Patsy Mink

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 Hawaiʻi 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 there, she met and married a graduate student in geology, 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 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 upper 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 served a total of 12 terms (24 years), split between representing Hawaii's at-large congressional district from 1965 to 1977 and second congressional district from 1990 to 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,^[2] 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.

Family background[edit]

Patsy Matsu Takemoto was born on December 6, 1927, at the sugar plantation camp, Hāmākua Poko, near Paia, on the island of Maui.^[3][4] She was a sansei, or third-generation descendant of Japanese emigrants.^[5] Her mother, Mitama Tateyama, was a homemaker,^[4][6] and the daughter of Gojiro Tateyama and Tsuru Wakashige.^[7][8] 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.^[7]


Takemoto's maternal grandparents were both born in the Empire of Japan during the 19th century.^[9] 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.^[7]


Her father, Suematsu Takemoto, was a civil engineer.^[4][6] He graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 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.^[10] 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.^[7]