The First Three Asian Ancestry Women at W&M
Charting Diverse Pathways explores the lives of the first three Asian ancestry women to attend William & Mary: Hatsuye Yamasaki Kajiwara ‘37, Margaret Lee Masters ‘45, and Beatrice Fujiwara Sakai ‘53.
This exhibit provides historical context to the experiences of these three women to understand the different realities faced by APIA students and the multitude of topics in APIA history. Undergraduate researchers on the Asian Pacific Middle Eastern Research Project team used a mixture of oral history and archival research to compile a holistic view of each woman’s life and experiences at W&M and beyond.
Charting Diverse Pathways was created by Alex Park ‘24 and Diana Kim ‘25 under the supervision of Professor Deenesh Sohoni, Exhibits and Artifacts Curator Jennie Davy, and Professor Esther Kim. Archival and exhibit support provided by Alex Wheeler ‘23, Oral Historian Dre Taylor, and the archivists at W&M Libraries. We are grateful to Katherine Masters and Susan Sakai for sharing their families’ histories.
This exhibit builds on previous research by W&M students, faculty, and staff including Professor Francis Aguas, Professor Emeritus Terry Meyers, Anthony Elopre ‘08, Benming Zhang ‘16, Ivana Marshall, and Shayna Gutcho. We are also indebted to the work of Valerie Cushman (W&M’s 100 Years of Women celebration) and Sumie Yotsukura ‘22 & Brian Zhao ‘23 (P. K. Chen Exhibit). This exhibit was made possible by the generous support of the Charles Center in promoting undergraduate research.