Sau Ung Loo Chan: A Pioneering Asian-American Lawyer

I have researched a lot of amazing stories of Asian-American legal history, but this one may be my favorite.  I discovered it in a footnote and wanted to know more.

Sau Ung Loo Chan first had to prove her U.S. citizenship during law school in the 1920s. She was one of the first Asian Americans to attend Yale Law School and one of the first women to do so.

On her way back from a student trip to Europe, she was refused re-entry and was threatened with detainment. “After having finished one year at Yale, I knew just enough law to scream ‘habeas corpus’ at the immigration officials, and they finally let me in,” she later recalled.

Years later, she used her training and drive to win perhaps the most important case of her life—proving that her husband was an American.

Sau Ung Loo Chan’s Early Life and Legal Challenges

The case was rooted in family tragedy and drama long before she met her husband, Chan Hin Cheung, and the complicated racial restrictions in naturalization law in the early 20th century.

Chan was born in San Francisco in 1906, but the San Francisco earthquake ruined his father’s health and finances, so the family went to China in 1907, and his father died soon afterward.

Chan grew up in China but wanted to go to the United States to study at Phillips Academy.  His mother was worried he would not return to her, so she let him believe he would be an international student in the United States, not a native-born citizen returning home.

Soon, upon arrival, he began to suspect that he had been born in the United States.  But he did not know until 1927 when he confronted his mother in China, and she admitted the truth.

He tried to clear this up with U.S. immigration authorities in 1928. Still, they were suspicious and concluded that he was an “impostor seeking a return certificate through fraud and misrepresentation.” 

The Struggle for Citizenship

Clearing up his citizenship became a priority after he met Sau Ung Loo, a Chinese American born in Hawaii and attending Yale Law School.  Marriage could have serious legal consequences for her – U.S. law at the time stripped American women of their citizenship if they married a non-citizen.  This law reportedly had been designed to punish rich American women who married European men with titles (think Downton Abbey). Still, the law severely impacted Asian-American women who married Asian-American immigrant men. 

They decided to go to China together to find evidence of his birth, but they ran into trouble.  While he had been in the United States, Chan’s mother had picked out a Chinese girl for her son to marry, and she refused to help prove her son’s citizenship and threatened to never speak with him again unless he broke off the engagement with Sau Ung.

Despite all the legal and familial consequences, Chan Hin Cheung and Sau Ung Loo married in Hong Kong in 1929.  But they did not give up hope.

“You knowing how thoroughly Americanized my wife is and the value she places upon her U.S. citizenship—we being absolutely alike in this respect—I need not stress the importance of our having our status definitely cleared,” Chan wrote in a 1931 letter.

A Family's Second Fight for Citizenship

The second time was more challenging.

Her husband (first name Hin, family name Chan) was born in the United States. Stidid did not know that fact until he was a teenager, so he had inadvertently given false information to immigration authorities when he first entered the United States in 1922.  Clearing this up would be difficult, especially since her mother-in-law refused to help Chan prove his ownership unless he renounced Sau Ung.

Sau Ung and Hin got married in 1929 despite the familial and legal consequences - Sau Ung lost her citizenship by marrying a man whom the U.S. viewed as an ineligible alien to become a citizen (U.S. law at the time prevented Asian immigrants from becoming citizens because they were not “white” and stripped American women’s citizenship if they married someone who was not a citizen).  She managed to get her citizenship restored in 1934, but that still left the citizenship of her husband and that of their daughter unclear (born in 1932 in Hong Kong).

The Legal Battle for Chan Hin Cheung's Citizenship

Proving her husband’s citizenship took more than a decade.

First, she had to convince Chan’s mother to cooperate.  “Year to year, we tried to get reconciled with my mother-in-law, but she refused to have anything to do with us,” she later explained.  Finally, in 1937, Chan’s mother signed the affidavit she had refused to sign eight years earlier.

Second, she had many connections due to her family’s status in Hawaii (her father was a court interpreter, and she had graduated from Punahou School), and she worked there, even managing to meet directly with a top immigration official in San Francisco.  As a result of all this, her husband was released on bond while his case was pending, rather than being detained like many other Asian Americans.

Third, she reached out to people in California and China who could corroborate parts of her husband’s family history and a U.S. official in Panama who had known her in Hong Kong and managed to clear up one inconsistency.

Fourth, she tracked down records showing that her husband was the same boy born in San Francisco in 1906, including a birth certificate that had been assumed to have been destroyed, 11 years of school records, and estate records.

Finally, she testified in an immigration hearing with her husband. At the end, she was asked if she had anything that she wanted to say:

“I want to say that he was born in San Francisco; otherwise, we would have given up the claim long ago.  We had to wait year after year to get help from his mother, and she refused for a long time.  My husband felt that it was rather hopeless.  That is all I have to say.”

Thanks to all her work, immigration officials agreed that there was a “substantial body of evidence” that Chan was born in the United States and was admitted back to the United States as a U.S. citizen.

Sau Ung Loo Chan's Legacy

Not only did Sau Ung win the case, but she impressed immigration authorities so much that they offered her a job! She worked briefly for the government and then began a long and distinguished legal career in Hawaii. In 1994, the Hawaii State Bar Association recognized her legal career, and in 1995, a Chinese organization named her “Model Chinese Mother of the Year.”  She passed away in 2002.

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Stephen Chahn Lee has written about Asian American legal history throughout his time as a lawyer, illuminating the pivotal legal battles fought by Asian Pacific Americans and their role in shaping the rights and freedoms we uphold today. This article was one of a series that Stephen wrote in 2023 and that grew out of an event that Stephen organized for the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, the Federal Bar Association Chicago Chapter, the Asian American Bar Association of Greater Chicago, and other bar associations.

For further insights into the story of Sau Ung Loo Chan or for legal guidance with healthcare fraud defense, please contact Stephen Lee Law.

Sources

• Damon, Annabel. "Local Attorney Makes Hobby of Immigration Law." Honolulu Advertiser, September 13, 1949.

• Fruto, Ligaya. "Small Estates Are Serious Problem to Estate Lawyer." Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 31, 1960.

• Hacker, Meg. "When Saying ‘I Do’ Meant Giving Up Your U.S. Citizenship." Access online.

• Matsuda, Mari J., editor. Called from Within: Early Women Lawyers of Hawaii. (Includes a chapter on Sau Ung Loo Chan.)

• Volpp, Leti. "Divesting Citizenship: On Asian American History and the Loss of Citizenship Through Marriage." 53 UCLA Law Review 405 (2005).

• Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Jane Park for her assistance with Sau Ung Loo Chan's oral history at Yale Law School, Caroline Kness for organizing archival materials, and the helpful archivist at the National Archives for providing the case file of Sau Ung Loo Chan's husband.

• Appreciation is also extended to Phillips Academy for making its historical yearbooks available online, which provided valuable insights into Chan Hin Cheung's background.