Sakaye Shigekawa

Shigekawa completed her medical internship at Mercy Hospital in Bay City, Michigan, where she became the second female medical intern.^[4] She began her residency at Los Angeles County Hospital but all of the hospital's Japanese-American staff were dismissed in 1941 in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. She then worked briefly at Seaside Memorial Hospital before being forced to move to the Santa Anita Assembly Center, a processing center for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, where she was one of seven imprisoned physicians of Japanese background who provided care for 17,000 fellow inmates.^[1] Shigekawa was the youngest of the doctors at 29 years old, and the only woman.^[2] When she was ordered to move to Wyoming to be interned and work at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, another internment camp for Japanese Americans, she sent letters to the government saying that she refused to go and that if forced to move there she would not work.^[4] She was subsequently released to live in Chicago, where she finished her residency in obstetrics at Walter Memorial Hospital. She worked at a private practice with another woman physician until 1948, when she returned to Los Angeles.^[3]

Shigekawa set up a medical practice on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood in 1949. In the same year, she began working at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, where she was the first Japanese-American staff member, and in 1977 she became the first woman to be elected president of the hospital.^[2] She worked at her Hollywood practice for more than 50 years, and in 2000 she estimated that throughout her career she had delivered between 20,000 and 30,000 babies.^[6]

In 1993, Shigekawa received Loyola University's Stritch Award "for outstanding research or humanitarian contributions in medicine".^[5] She served as president of Japanese Community Health Inc. and was a member of the Japanese American Medical Association.^[3]

Shigekawa died in Los Angeles on October 18, 2013, aged 100.^[3]