Newspaper Article

Los Angeles; L. A. THEN AND NOW; Chinese American Was 'Mom' to 1,000 Servicemen

Rasmussen, Cecilia

2001

Overview

Born in Santa Barbara in 1889, the daughter of immigrants, [Margaret Chung] was the eldest of 11 children. Growing up on the 24,000-acre Rancho Guadalasca in Ventura County, where her father was the foreman, Chung decided at an early age that she wanted to be a doctor. Her practice extended beyond Chinatown, though. At the beginning of the Depression, she was asked to conduct medical exams for seven hard-drinking crack Navy reserve pilots. More than that, Chung, who had a reputation for treating patients to home-cooked meals, fed the seven, who were soon referring to themselves as \"Mom Chung's Fair- Haired Bastard Sons.\" They were the core of what became nearly a thousand loyal wartime \"flyboys\" who called her \"Mom.\" As her fame grew, she became the inspiration for the 1939 movie \"King of Chinatown,\" a fictionalized bio-pic starring Chinese- American actress Anna May Wong. During the war, Chung shared the pages of Real Heroes comic books with the likes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Texas Rangers, providing Chinese Americans with a patriotic role model.

• Publisher: Los Angeles Times Communications LLC
• Subject: Asian Americans / Chung, Margaret (1889-1959) / History / Personal profiles / Physicians / World War II