She cracked Russian codes for the NSA at the height of the Cold War. Before that, she was the first female instructor in the US Navy to teach pilots how to shoot down enemy planes. But first, she had to crack racial barriers to be the first Asian American woman in the US Navy. Later she cracked social taboos to marry outside of her race at a time when this could send you to jail. She was an athlete, a leader, and the daughter of a freedom fighter. Her name was Susan Ahn Cuddy, and you should know her story.
She was born Susan Ahn to Ahn Changho and Helen Ahn on January 16, 1915. Her father, Ahn Changho, was also known by a pen name, “Dosan”, and was a famous independence leader for Korea in the early 20th century who worked tirelessly to throw off the shackles of Japanese domination over his homeland. But more than that, he was a philosopher and educator, an almost Gandhi-like figure of modern Korea that is still respected in both North and South Korea.
Ahn grew up in Los Angeles in a home that served as a hotbed of independence movements for Korea, as well as an intellectual and political nexus for educating young Korean leaders. Growing up in this kind of environment, she worked on many of her father’s independence related activities during her youth. Although he was often gone overseas pressing the cause of Korean freedom, when he was home he game his children all the time he could. And taught them all his ethos and his beliefs. For his children, the most important was to “be the best American you can be, but never forget your heritage”.
Ahn attended school in Los Angeles becoming a star athlete playing sports such as baseball and field hockey in high school. She attended Los Angeles City College where she was the school’s first Asian-American women’s baseball player as well as the director of women’s baseball at the school. She later graduated from San Diego State College in 1940 with a degree in sociology.
This level of athleticism was a departure from the traditional expectations of Korean woman – or even American women – of the time which didn’t focus so much on such “boyish” pursuits. Then again, Dosan Ahn Changho wasn’t a traditional father. Ahn states that her father was exceptionally “liberal” by the standards of the time, allowing his daughters to be “rough…and not ladylike”.
Her father’s dynamism and outlook greatly influenced Ahn. Dosan was eventually arrested in Korea during one of his independence related trips and died under torture in Japanese custody in 1937. This inspired a deep desire to fight against Japanese imperialism in Susan Ahn. As soon as the US declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, she signed up for the US Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School at Smith College. This was the home of the WAVES program, the Women’s Reserve of the US Naval Reserve. It wasn’t easy to get in for her. Her first application was rejected because she was too “oriental”. But Ahn persisted, and in 1942 she became the first Asian-American woman in the United States Navy.
In the WAVES Ahn became an air tactics and LINK instructor, teaching pilots how use the simulator cockpits. She worked her way up the Navy ranks, eventually becoming a lieutenant and the first female aerial gunnery officer and teaching pilots how to shoot down enemy aircraft using the 0.50 caliber machine guns.
Ahn accomplished all of this at a time when anti-Asian sentiment was at its highest and there was undisguised sexism in the military. She described her experience in the Navy as “wonderful”. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. As she later told her biographer, “A lot of people thought that women didn’t belong in the service. That made us try harder”. She was met with some resistance, especially from pilots who didn’t like the idea of being taught how to fight from an Asian, or a woman, or both! Ahn recounts one incident where a white male pilot protested having to take instructions from an Asian woman. She shut him up by telling him, “Down here, you will shoot when I tell you to shoot!”
After her stint as a gunnery officer, the now Lt. Ahn moved on to work in the Office of Naval Intelligence. Initially, this too was met with resistance as one of her supervisors refused to let her even near classified materials, not trusting her due to her ethnicity. But she overcame this and became a codebreaker, a work that would lead her later to the National Security Agency. She also served as a liaison from Naval Intelligence to the Library of Congress.
After WW2 ended, Ahn went on to work for the new NSA. She led a team of over 300 linguists and other experts in the Russia section as a section chief, while also working on various top-secret projects for the Department of Defense. This was at the height of the Cold War, before the Women’s Liberation Movement, before the Civil Rights Movement. Ahn even received a fellowship from the NSA in 1956 to study at the University of Southern California to further her career.
Even in her personal life, Susan Ahn was a trailblazer. She met Francis X. Cuddy during her time at Naval Intelligence. He, also a codebreaker and fluent in Japanese, and the two fell in love. To get married, they defied both of their families and the racist miscegenation laws of Virginia, where the two lived at the time. They got married at a base chapel in Washington DC in 1947 and she became Susan Ahn Cuddy. This was over a decade before the Lovings got married and their cause broke the interracial marriage taboo.
Perhaps it was her upbringing as the daughter of a freedom fighter, but Susan Ahn Cuddy was no stranger to the plight of the oppressed. According to an interview with her son Philip Ahn Cuddy, his mother would go to places in the South such as Atlanta and Florida where at the time, an Asian person was a rarity. Often times the people of the region wouldn’t know what to make of her and she would voluntarily sit in the back of buses and used the “colored” designated public facilities as a form of solidarity with the other minorities of the time.
Eventually the now Mrs.Cuddy would leave the NSA to spend time with her growing family. Her husband continued in the Navy and would serve for 33 years. She left Washington DC to move back to Los Angeles in 1959 and joined her brother (actor Philip Ahn – himself a pioneer in Hollywood) and her sister Soorah to run the family restaurant business, Moongate. When her brother passed away in 1978 Cuddy stepped in to manage the business as well as be the family representative to help preserve her family’s legacy and history.
In her later years, she was a paragon of the Korean-American community, especially in Los Angeles. Two bouts of breast cancer didn’t slow her down. She continued to participate in community activities, even campaigning for the then-candidate Barak Obama. In 2003, the State Assembly of California of District 28 named Mrs.Cuddy the Woman of the Year in honor of her commitment to public service. On October 5, 2006, she received the American Courage Award from the Asian American Justice Center in Washington D.C.
To the end, she was a fighter. Susan Ahn Cuddy was a spy, a leader, a veteran, and a pioneer in so many things. Most of all, she was a Hero of Awesomeness. She passed away on June 15, 2015, at the age of 100.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Ahn_Cuddy
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2015/05/20/first-female-asian-officer-speaks-about-her-naval-service/
http://www.latimes.com/la_me_susancuddy_obit_pictures-photogallery.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-susan-ahn-cuddy-20150701-story.html
http://www.susanahncuddy.com/frontpage.html
http://time.com/4314308/susan-cuddy-history/
http://www.jstudentboard.com/reporter/korea-and-abroad/community-remembers-cuddys-legacy/
http://kore.am/living-legend-susan-ahn-cuddy-passes-away-at-100/