss at Marinship. Every time the

boss got promoted to a

higher position, he would

take her with him to his new office. But Jade Snow noticed that while many clerks, secretaries, and

other office workers in Marinship were women,

their bosses, those who read the reports prepared by their secretaries and made decisions, were all men.57

Asked later whether she would like to stay at Marin

ship when the war ended if she had the choice, she

answered "no" without any hesitation. "I decided to

leave before they started to lay people off," she said.

"There was no future for me, no future for women

in the shipyard." At Mills College, Jade Snow had found a few female role models?her professors, the

dean for whom she had worked, and the college pres ident. She wanted to be a professional

woman like

them. But "in defense industry," she said, "a woman

could only be someone's secretary. The bosses were

all men." Before the war ended, she started search

ing for a career in which she did not have to be treated differently because she

was a Chinese Amer

ican and a woman.58

Toward the end of the war, defense industries

gradually reduced the volume of their production, and their workers were free to leave their jobs. Some

Chinese American women had waited for this day to come. Jade Snow Wong

was happy that she had

done her part to support the war effort of her coun

try, but she quit her job right after V-J day. With the

money that she had saved, she started a business of

her own in San Francisco's Chinatown and began

writing books.59 Alameda Naval Air Station was one

of the few defense establishments in the Bay Area that was able to keep

some of its female employees after the war. Some women in the station, neverthe

less, decided to leave. Lanfang Wong, a metalsmith

in the yard for over three years, quit her job for two reasons. First, she found it tiring to commute two

hours a day from San Francisco's Chinatown to

Alameda to work. Second, she did not think her job was skilled work. After a while, she realized that it was not much different from making clothes except

that metal instead of cloth was used. As soon as she

learned that the war was over, she found a new job

working for an insurance company in San Francisco.

She later married a war veteran and moved with him to Napa Valley to work

on a small farm.60

Only a few Chinese American women continued

to work in defense industries after the war. Yuqin Fu

worked as an office clerk at Alameda Naval Air Sta tion until 1947, when she got married. After a few

years at home taking care of her children, she found

a job at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph.61 Born and

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schooled in Oakland, Elizabeth Lew Anderson

worked as a metalsmith at the Alameda Naval Air

Station during the war. She later married a Caucasian

merchant seaman. Although her husband had to

move from one place to another all over the coun

try (and sometimes outside the country) and Eliza

beth followed him most of the time, she was called

back to work by the Naval Air Station during the Korean War (and later again, during the Vietnam

War), when her family moved back to the Bay Area.62

Joy Yee continued to work at the Naval Station until

1955, when she was about to have her first child. But

when she stayed at home, she missed her job and her

friends at work. In 1968, she went back to work and

kept her job for another seventeen years until her

retirement. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the

war, Joy Yee helped organize a reunion of Chinese

American women who had worked at the Alameda

Naval Air Station during the war.63

A few others, however, were reluctant to leave

their defense jobs. Ah Yoke Gee loved her job in the

shipyard so much that she would not leave it for any

thing else. She knew that other jobs would not pay as well. Aimei Chen also wanted to stay at her

defense job. Since so many white women were then

also job-hunting, the chances for her to find a

good

job were slim. By late 1945, however, most of the Bay

Area's defense establishments were about to shut

down, and large-scale lay-offs began. With limited

training and skills, these women could not find jobs

in other industries; they had to look for jobs that were

traditionally held by women.

These Chinese American women's wartime work

nevertheless had important consequences: their lives were no

longer restricted within their ethnic com

munities. Most of them found jobs outside China

towns as race relations and the economy improved in the postwar years. Ah Yoke Gee took a job at

a post office in Berkeley, where she worked until her retire

ment. Meanwhile, she became actively involved in

Berkeley's Chinese American community.64 Aimei

Chen married and moved with her husband to

Berkeley. Under the GI Bill, her husband became an

engineering student at the University of California.

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Aimei found a job as an office clerk in a small firm,

where she worked until her first child was born.65

Yulan Liu married her former shipyard foreman, a

white man. The young couple bought a house in

Vallejo, where Yulan's husband worked in the Navy

Shipyard at Mare Island. Yulan worked as a nursing

aide on and off for over thirty years. Lili Wong,

daughter of a San Francisco restaurant waiter, left her

job at a Richmond shipyard and went to medical school. She later moved to Washington, D.C., and

practiced medicine with her husband.66

Their wartime experience gave Chinese American

women confidence and maturity. They found that

they could do the things that men could. Maggie Gee left the WASPs and went to graduate school

in

Berkeley. She was not a shy Chinese American girl

anymore and was soon elected president of the Chi

nese Students Association on the Berkeley campus. Thereafter, she became active in local communities.

She also decided to become a physicist, although most graduate students

in physics were men. She

later worked at the Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory and was the only

woman physicist there

for many years.67 Jade Snow Wong, however, was no

longer eager to work outside her ethnic community. After she left Marinship, she went back

to San Fran

cisco's Chinatown looking for her own identity. Her

first book was about herself; she wanted the outside

world to know what the life of a Chinese American

was like, especially a Chinese American woman. It

was at that time that she decided to give up her Eng lish name "Constance," a name that she had been

known by in school and at Marinship. The girl in her

autobiography was "Jade Snow," translated origi

nally from her Chinese name.68

While acknowledging that World War II brought significant changes

to their lives, many Chinese

American women noticed that racial discrimination

and prejudice did not disappear after the

war. They

continued in subtle ways. When Maggie Gee and her

sister tried to find an apartment in Berkeley in the

early 1950s, they knew that some people would not

rent their properties to Chinese Americans. So they

told people their ethnic identity when they first

inquired over the telephone. At least in

one case, a

landlady refused to show the sisters the apartment

when she learned that they were Chinese.69 Limin

Wong, a defense worker during the war, remembered

calling a business firm in Berkeley for

an advertised

office position after the war. The person who

answered the phone at first told her that the job was available. When he realized that she was Chinese,

however, he changed his statement and said the posi tion had been filled. Limin later found a job at the State Employment Office. She worked there for thirty years and was the manager of the office before she

retired.70

The young Chinese American women who par

ticipated in defense work had had fresh memories

of discriminatory practices in American society before the war, and they

were fully

aware of the polit ical implications of taking defense jobs. Although

very few of them were able to keep their jobs after

the war, and some of them might not necessarily have

cared about the limited skills that they acquired, what they had accomplished was far more signifi cant than the jobs themselves. They

were accepted, for the first time, as Americans, even though most

of them were born in the U. S. and had been Amer

icans since birth. To a large extent, the war

provided an entry for Chinese American women into the

larger American society, something for which their

ancestors had struggled a hundred years. |chs]

See notes beginning on page 182.

Xiaojian Zhao is assistant professor of Asian American stud ies and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993.

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