Sau Ung Loo Chan (1906–2002) was Hawaii's first female lawyer of Asian descent.
Chan, the youngest child of her family, was born on August 8, 1906, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Joe and Choy Shee Loo. Her father was a Chinese immigrant and had a close friendship with Sun Yat-sen. Chan completed her higher education at Punahou School and Yale Law School respectively before settling in Hong Kong with her husband Hin Cheung Chan to raise a family.
In 1941, she returned to Hawaii where she was admitted as the first Asian female to practice law. From 1943-1976, Chan organized and oversaw the Circuit Court Small Estate and Guardianship Division. In 1948, Chan testified before the United States Congress in an effort to have certain portions of the Immigration Act of 1924 amended. She practiced as an estate and guardianship attorney.
Chan died on March 1, 2002, in Kaneohe, Hawaii.
See also
List of first women lawyers and judges in Hawaii
References
Further reading
Barde, Robert. “An Alleged Wife: One Immigrant in the Chinese Exclusion Era,” National Archives, 2004. Chan, Ruth. “Sau Ung Loo Chan, An Advocate for American Citizenship and Immigrant Rights,” National Archives Blog, The Text Message, 2024. Lee, Stephen. “How One of the First Asian-American Women Lawyers Lost and Regained Her Citizenship,” Our Asian Pacific American Heritage, 2023. Smith, Marian L. “’Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married . . .’: Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802–1940,” National Archives, 1998. Tyau, Blossom Y. “Sau Ung Loo Chan,” in Called from Within: Early Women Lawyers of Hawaii, ed. Mari J. Matsuda (The Hawaii Women’s Legal Foundation, 1992), 172-190.