March 3, 2019:  Being an Asian Americans during World War II was not easy. Many Japanese-American families were carted off to internment camps like Manzanar, and even for those who weren’t forcibly relocated, the United States was often a harsh, discriminatory place. Which makes the career of Susan Ahn Cuddy, a trailblazing Korean-American U.S. Navy officer, even more surprising.

Cuddy’s parents were pioneers themselves: They were the first married Korean couple to immigrate to the United States after the U.S. opened up the country to Korean immigration. At the time, mainstream culture in the U.S. lumped all people of Asian descent together. Cuddy experienced this firsthand when, moved by American patriotism and anti-Japanese sentiment to become a U.S. Navy officer during World War II, her application was rejected because she was “Oriental.” Cuddy persisted,though, and was accepted when she reapplied.

Read the full story: The Officer Who Opened the U.S. Navy for Asian-American Women (time.com)

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