Interviews

1. Parents were willing to send her to medical school

2. Differences in discrimination

3. Getting good guidance

4. Unable to work when the war broke out

5. Traumatic experiences before camp

6. Joining the hospital unit in Santa Anita Race Track

7. Lost respect for the flag after incarceration

8. No use in having citizenship

9. Never married

10. “Everybody went in like sheep”

Shigekawa,Sakaye

(1913-2013) Doctor specializing in obstetrics in Southern California

Differences in discrimination

The only time we got discrimination is when we went to medical school, cause…of course you know, medical school discriminated against women. But I think because I was oriental in Chicago, where they never saw an Oriental, I think I was sort of a curio to them, you know. They wondered what I was like. And when I went to Chicago, there was no discriminationing – in restaurants or anywhere…nightclubs or…like it was here in Los Angeles, you know. We were completely discriminated against, many places. We’d go to a restaurant and they wouldn’t wait on us. But when I went to Chicago, I was at first a little reluctant about going to those places, but I was accepted and so then I got used to going to those nightclubs and restaurants and so on.

California Chicago discrimination gender Illinois interpersonal relations Los Angeles medical schools racism United States

Date: March 31, 2005

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Gwenn M. Jensen

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Dr. Sakaye Shigekawa was born January 6, 1913 in South Pasadena, California. When she was a child, her father was hospitalized from double pneumonia and while visiting him, she got acquainted with the doctors and nurses and decided then to become a doctor. After studying premed at USC, she was accepted to Stritch Loyola Medical School and was only 1 of 4 women in her class. She persevered through medical school despite sex discrimination from instructors and fellow students and began practicing medicine in the Los Angeles area.

She was one of the first to be incarcerated at the Santa Anita Race Track on March 1, 1942. She was invited to join Dr. Norman Kobayashi and Dr. Fred Fujikawa treating patients while there which helped her overcome the bitterness and depression she was in. At first she was only allowed to treat skin conditions, but after a while she asked to be able to do other things and began to do obstetrics and other parts of medicine.

After the war she continued to practice medicine and eventually opened up her own practice, which she continues. In her thirty-nine years of obstetrics practice, she calculates that she delivered over twenty thousand babies and never lost a mother. She passed away on October 18, 2013 at age 100. (April 2020)