The reason we can write about the stories of our ancestors, who are no longer in this world, is all due to the records they left behind. Some individuals preserved newspapers from the very first issue, while others left behind autobiographies or photographs. Notably, figures like Sonia Sunwoo and Min Byung-yong recorded the lives of the first immigrants through interviews during their lifetimes, ensuring that these accounts could be used as historical resources in the future. Autobiographies, in particular, serve as excellent records that allow us to naturally observe the lives of people during that time, the social conditions, and the flow of history through the life of an individual. While people may pass away, their writings endure, greatly aiding our understanding of immigration history.
Noh Shin-tae
Noh Shin-tae immigrated to Hawaii in 1905 and worked in a sugarcane field before moving to San Francisco the following year. However, he was unable to find work due to the great earthquake of 1906.
He then went to Sacramento, where he worked on a farm for 17 years. After a photo engagement, he welcomed his bride, a photo bride, to San Francisco on May 15, 1923, after nine years.
Upon arriving in the U.S., his bride, Noh Jeong-soon, found it difficult to make ends meet as her husband had no work during the winter months. She hoped he would learn any skill. Noh Shin-tae borrowed $125 from a friend to attend a business school for three months but could not find a suitable business.
Later, he learned the trade of barbering at a friend’s barbershop in Oakland and obtained his barber’s license in 1926, opening a shop on 7th St. in Oakland. At that time, he charged 75 cents for a haircut, but after paying $40 for rent and $12.50 for housing, it was hard to make ends meet. For a while, with the help of Pastor Lim Jeong-gu from the Oakland Methodist Church, he received money from the government that was given to the poor (similar to today’s welfare). It is said that the only food the Noh family had at that time was cabbage soup and rice. However, his barbershop eventually prospered, and by 1941, he was earning $35 to $45 a day. He saved money and established a public bath for sailors arriving at the Oakland port, generating significant income. In 1942, he purchased a hotel in his daughter’s name, as only citizens could buy property at that time.
By 1945, his monthly income reached $2,000. A devout Christian, Noh Shin-tae served as a lay pastor at the Oakland Methodist Church during the absence of a minister. As a member of the Korean National Association, he provided substantial economic support for the independence movement and the Korean community.
Dora Kim
Dora Kim’s father, Yeom Man-seok, immigrated to the U.S. in 1904 and worked on the Union Pacific Railroad, which was under construction at the time. Her mother, Kim Hang-sin, arrived in San Francisco in 1920 as a photo bride. She traveled in the ship’s lowest deck and suffered from severe seasickness, with some in her party reportedly committing suicide by jumping overboard. During World War I, her mother volunteered with the Korean Women’s Association of the Red Cross.
Her father, Yeom Man-seok, was one of the eight founding members of the Korean National Association established by Ahn Chang-ho in 1913, representing Gangwon Province among the various regional representatives. He ran a tobacco shop at the corner of Pacific and Kearny streets in San Francisco and co-owned a restaurant called “Lee’s Lunch” with a partner named Mister Lee.
At the restaurant located at the corner of Jackson and Kearny in Chinatown, her father worked tirelessly, often 16 hours a day without a day off. Young men from Hawaii would often hang around the restaurant, and he would treat them to kimchi and bulgogi, even when they had no money. From 1924, when immigration was restricted to students only, he provided shelter and food for those who came to study without funds and taught his children the Korean language.
At that time, the Korean Methodist Church was the only gathering place for Koreans, renting a space on Oak St. for $25 a month. In 1937, her father purchased a four-unit building on Mason St. Since Asians were not allowed to buy property, he used a lawyer’s name to make the purchase, and it wasn’t until his daughter turned 21 that the title could be transferred to her name. This purchase marked the first time an Asian had bought property, making Dora Kim the first Korean to own a home.
In 1950, he acquired the Golden Gate Hotel, which the family managed, and as the president of the Korean Association of San Francisco, he presided over the annual March 1st commemorative ceremony until his passing. At that time, Hannah Seo was the director of the YMCA in Chinatown. Dora Kim was born on March 16, 1921, in Manteca, Northern California. She graduated from Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland and from Jean Parker High School in San Francisco, later studying at UC Berkeley. Even after turning 60, she continued her studies at San Francisco State University.
After marrying Tom in 1942, she worked for many years as a state government employee. Dora Kim’s brother worked as an interpreter during the Korean Armistice talks until 1954.
In 1946, she became the first Asian woman to pass the real estate broker exam in San Francisco, motivated by the desire to help her father, who was being taken advantage of in real estate transactions. In 1976, she co-founded the San Francisco Korean Senior Center with her second son, Tom Kim, securing government approval for a meal program for the elderly.
She received government funding and provided hot meals, including kimchi daily, to lonely seniors living in the U.S.
Regularly working at the Korean Community Center, she served as a spokesperson for the Korean community, providing legal interpretation and job placement services until her retirement in 1986 at the age of 60. In 1979, she was elected vice president of the San Francisco Business and Professional Women’s Club. In recognition of her contributions to the Korean community, she received an award from the City and County of San Francisco in 1995. Her daughter, Jin Soo-young, published an autobiography about Dora Kim titled “Doing What Had To Be Done” in 1999.
Park Jun-seop
Born Julia Park Jun-seop on June 22, 1895, in San Francisco, his mother, Yeom Han-na, was the first Korean woman to enter the U.S. His father, Park Jeong-suk, was a royal official during the tumultuous late Joseon Dynasty, marked by the Russo-Japanese War and power struggles among figures backed by foreign powers. An early Christian, Park Jeong-suk sought to maintain close ties with the U.S. to resist foreign influence.
However, feeling threatened, he sent his pregnant wife to the U.S. first. After enduring a month of hardship at sea, upon arriving in San Francisco, the immigration authorities did not immediately send the heavily pregnant woman back but ordered her to return to Korea after giving birth. Yeom later joined the first group of immigrants to Hawaii in 1903 but did not see her son, who was growing up at a relative’s house in San Francisco, before returning to Korea.
After the Eulsa Treaty, Park Jeong-suk came to Hawaii with his wife to engage in the independence movement but died shortly after arriving due to nephritis. His mother was deported back to Korea as an illegal immigrant. Growing up in a Chinese immigrant slum in San Francisco, Park Jun-seop endured various hardships, including washing dishes to make a living. He attended Lowell High School before moving to Los Angeles, where he focused on his studies and graduated from Princeton University with degrees in theology and English literature.
He is believed to be the first Asian graduate of Princeton’s theology program and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1923, serving at the Uniondale Foster City Presbyterian Church while also acting as principal of Foster City High School in Northern California. He was finally able to reunite with his mother at the age of 65.
He served as a pastor at the Duncanville Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia until his retirement in 1966, emphasizing the importance of human compassion and the rejection of racism and prejudice. Even after retirement, he continued to serve the community and passed away in 1981 in Duncanville, leaving the entire Korean town in mourning.
Baek Kwang-seon (Mary Baek)
Mary Baek immigrated to Hawaii at the age of five in 1905 after her family lost their home to Japanese invaders. Her father, Baek Sin-gu, a pastor who had embraced Christianity early on, taught Korean to missionary Underwood. Leaving their crumbling country and home due to Japan, the family traveled to the U.S. under a one-year labor contract, boarding the ship for free. They worked from dawn until dusk, earning 50 cents a day. Mary Baek had ten siblings and lived a sad and difficult life filled with racial discrimination and hunger, but her father’s faith kept them mentally healthy. They worked on a citrus farm in Riverside, while her mother cooked for 30-40 widowers working there.
Unable to live in the same neighborhood as white people, they lived in a one-room shack next to the railroad tracks, which had once been home to Chinese workers during the 1850s railroad construction. Her mother cut her long hair to avoid hindering cooking while sleeping on the floor. She would wake up at 3:30 a.m. to prepare breakfast for the workers by 5 a.m. Mary also had to wake up at 3 a.m. to prepare lunch. To serve dinner to those returning from work at 7 p.m., her mother had to spend all day in the kitchen, as Mary recalled. She helped her mother with tasks like babysitting and starting the fire. Her parents moved around California, farming and working in mines, including potato farming in Sacramento and doing housework in Hollister.
At that time, Americans did not eat beef intestines, so they would collect them to make soup. While living in Claremont, they survived by doing laundry at home, but since white people would not hire them, Mary had to beg her brother and teachers for work.
In 1913, during a recession, they went to Stockton to farm potatoes. Later, Kim Jong-rim, known as the “King of Rice,” tried to sell the potatoes he had grown in Stockton, but they wouldn’t sell even for 10 cents a bag. Frustrated after not selling any of their hard-earned crop, he dumped everything into the river and returned with empty bags. The following year, they left for the Idria mercury mine, 80 miles from San Jose.
They earned $5 a day, as demand was high at the start of World War I. Her father’s health deteriorated due to losing teeth, a blackened tongue, and poor eyesight, prompting him to return to Willows to farm again. He held church services at home, with two or three families attending weekly. Farmers at that time could not educate their children in Korean due to their own illiteracy. Those who came to America moved to Anaheim to run a vegetable store and made a lot of money but lost it all after investing in stocks during the 1929 crash.
Mary Baek graduated from San Benito High School and married Lee Hong-man in Willows in 1919, having three sons. Her husband was the first Korean to sign a contract with Cross, known as the “King of Rice,” for 10% of the harvest.
He was a tenant farmer who employed over 100 people across three camps and managed 4,500 acres of farmland.
In 1920, they had a bumper crop, but floods during harvest time and a post-World War I drop in rice prices forced them to abandon rice farming. They grew sugar beets in Utah and started a Korean school there. In 1921, they moved to Anaheim, Los Angeles, where they ran a vegetable business for 11 years and farmed oranges, lemons, and avocados in El Monte.
In her autobiography, Mary Baek recalled, “At that time, the average hourly wage for farm workers was 25-35 cents for 10 hours of work, and after the war, it rose to 75 cents to a dollar. Living expenses in the 1920s required $10-$15 a month, but during the war, prices rose, and $25 was necessary.”
She saved money through work in farming, laundry, and cleaning, even managing a market.
Mary Baek passed away on February 14, 1995, after suffering from Alzheimer’s at On Rock Nursing Home in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Her remains were cremated and buried next to her husband at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Sunwoo Hak-won
Born on February 2, 1918, in Pyongnam Daedong-gun, he came to find his grandfather, Sunwoo Tan, who had immigrated to Hawaii in 1903 when he was 20 years old in 1938. At that time, he was studying in Tokyo, Japan, and had joined an underground movement called the “Korean Independence Movement Circle,” becoming a target of surveillance by Japanese authorities, which led him to cross over to the U.S. His entry into the U.S. was made possible through the guarantee of the Korean National Association.
After serving in the military, he studied at the University of Washington and Stanford University. He worked as an interpreter for the CIA and the San Francisco District Court. He taught Japanese at the University of California while pursuing a Ph.D. in political science and met Sonia, a second-generation Korean, at the San Francisco Korean Church, marrying her. They moved to Seattle, where he taught Korean and became a professor at the University of Washington, establishing the first Korean language program at an American university, teaching Korean history, culture, and literature.
Having faced racial discrimination in his youth, he was shocked to find it difficult to rent an apartment. This experience motivated him to dedicate his life to human rights activism to uphold “human dignity.” His mother-in-law, Shin Kyung-ae, managed the “Kearny Hotel” in San Francisco, where she often served meals and kimchi to soldiers staying there.
Sunwoo Hak-won ran a grocery store called “Food Land” at the corner of Cole St. next to Golden Gate Park and worked diligently in the Korean National Association. Holding progressive ideological views, he once taught at Yonsei University in Korea before returning to the U.S. to purchase and manage the “Molden Hotel” located at the corner of Bush and Grant in San Francisco.
He later acquired a nearby three-story building, demonstrating his successful business acumen. After studying at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, he worked as a pastor at Trinity Methodist Church on Market Street in San Francisco. He then taught for 29 years at Central Methodist Theological School in Missouri. His major works include “Korea: A Political History in Modern Times” and “Arirang, That Sad Melody,” among others.
Ahn Susan(Susan Ahn Cuddy)
Born on July 5, 1915, as the eldest daughter of Ahn Chang-ho in Los Angeles, she majored in socioeconomics at San Diego State University in 1939 and worked as a dormitory counselor after graduation. In December 1942, she became the only second-generation Korean woman to enlist as a Navy officer. Initially rejected due to her Asian descent, she reapplied and was accepted. On March 27, 1943, she graduated from the Naval Academy as one of 74 cadets. During World War II, she volunteered to fight against the Japanese army, becoming the first female gunnery instructor in U.S. Navy history, carrying on her father’s legacy as a leader in the independence movement. At that time, all three of Ahn’s children were in the military: Ahn Soo-jan as a Navy captain, Ahn Philip as an Army private, and Ahn Pil-young as a Navy private.
Ahn Soo-jan became the first Korean woman to serve as a gunnery officer. Notably, as a captain in the Navy’s special forces, she was the first Asian female officer to teach combat gunnery, which had previously been reserved for male officers. After her discharge in 1945, she became a civilian intelligence officer at the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington, D.C., serving as a secret intelligence analyst overseeing over 300 civilian intelligence officers until her resignation in 1959. She married a U.S. Navy lieutenant.
Ahn Soo-jan was a member of the Korean National Association founded by her father and actively participated in the anti-Japanese and independence movements. She also served as the English editor for “The New Korea.” Together with her late brother Ahn Philip, a now-deceased actor, she successfully managed a restaurant called “Moon Gate.” Leading the March 1st Women’s Association, she lives proudly as a Korean, carrying on the spirit of Ahn Chang-ho.
In March 2003, she received the “Woman of the Year” award selected by the California State Assembly to commemorate the centennial of Korean immigration to the U.S. She also published an English autobiography titled “Willow Tree Shade.”
Ahn Young-ho
Ahn Young-ho, a cousin of Ahn Chang-ho, left Korea for Hawaii in 1905 at the age of 12 due to food shortages. He decided to immigrate after learning from Ahn Chang-ho’s letter that life in America was better than in Korea. Being too young to work, he attended a school run by the American Methodist Church in the Korean community. For $6 a month, he was provided with food and lodging, attending a school with about 120 students aged 8 to 14. At 15, he learned tailoring at a suit shop.
It took him six months to learn to make pants and another six months for coats, after which he worked at a tailor shop run by a Korean named Ahn Won-gu.
In 1915, he moved to San Francisco and worked various farming jobs. He bought fruits and vegetables from farms with a truck and sold them in stores. He went to Isleton in Northern California to buy asparagus and ended up living in Sacramento, where he married Ahn Joan in 1925.
He bought a vineyard but lost $25,000 due to rain. Although he once earned tens of thousands of dollars from rice farming, he faced economic difficulties after losing the investment he made with Kim Jong-rim and other Koreans. He also served for a long time at the Oakland Methodist Church with his wife.
Chai Seok (Charr, Easurk Emsen)
Born in Pyongyang in 1894, Chai Seok immigrated to Hawaii in 1904 with the intention of studying medicine in the United States and returning to Korea to engage in medical missions. He left Jemulpo with 350 other immigrants. After picking up 550 Japanese passengers in Japan, he arrived in Honolulu, where he was confused because it was supposed to be Sunday, but they arrived on Saturday. He thought the ship had arrived a day early because it was too fast. His father gave him $15, a significant amount at the time, and told him to go to San Francisco. To travel from Hawaii to the mainland, which took seven days by boat, he needed $30 for the fare and $1 for expenses.
After working on a farm for six months, he arrived in San Francisco on June 26, 1905, at a place referred to as the “Gateway to America.” With the help of Dr. Drew, he successfully completed his medical examination and stayed at a hotel run by a man named Huang near Filbert St. in North Beach. With assistance from Ahn Chang-ho, he began working as a “School Boy,” living and doing housework at a home near Post St. close to Van Ness in San Francisco.
He would wake up early in the morning to light the fire, prepare breakfast and dinner, take care of the children, and attend school during the day. He did general cleaning on Saturdays and earned $2 a week. He worked picking plums, peaches, and pears in Vacaville, Northern California, earning $1.15 a day. In Malaga, he picked grapes for 2 cents a tray, and in Fresno, he earned 3 cents per box of grapes. He also picked oranges in Riverside and enrolled in elementary school there as a third grader.
He worked as a hotel busboy and dishwasher. He also worked as a typesetter for the Shinhan Minbo and at the Lake Tahoe Hotel. While working for the Korean National Association in San Francisco, he met missionary McQueen and studied at Park College in Missouri, graduating in 1923. He was drafted into the military in April 1918 and served as a medical officer. Despite not being a citizen, he volunteered to serve in the military during World War I. After the March 1st Movement, he sent letters to American Christians informing them of the injustices of Japanese rule and gave several lectures in American churches.
Nineteen years after leaving San Francisco, he returned in 1931, arriving at the San Francisco train station on Townsend St. He completed 1,000 hours at barber school and obtained his barber’s license for $2, working at a barbershop in Chinatown.
Although he dreamed of becoming a doctor and returning to his homeland for medical missions, he became a barber. He found comfort in the fact that barbers once played the role of doctors in the past, thinking of their white coats as similar to a doctor’s gown. He married a woman who was a student and could only reside in the U.S. as a student. In 1932, when his wife, who was attending a music school, gave birth to their second child, she could no longer attend school. He wrote a letter to Washington explaining that he had served in the military and that his wife could no longer attend school. Consequently, the immigration authorities ordered his wife to leave the U.S. six weeks after giving birth. After the child was born, immigration officials came to interview his wife at Angel Island. They informed her that marrying a fellow immigrant was a violation of federal law, and marrying an American woman was against state law.
He sent letters to all influential acquaintances he knew from the military and school, seeking support. They sent protest letters and requests for assistance to Washington. After many twists and turns, his wife received a letter guaranteeing her stay in the U.S. from the San Francisco immigration office, which also led to Chai Seok receiving the citizenship that had previously been denied to him.
On April 5, 1918, he participated in World War I and published his autobiography titled “The Golden Mountain.”
Leave a Reply