Died 15 December 1992 | ||
Kazue Togasaki (June 29, 1897 – December 15, 1992) was one of the first two women with Japanese ancestry to earn a medical degree in the United States. The other such woman was Megumi Shinoda, and they both earned their medical degrees in 1933. Togasaki earned her medical degree from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1933.
She had earned a bachelor's in zoology in 1920 from Stanford University, and also studied at a nursing program, but could not work as a nurse due to anti-Japanese discrimination. She worked as a fundraiser and secretary, and after that studied public health nursing at the University of California for one year, before enrolling in medical school in 1929. During World War II she was detained for a month at the Tanforan Assembly Center, and while there she delivered fifty babies and led an all-Japanese-American medical team. She was afterwards sent five times to other assembly and relocation centers (including Topaz, Tule Lake, and Manzanar) before being let out in 1943. She then opened a medical practice in San Francisco, where she worked until she retired at age 75, having delivered more than ten thousand babies in all.