Susan Ahn Cuddy grew up with parents deeply involved in helping Korea achieve independence. Her father would lose his life after sustaining injuries from torture during imprisonment while fighting for the movement back in Korea. And the family home in Los Angeles, where Susan was raised, often housed Korean immigrants, many of whom also fought for independence.
Tough and motivated, at twenty-seven years old in 1942, Susan joined the U.S. Navy, becoming the first female gunnery officer, and served until 1946, reaching the rank of lieutenant.
And after the war, going against the Anti-miscegenation laws of her time, Susan married Francis X. “Frank” Cuddy. She and Frank, an Irish-American, wed at a Navy chapel in Washington, D.C., the only place that would marry them.
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Note: photograph is of Susan with her siblings, all of whom had enlisted in the U.S. military. Taken in 1942.
“A snapshot biography of Susan Ahn Cuddy” sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Ahn_Cuddy / U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph / Wikimedia Commons
