After losing her brother, sister, and father at an incarceration camp, she became a doctor who never lost a mother or a baby.
March 15, 1920: Mary Sakaguchi Oda, a physician whose medical training was interrupted by incarceration during World War II, was born in North Hollywood, California.
Mary Sakaguchi was the fifth of eight children born to Japanese immigrant farmers Shiichirō and Hisaji Sakaguchi, who had emigrated from Nagano, Japan.
Education was central to the family’s values. Mary’s mother Hisaji came from a distinguished background in Japan. For generations, her family had served as shōya, respected village leaders descended from samurai. She herself had attended college and worked as a teacher. She expected the same ambition from her children.
Mary graduated from North Hollywood High School in 1937. At the time, few students continued to college. Out of roughly 150 students in her graduating class, only five went on to higher education.
Mary was one of them.
Courtesy of Bo Sakaguchi and CSU Northridge
Mary Sakaguchi, fifth of eight children, grew up in a farming family in California. Her parents, Shiichiro and Hisaji Sakaguchi, had immigrated from Nagano, Japan.
Courtesy of the Japanese American Medical Association
Mary Sakaguchi (second from right) in 1935, two years before graduating from North Hollywood High School and beginning college, with her siblings.
The novel Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis inspired many young scientists of the era, including Mary, to pursue bacteriology.
Courtesy of UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the 1940s, where Mary Sakaguchi pursued her pre medical studies before World War II interrupted her education.
Courtesy of UCLA
Theodore Day Beckwith, chairman of UCLA’s Department of Bacteriology, told Mary that if he was her, he would quit medical school because of what the “Japs” were doing.
Photo from Osaka Mainichi
Japanese troops in Manchuria during Japan’s expansion in China in the 1930s. Events like these fueled anti-Japanese sentiment that shaped attitudes toward Japanese Americans.
“You Will Never Get a Job”
Mary originally planned to become a researcher. Inspired by the novel Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, she decided to major in bacteriology, just like the book’s protagonist, Martin Arrowsmith. But prejudice quickly intruded on those plans.
One day at UCLA, the chair of the bacteriology department, Dr. Theodore Beckwith, delivered a blunt warning. “If I were you, I would quit,” he told her. “Because of what those damn Japs are doing in Manchuria, you will never get a job.”
Shaken, Mary sought advice from another professor. The suggestion she received was practical but discouraging. “Go into nursing,” the professor advised. “You’ll always have a job.”
Mary brought the idea home to her mother, who objected to her becoming a nurse. But when Mary asked about becoming a doctor, her mother agreed.
War and Incarceration
In 1940, Mary was accepted into the University of California medical school at Berkeley. She was one of only three Japanese American students and one of just eleven women in a class of seventy-two.
But her education was soon interrupted by war.
After Pearl Harbor, the Sakaguchi family was forced to abandon their farm and report for incarceration at Manzanar, one of the government’s concentration camps in the California desert.
The night before leaving, Mary’s father shared a reflection that stayed with her for the rest of her life. “I’m not sorry I came to America,” he said. As the fourth son in Japan, he would never have had the opportunity to farm large landholdings there. In the United States he had been able to build a farm and send all of his children to college. For him, that was still worth it.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 interrupted Mary’s education and changed the course of her life.
AP Photo
The entire Sakaguchi family was incarcerated at Manzanar. Yet before going there, Mary’s father initially said he did not regret coming to America.
Courtesy of the Japanese American Medical Association
Obo (standing in Boy Scout uniform) and Shiichirō (seated, second from right), together with Chico (not pictured), all died within seven months of each other at Manzanar.
Photograhy by Dorothea Lange
Harsh desert conditions, poor living quarters, and most ironically inadequate medical facilities contributed to the deaths of Mary’s family members.
Rising From So Many Losses
Life inside Manzanar brought devastating hardship.
Within seven months, three members of Mary’s family died: her oldest brother, her older sister, and her father. Illnesses that might have been manageable elsewhere were worsened by the camp’s harsh desert climate and living conditions.
Meanwhile, Mary’s medical education had been suspended. Determined to continue, she secured recommendations from former professors and sent dozens of applications.
She applied to roughly sixty schools. Only five even responded. Most rejection cards contained the same explanation. “We cannot consider your application because we have military installations on campus.”
Mary believed the real reason was obvious. The return address on every application read: Manzanar.
An Unexpected Visitor
One day in camp, Mary was told she had a visitor. That alone was surprising. Visitors to Manzanar were rare.
Waiting for her was Dr. Hiram Edwards, one of her former professors. He had written one of her recommendation letters and had been advocating on her behalf. He had news.
Mary had been accepted to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The school’s dean, Dr. Margaret Craighill, the first female physician commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army, had agreed to admit her.
Mary never forgot that moment.
“I’ve always felt grateful that I was able to get a medical education despite what happened to us during the war,” she later said. Her tuition and living expenses would be funded by her mother’s life insurance policy.
Courtesy of Drexel University College of Medicine
One of Mary’s former professors, Dr. Hiram Edwards, wrote a strong recommendation that helped her gain admission to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Courtesy of U.S. National Library of Medicine
Dr. Margaret Craighill of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania accepted Mary Sakaguchi after her medical education had been disrupted by wartime incarceration.
Dr. Sanbo Sakaguchi, Mary’s brother. Despite the losses their family endured during the war, the two siblings later founded Serra Memorial Hospital in Sun Valley.
Courtesy of Serra Medical Group
Serra Medical Clinic in Sun Valley today. It was originally founded by Dr. Mary Sakaguchi Oda and her brother Dr. Sanbo Sakaguchi to fight discrimination in medical care.
Starting Trends
In January 1946, she graduated cum laude from Woman’s Medical College. One month later, she gave birth to her first child. School officials later told her she was the first woman in the college’s history who had not dropped out after getting married, and certainly the first to continue through pregnancy. Mary laughed when recalling the story years later. “I guess I started a trend.”
After the war, Mary and her husband eventually returned to California after spending time in Japan. But discrimination still lingered. Hospitals in the San Fernando Valley often refused to admit Japanese American doctors’ patients.
Mary and her brother, Dr. Sanbo Sakaguchi, decided to solve the problem themselves. Together they founded Serra Memorial Hospital in Sun Valley, named after Junípero Serra. The hospital was created specifically to serve patients who had been excluded from other medical institutions.
A Life Delivering New Life
Dr. Mary Sakaguchi Oda practiced medicine for more than fifty years. She delivered over 3,500 babies during her career.
What many people remembered most was her remarkable record. Over decades of obstetrics practice, she never lost a mother or a baby. For someone whose own life had been marked by devastating loss during incarceration, the achievement carried special meaning. Dr. Oda remained deeply grateful to the institution that had given her a chance when so many others refused.
Her granddaughter later explained how strongly she felt about the school. “She really credits Woman’s Medical College for everything that she achieved in her life. At the time there was nobody else giving her an opportunity.”
It was an opportunity that changed thousands of lives. Including all the children she helped bring safely into the world.
Dr. Mary Sakaguchi Oda delivered more than 3,500 babies over 50 years of medical practice — without losing a single mother or child.