Patsy Matsu Mink (née Takemoto; December 6, 1927 – September 28, 2002) was an American attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Hawaii. Mink was a third-generation Japanese American, having been born and raised on the island of Maui. After graduating as valedictorian of the Maui High School class in 1944, she attended the University of Hawaii at Mānoa for two years and subsequently enrolled at the University of Nebraska, where she experienced racism and worked to have segregation policies eliminated. After illness forced her to return to Hawaii to complete her studies there, she applied to 12 medical schools to continue her education but was rejected by all of them. Following a suggestion by her employer, she opted to study law and was accepted at the University of Chicago Law School in 1948. While at university, she met and married a graduate student, John Francis Mink. When they graduated in 1951, Patsy Mink was unable to find employment and after the birth of their daughter in 1952, the couple moved to Hawaii.
When she was refused the right to take the bar examination, due to the loss of her Hawaiian territorial residency upon marriage, Mink challenged the sexist statute. Though she won the right to take the test and passed the examination, she could not find public or private employment because she was married and had a child. Mink’s father helped her open her own practice in 1953 and around the same time she became a member of the Democratic Party. Hoping to work legislatively to change discriminatory customs through law, she worked as an attorney for the Hawaiian territorial legislature in 1955. The following year, she ran for a seat in the territorial House of Representatives. Winning the race, she became the first Japanese-American woman to serve in the territorial House and two years later, the first woman to serve in the territorial Senate, when she won her campaign for the higher house. In 1960, Mink gained national attention when she spoke in favor of the civil rights platform at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
In 1964, Mink ran for federal office and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, and also the first woman elected to Congress from the state of Hawaii. She served a total of 12 terms (24 years), split between representing Hawaii’s at-large congressional district from 1965–77 and second congressional district from 1990–2002. While in Congress in the late 1960s, she introduced the first comprehensive initiatives under the Early Childhood Education Act, which included the first federal child-care bill and worked on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. In 1970, she became the first person to oppose a Supreme Court nominee on the basis of discrimination against women. Mink initiated a lawsuit which led to significant changes to presidential authority under the Freedom of Information Act in 1971. In 1972, she co-authored the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, later renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002.
Mink was the first East Asian-American woman to seek the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. She ran in the 1972 election, entering the Oregon primary as an anti-war candidate. She was the federal Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs from 1977 to 1979. From 1980 to 1982, Mink served as the president of Americans for Democratic Action and then returned to Honolulu, where she was elected to the Honolulu City Council, which she chaired until 1985. In 1990, she was again elected to the U.S. House, serving until her death in 2002. During her second six terms in office, she continued to work on legislation of importance to women, children, immigrants, and minorities.
Family background
Patsy Matsu Takemoto was born on December 6, 1927 at the sugar plantation camp, Hāmākua Poko, near Paia, on the island of Maui. She was a sansei, or third-generation descendant of Japanese emigrants. Her mother, Mitama Tateyama, was a homemaker, and the daughter of Gojiro Tateyama and Tsuru Wakashige. Their family, which had 11 children, lived in a shack by the Waikamoi Stream. William Pogue, Gojiro’s employer, arranged to have Tateyama’s daughters educated at the Maunaolu Seminary, a boarding school for Christian girls located in the town of Makawao.
Takemoto’s maternal grandparents were both born in the Empire of Japan during the 19th century. Gojiro Tateyama arrived in the Territory of Hawaii late in the century, and was employed on a sugarcane plantation. He later moved to Maui, where he was initially employed as a worker for the East Maui Irrigation Company. Subsequently, he was employed as a store manager and filling station employee. He also delivered mail throughout the backcountry of Maui.
Her father, Suematsu Takemoto, was a civil engineer. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1922, the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Hawaii with a degree in civil engineering. For several years, he was the only Japanese-American civil engineer working at the sugar plantation in Maui. Suematsu was passed over for promotion to chief engineer several times during his career, the positions instead being offered to mostly white Americans. He resigned his local position in 1945 in the aftermath of World War II, and moved to Honolulu with his family, where he established his own land surveying company
Early years and education
Takemoto began her education at the Hāmākua Poko Grammar School when she was four and then transferred in 4th grade to the Kaunoa English Standard School a mostly-white school attended only by students who could speak English and pass the entrance examination. She felt isolated and found the atmosphere unfriendly. She entered Maui High School one year before Honolulu was attacked by Japan. Despite the local Japanese being treated as if they were enemies, Takemoto ran for and won her first election, becoming student body president in her senior year. She was the first girl to serve as president of the student body and graduated as class valedictorian in 1944.
Takemoto moved to Honolulu where she attended the University of Hawaii at Mānoa with medical school and a career in medicine her ultimate goal. During her sophomore year, she was elected president of the Pre-Medical Students Club and was selected as a member of the varsity debate team. In 1946, she decided to move to the mainland and spent one semester enrolled at Wilson College, a small women’s college in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.[13] Unsatisfied with the school, Takemoto transferred to the University of Nebraska. The university had a long-standing racial segregation policy whereby students of color lived in different dormitories from the white students. This angered Takemoto, and she organized and created a coalition of students, parents, administrators, employees, alumni, sponsoring businesses and corporations. She was elected president of the Unaffiliated Students of the University of Nebraska, a “separate” student government for non-white students who were prevented from joining fraternities, sororities, and regular dormitories. Takemoto and her coalition successfully lobbied to end the university’s segregation policies the same year.
Although her campaign was successful, in 1947 Takemoto experienced a serious thyroid condition that required surgery and moved back to Honolulu to recover and finish her final year of college at the University of Hawaii. In 1948, she earned bachelor’s degrees in zoology and chemistry from the university She began applying to medical schools, but none of the dozen schools to which she applied would accept her because she was a woman, especially as they were receiving large numbers of applications from returning veterans. She briefly worked as a typist at Hickam Air Force Base and then went to work at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Her supervisor there, Jessie Purdy Restarick, encouraged her to consider a career in law.
Takemoto applied to both Columbia University and the University of Chicago Law School in the summer of 1948. Columbia rejected her outright, as the term was starting within months. The University of Chicago admitted her as a foreign student and there was only one other woman in her class. Although she had a difficult time adjusting to the harsh winters, and she found her courses tedious, Takemoto became a popular figure at the International House. While playing bridge there one evening, she met John Francis Mink, a former U.S. Air Force navigator and World War II veteran, who was enrolled in geology classes. Against her parents’ wishes, she and Mink married in January 1951, six months after meeting. That spring, she obtained her Juris Doctor degree and John graduated as well, with a master’s degree in geology.
Personal Life
While studying at the University of Chicago, Mink met John Francis Mink, a graduate student there. They wed in 1951, and their daughter, Gwendolyn, arrived in 1952.
More than two decades after Mink’s daughter was born, Mink discovered that during her pregnancy she’d been an unknowing participant in a study of diethylstilbestrol. DES, a synthetic estrogen, was intended to stop miscarriages, but it also came with multiple health risks, including cancer, for those who were exposed. Mink sued and later reached a settlement in the case.
Death and Legacy
Mink died at the age of 74 in Honolulu, Hawaii, on September 28, 2002. Her death was the result of pneumonia due to complications from chickenpox.
Following Mink’s death, Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. Mink received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2014. A documentary, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority, recounted Mink’s life and achievements. The Patsy Takemoto Mink Foundation aims to continue her life’s work.
