Opening Doors is about hope, pursuing new opportunities, and immigrant contributions. The exhibit reveals how immigration policies were pivotal turning points for generations of the past and continue to shape citizenship today. The exhibit is housed in one of the hospital’s historic men’s wards. Below, you can learn more about the immigrants whose stories are included in this exhibit.
This room was used to treat male European patients. The segregated design of the hospital was intended to create “practically two distinct buildings” to separate Asians and Europeans. Originally there were windows in all four walls to maximize sunlight, which was believed to be beneficial for healing. The radiators are part of the original heating system, which administrators reported as being inadequate.
Learn more about the hospital in the Saving the Hospital gallery.
SAMMY LEE
AN OLYMPIAN LIKE NO OTHER
Sammy Lee was born in 1920 in Fresno, California. His parents emigrated from Korea in the early 1900s. The family settled in Los Angeles, where they operated a grocery store.
Banners promoting the 1932 Summer Olympics caught Sammy’s eye, and he vowed to become an Olympic champion. He discovered an affinity for diving, but he encountered a major obstacle when trying to practice.
“[Pool access] was limited to one day a week for people of color. [The pool] was then emptied that night so that the white swimmers wouldn’t be stained by us.”
Undeterred, Sammy practiced his diving in a sand pit in his coach’s backyard. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, so he balanced diving and studying.
In 1942, he became the first person of color to win the U.S. National Diving Championships. He graduated from medical school in 1947 and joined the Army Reserves. He never gave up his dream of competing in the Olympics.
“I wanted to prove to the world that an American-born Korean could do anything he wanted in America, even win a gold medal.”
At the 1948 Olympic Games in London, Sammy became the first Asian American man to win a gold medal. At the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, he became the first Asian American to win consecutive Olympic gold medals.
After serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, Sammy returned to Los Angeles in 1955. Sammy coached young divers, and his athletes ultimately won 10 Olympic gold medals.
REIKO HOMMA-TRUE
PSYCHOLOGIST, FEMINIST, AND ACTIVIST
Reiko Homma-True was born in Japan in 1933 and grew up during World War II. She married an American she met in Yokohama. In 1958, the couple moved from Japan to San Francisco. Reiko earned a Masters in Social Work from UC Berkeley and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School for Professional Psychology.
As a psychiatric social worker, Reiko saw that Japanese women who were married to American servicemen often struggled to adjust to life in the U.S. She helped create a support group for these “war brides.” The group was named Himawari-kai, after the Japanese word for sunflower.
“The sunflower became a symbol for us. It represented our hardiness, thriving in foreign soil.”
Reiko knew from first-hand experience that Asian American women were subjected to both racism and sexism, and she advocated for mental health services that addressed the unique cultural challenges that Asian American women faced. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Reiko recognized the need for activism within her own community.
“As Asian Americans, we learned from African Americans and Latino Americans that we had to speak up and demand what we lacked.”
Reiko became the first woman and first person of color to serve as director of San Francisco Community Mental Health Services and Substance Abuse Services. She has received international recognition for her work with underserved and marginalized groups.
ROSE KLEIN
FLEEING THE GERMAN REICH
Rose (Rosa) Ginsberg was 16 years old in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Germany. During this time, Nazi Germany stripped Austrian Jews of their property, jobs, and citizenship rights. Thousands of Jews, including the Ginsberg family, were desperate to escape persecution and violence in their homeland.
But most of the world’s nations, including the U.S, had essentially shut their doors to Jewish refugees.
China was one of the few places where Rose and her family could go to find safety. The Ginsbergs fled Vienna and started a new life as refugees in Shanghai. Two years later, Rose left her family and set off for America on her own. On March 7, 1940, she arrived at Angel Island with just $2.50 in her pocket. She told immigration officials she was on her way to New York to join her relatives and her fiancé, Herbert Klein, whom she had met in Vienna.
“[Herbert and I] thought all the time of coming to the States together.”
Her relatives in the U.S. did not seem to have enough money to support another person, and inspectors learned from Herbert that he was not engaged to Rose. Concerned that Rose would become a public charge, officials detained her at Angel Island for three weeks. She was released once her relatives sent her $41.85 for a bus ticket to New York and promised to pay a $500 bond.
Rose joined her family in New York and married Herbert in 1941. They had two children, Jeffrey and Debbie, and eventually settled in Hicksville, New York.
DAVID LEE
PATRIOT, ADVOCATE, COMMUNITY LEADER
As Japan tightened its grip on Korea, 22-year-old David (Dae Wei) Lee left his home near Pyongyang to study in America. Reverend Lee and other Korean immigrants exercised their rights of free speech and assembly in the U.S.—actions that were not allowed in Japanese-occupied Korea. Rev. Lee helped found the San Francisco Korean Methodist Church and was a pastor from 1911 to 1928.
Rev. Lee also co-founded the earliest Korean community organizations in the U.S., which consolidated into the Korean National Association (KNA) in 1909.
The mission of the KNA was to support the Korean immigrant community in the U.S. and fight for Korea’s independence from Japan. The organization provided critical immigrant services, including job assistance and advocacy.
As the president of the KNA and a port interpreter at Angel Island, Rev. Lee advocated for Korean immigrants. On behalf of the KNA, he guaranteed they would not become “public charges,” paid for their medical expenses, and posted bonds to secure their admission.
Rev. Lee successfully argued that Koreans who arrived at Angel Island without passports were stateless, and therefore had no country that could issue a passport.
Rev. Lee served as the editor of the Shinhan Minbo, KNA’s newspaper, which was a vital communication channel for the scattered Korean immigrants in the US and for those living abroad. Rev. Lee is remembered as a patriot of Korea, an advocate for Korean immigrants, and a Bay Area community leader.
THUY VU
ESCAPING THE FALL OF SAIGON
In 1975, Thuy Vu and her family fled their home in Vietnam after Saigon (today known as Ho Chi Minh City) was captured by North Vietnamese forces. The journey to America forced the family to split up. Thuy, several siblings, and their father, traveled by cargo boat with hundreds of other refugees. The other half of the family, including Thuy’s mother, went by plane. Thuy did not know if she would see the rest of her family again.
“I couldn’t understand why [my mother] left me to the open sea, on a boat crammed with hundreds of other people.”
An American military ship rescued Thuy and her family. They were taken to a refugee camp in Guam, where they learned the other half of the family had landed in Arkansas at a relocation center.
A Lutheran church group in Minnesota sponsored Thuy’s family, helping them settle together in Duluth. Adjusting to life in a new country was a struggle. Thuy’s mother worked in a garment factory, and her father found employment at a pizza factory. In 1979, the family moved to San Jose, California.
“We felt we owed it to our parents to get a good education, because we knew the risks they had taken to bring us all here.”
During the summers, Thuy worked on the assembly lines for computer companies alongside her parents. She went on to graduate from UC Berkeley. Thuy became an award-winning reporter and news anchor in the Bay Area.
U.S. ARMY TRANSPORT MERRITT
SEEKING SAFE HARBOR
Between 1920 and 1941, approximately 5,000 refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war in Russia arrived in San Francisco. None of them received official help getting to the US, except for a group who traveled on the U.S. Army Transport (USAT) Merritt. Their journey began in Vladivostok, the last outpost of resistance.
In October of 1922, as the communist Red Army closed in, a flotilla of 24 ships carrying between 7,000 and 8,000 refugees fled the city.
At port after port, the group was turned away, and food and fuel dwindled. The flotilla was battered by storms, and one ship sank. In December, they arrived in Shanghai, where most of the refugees, too exhausted to continue, remained. In January, the flotilla left Shanghai with fewer than 1,000 passengers on 12 ships.
Another ship sank en route to Manila, where the refugees received asylum. The American Red Cross provided food and shelter for the refugees at an American naval base. Consul G.C. Hanson sympathized with the Russians and advocated for their admission. President Harding ultimately admitted qualified refugees under the Quota Law of 1921.
On May 26, 1923, the USAT Merritt finally set sail for San Francisco with 526 Russian refugees on board. The Red Cross paid for the group’s transportation.
On July 1, 1923, the group, including more than 50 families, landed at Angel Island. All but 19 refugees were allowed to stay. The Russian Relief Society and YWCA helped the weary passengers find employment and housing.
Vij Senthilnathan and her husband Shyam-Sunder Uma-Chander spend time at home with their children, Siddharth and Sahana, who are playing the game Pallangkuzhi. Shyam-Sunder is from Chennai, India. He came to the US as a student with an F-1 visa and then obtained an H-1B visa to work as a hardware engineer. Vij is a molecular biologist from Chennai, India. She was able to obtain an H-4 visa as the spouse of an H-1B visa holder. Both are now US citizens.
VIJ SENTHILNATHAN
MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST, WIFE, MOTHER, AND CHEF
Vij was born in Cuddalore town, Tamil Nadu, South India and spent her school days in Chennai. Growing up, Vij enjoyed her grandmother’s authentic, traditional Indian dishes. While pursuing her Master’s Degree in Molecular Medicine, she learned how to cook for herself using her grandmother’s Southern Indian recipes. She eventually moved to San Jose, where she enjoys cooking for others and regularly hosts pop-up dinners around Silicon Valley. She admits seeing a parallel between cooking and her work in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry.
“I think of cooking as an experiment. How you use your ingredients, how you learn from it, how you make it better the next time. My approach to cooking is similar to how I studied biology in school. In India, growing up we believed that ‘food is medicine and medicine is food’ and that’s how I see the connection, and my love for it.”