Editor’s note: Dr. Sam Chan 陳礼能 is a clinical psychologist and was District Chief with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Children’s System of Care prior to retirement. Dr. Chan held senior administrative and faculty positions at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP), the USC School of Medicine, and the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. This is abstracted from a GSJ Zoom interview on 13 February 2024 and from documents provided by Dr. Chan.
My Father, Cheung Sum Chan or Yuen “Sam” Chan (1922 – 2003)
My father, Cheung Sum Chan, was born in Sun Loan village in the Shunde area 顺德 of Sam Yup District 三邑 of Guangdong. He was a paper son, and on record, he was born in 1922. He came to the United States in 1936 when he was actually eleven. He was claimed as the firstborn son of his uncle (Sing Chan), who was a businessman in San Francisco Chinatown. The Chinese Exclusion Act only allowed merchants to reunite with their families. Uncle Sing actually had a daughter (Mun) in China, and my dad took her “placeholder” name (Yuen) to immigrate as his “son”.
My father was the firstborn son in his family, and his father (Kwong or Quong Hoi) was the firstborn son. My dad had six siblings, and his baby sister – now living in Hong Kong – is the sole survivor in their family. My grandfather was like a patriarch in the village, but he passed away when my dad was ten years old. Without their breadwinner, the family was near starvation. That’s why my dad needed to come to the U.S., to make money and send back remittances. In fact, the family was ready to sell one of the sisters. Dad begged and pleaded to not sell her; he promised to come to the U.S. and work hard. That’s the story of so many other Chinese.
When my own son was ten, he interviewed my father for a school project. That’s when I learned that it was a traumatizing departure for Dad. His baby sister was nicknamed “Chut” (as she was the seventh and last child), and when he insisted on holding her for the last time, there were lots of tears. She reportedly peed on his pant leg during that occasion. He traveled to the U.S. on the SS President Coolidge ocean liner, and every night, he would go to the back of the boat – facing China – and cry. He assumed he would never return. He knew he would never see his mother again.
He was detained on Angel Island for about three months. He was one of the youngest kids there as he was trying to pass as a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old. He had to memorize and recite all the details of his coaching book. If he messed up in front of the immigration officer, he feared he would be sent back to China. But he ultimately passed the interrogation process.
My “grandfather” – or the great uncle – was part of the Sam Yup Company, one of the original six of the Chinese Six Companies. He owned George Brothers, a textile manufacturing company. I remember going to visit the factories when I was little. These were not sweatshops; women were paid and had fairly good working conditions. They sewed denim overalls and jeans in competition against Levi Strauss. They had a Jewish attorney as the liaison for the business and Jewish sales agents.[1]
His uncle was good to Dad. Dad was the oldest of all the American-born cousins, but he was still the outsider. He did a lot of the chores. Initially, because of his lack of English fluency, he was put back in school a few grades relative to his same-age peers; thus, he was older than his classmates. He learned English by reading Superman comic books. His junior high teacher gave him the name of “Sam,” a phonetic derivative of his Chinese name “Sum.” He got more acculturated by high school. He maintained friendships with boys from the same village. They ran with Chinese gangs who fought the Italians at Galileo High in San Francisco.
Grandpa Sing had a farm/ranch property near Penryn/Loomis. Grandpa thought it would be best for Dad to move there after high school and live with the Mexican braceros. Dad was placed in charge of the farm as the foreman. Grandpa was also protective and didn’t want Dad to enlist in the military as WWII loomed. But ultimately, Dad enlisted in the Army in 1946.
Dad served with the 202nd Signal Depot Company in postwar Japan. When my dad was stationed in Yokohama, he would travel off base to visit a local family he came to love and also got to know neighbors who were former Japanese Army soldiers. As one of the few Asian soldiers in his unit to engage the locals, they felt a kinship with him. He also learned to speak some conversational Japanese and served as an example of an American who established good will and furthered the healing process among those who were former combatants.
When he returned from Japan, he worked as a butcher at a Chinese grocery store, Paramount Market, in downtown Sacramento. In 1949, he began working as a civilian employee at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento. He worked in the warehouse and then became a superintendent of working crews. When General Dewey Lowe was the commander of the base in the early 1970s, my dad was his driver.[2] Dad worked at the base for thirty years.
An Early Interracial Marriage
As a young man, Dad was outgoing in Sacramento and San Francisco. He played in a bowling league in Sacramento – and so did Mom, in an opposing White bowling league. They met at Capitol Bowl in a bowling tournament. It was love at first sight. Dad started dating Mom. Mom was a widow; her first husband was a WWII vet with significant mental and physical health issues. When he died, Mom had a 2-year-old daughter, my half-sister Patty. Mom was struggling as a single parent on welfare. Anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books. In fact, her neighbors at the housing project reported Mom to the County when they saw that my dad was coming around a lot. She got a threatening letter from the County that said that if she continued to be seen in the company of a man of “Oriental persuasion”, they would cut off her child benefits. My parents were able to get married just after California’s anti-miscegenation laws were repealed in 1948 with Perez v. Sharp. Of course, Loving v. Virginia was not passed until 1967.
My parents had a hard time finding someone who would marry them. They finally found a Japanese-speaking Shinto priest at a Buddhist temple. They didn’t understand a word of the wedding ceremony (laughs). They were a rare couple in Sacramento at the time. Certainly, they were the first interracial couples in either of their families. And then they had kids: me in 1950 and my younger brother, Daniel, in 1954.
“Grandpa” Chan passed when Mom was pregnant with me. As she wanted to go to the funeral to honor her father-in-law, she wore a Hanfu over a sash around her stomach with a silk pouch containing garlic cloves to ward off evil spirits. My Chan grandmother in Guangdong passed away when I was a few months old. Before that, she wrote a letter addressed to Mom to give me my Chinese name 陳礼能 (meaning “polite” and “anything possible”) and told Mom how happy she was about my birth. That was quite something. Despite all the trauma she knew in her life in China, she felt guilt about sending my dad to America and was happy that he was in a good marriage.
Mom’s name was Lola Mae Garner Chan (1926-2021). As one of her projects in the early 1980s, she extensively researched her family genealogy. She was born and raised in Oklahoma. Her mother was also born in Oklahoma when it was Indian territory. My maternal grandmother was a Smith, and we are related to Captain John Smith of Jamestown. Mom could have been a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (laughs). However, we are also related to John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Lincoln (laughs). That’s another story. My grandfather, Gus Garner, was born in Arkansas. He spent time in Mexico as a ranch hand before the Mexican Revolution. He provided for his five children through very trying times. Like the Grapes of Wrath story, they worked their way from Colorado to California during the Depression. Grandpa Garner was fascinating and quite a character. Later known as “Gadget Man,” he was a mechanic, a handyman, an artisan… He had every tool you can imagine in his garage. He was very creative. We saw these grandparents every Sunday. I learned a lot of Southern culture from them. Grandpa would teach me stories from the Bible, and when it came to the disciples, he’d add, “But you gotta understand, they were also a bunch of winos who hung out with Jesus” (laughs). My grandparents were very accepting of my dad.
My dad’s family in San Francisco was first wary of him marrying a White woman. We’d go see that side of our family about twice a month as they were further away. I was close to my cousins. But I was also close to the children of my dad’s village peers. My parents were active in the Hung On Tong Association 行安善堂. My dad was a first-generation immigrant and very connected to his Cantonese village. Dad had a big personality and was bilingual. My mom was the only White woman in that group, but they loved her. I never felt any prejudice from the Chinese community; I felt at home there.
Patty, my older half-sister, was blond and blue-eyed, as White looking as you can be. She embraced our father as her own. Her last name was Chan. Patty was a cheerleader and had all these White boyfriends, but she was very much a part of our Chinese family. She became a successful businesswoman.
In the 1950-60s, there was a lot of social stigma against interracial couples. We got plenty of stares as a biracial family. Sometimes, these were hostile stares especially as Patty was a White girl amidst darker mixed-race boys. One time, I asked Mom why we were always stared at. My mom thought for a minute and said, “Sammy, it is because we are such a good-looking family.” My dad had another tactic. When I started kindergarten, a few kids made fun of me with slurs like “Ching Chong Chinaman” and “Charlie Chan.” I later told my dad about the incident, and he put his hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. He said, “Sammy, the next time someone calls you a ‘Chinaman,’ you kick his ass” (laughs). He was like that. He stood up for a lot of other Chinese; Dad got into physical fights and confrontations with White racists. He wanted us to be very proud of our ethnic heritage.
Both of my parents were determined to gain acceptance into each other’s families. My mom learned Cantonese. In some ways, she embraced Chinese culture more than my dad! When I was in the first grade, she had me present at a show-and-tell about the meaning of lycee red envelopes and how to use abacus and chopsticks. She wanted me to promote my Chinese heritage and culture. Mom was active with the United Methodist Church and the interdenominational Sacramento Church Women United. She worked with children with special needs for many years. On the other hand, Dad volunteered for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Dad also did watercolor and charcoal art. My dad became very close to my Grandpa Garner and was like a favorite son. They went fishing together. Each of my parents worked very hard to be accepted by the extended family. My parents were married for fifty-three years.
In 1982 when Dad retired, my parents returned to his small village in China. They had sent all these remittances and letters over the years. Mom was treated like a queen. She could speak Chinese, and all the little kids trailed after her as if she was magical. Their remittances helped our Chinese families build housing and sustain through some tumultuous times. After not having seen each other for over forty-five years, it was a tearful reunion with Dad’s younger brother and three older sisters. As he and my mom were departing from the village at the train station, his sister-in-law went down on her knees, grabbed his leg and tearfully pleaded for him to stay longer. His baby sister, Chut, had settled in Macau, then later moved to Hong Kong.
UC San Diego from 1967
We grew up in a multiethnic lower middle-class community. Our neighbors included Mexican American, White, and Asian families. Dad was like the patriarch of the neighborhood. Dad had many African American co-workers, and they were his fishing buddies. We’d bump into them all over Sacramento.
We went to C.K. McClatchy High School. By junior year, I was in AP History with two fellow students who were hardcore anti-war activists. They were growing their hair out and wearing badges and pins. They would even challenge the teacher about the Vietnam War and the curriculum. They went on to Berkeley. They brought a consciousness to all of us. They were ahead of their time. By the time I went to college at UC San Diego, it all came to the forefront.
Dad was working at McClellan Air Force Base, an air logistics supply center providing military equipment for the Vietnam War. Dad was very patriotic and never said anything good or bad about Vietnam. But my mother’s younger brother, my favorite Uncle Bill, would visit our house with my cousins. He was starting to introduce me to civil rights issues with his provocative and politically insightful discussions.
I went to UC San Diego because I wanted to major in aerospace engineering. Growing up in the Cold War and the space race, I had wanted to be in that field since the eighth grade. In the 1950s, I was part of a generation of aspiring astronauts and rocket scientists!
In my freshman year, I was letting my hair grow longer. When I went out with friends, the San Diego Police would hassle college kids with long hair. San Diego PD would drive around with SWAT-like brown helmets and target or profile “Swabbies” or sailors, hippies and Mexican immigrants. College students were considered hippies. We would inevitably be thrown against walls, threatened, and occasionally detained. We might also be placed in the back of unmarked cars, then driven to remote areas and dropped off without ever being arrested. They would card everyone; I was actually not yet seventeen and still under curfew laws. I came to really hate the cops.
By my junior year, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other activist groups were very prominent on campus. And Angela Davis was my T.A. for my humanities class. She was a graduate student at UCSD and founding member of the Black Student Union that was demanding African American studies courses. She was a protégé of Marxist Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, also at UCSD. Davis joined the Communist Party in 1969 and was a very public target of J. Edgar Hoover and Governor Ronald Reagan. In 1969, Angela Davis moved to UCLA as a philosophy professor and was working on the Soledad Brothers case.[3] She was fired in 1970. Other anti-war campus faculty at UCSD included Dr. Linus Pauling.[4]
La Jolla, the city where UCSD is located, had a chapter of the John Birch Society, a far-right organization. There were also military bases in the area. In contrast, UCSD was a hotbed of far-left radicalism, especially after the deaths of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy. There was much discussion about how the Third College would be formed. Our SDS chapter got militant. On Girard Street in downtown La Jolla, there was an American flag every ten feet or so. During one particular street demonstration, SDS members took the flags and stuffed them in garbage cans. The marchers also paused in front of the Bank of America as a symbolic gesture of support for the students at UC Santa Barbara who had stormed a B of A branch office and set it on fire during the Isla Vista Riots that same year.[5] I left the scene before arrests were made and the crowd was disbursed.
By that junior year, I had bombed all my physics classes. I also realized that aerospace engineering would lead to a career in the “military industrial complex.” I was ready to switch majors. I had fallen in love with psychology. I saw films where behavioral modification approaches – with a very systemic engineering-like bent – were used in treating children with autism. I embraced the work of B. F. Skinner, learning theory, and operating conditioning. The definition of psychology as “the science of predicting and controlling behavior” attracted me at that time. I’ll never forget that Christmas when I came home to my parents to tell them I wanted to switch majors (laughs). I thought I would be shamed and a disappointment. But my parents had seen my progression. They knew what I was becoming. My mom and I had a two-year correspondence about the Vietnam War. She was right there with me. My dad didn’t blink an eye and said, “If that’s what you want…” My mom said, “I always knew you should be something like a preacher or lawyer as you have the gift of gab and a skill working with people.” My parents were worried for my safety in my activism, but they encouraged me to follow my path. I got serious and applied to UCLA grad school.
UCLA by 1971
In my more militant “Mao Mao period”, I was into anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, left-leaning politics, but I didn’t associate with an ethnic group. There was not enough of an Asian American critical mass at UCSD. I was not associated with any organization. I went to sporadic demonstrations. It was an individual journey.
I got some key faculty advisor recommendations from UCSD that enabled me to be recruited to work with Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas at UCLA’s Psychology Department. Lovaas was the pioneer who worked to treat autism with applied behavior analysis (ABA). He co-founded the Autism Society of America in 1965. There were only ten students accepted that year I entered the UCLA Clinical Psychology Program, and I was fortunate to work as Lovaas’ research assistant.
In my first quarter at UCLA, I discovered the Asian American Studies Center in Campbell Hall. My roommate was also a grad student in social psychology originally from UCSD. Steven Chinn asked me to join him at the Chinatown Education Project. One thing led to another, and I was hanging out at Campbell more than Franz Hall, where the Psychology Department was housed. The Asian American Studies Center had more radical thinkers, like the ones at UCSD. In my office in Franz, I had plastered posters of the Red Army and Mao on the walls (laughs). Dr. Lovaas, a Norwegian immigrant, would come in and say, “So many guns, so many guns”. He was supportive as long as I continued my work on autism.
But the “behavior mod squad”, as we called ourselves, really matched with the Asian American Movement. We thought behavioral psychologists like Skinner to be fairly arrogant. He felt that if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. We thought we knew better; we were our own club and pushing our own style. We were militant! I now see it as a form of activist arrogance.
About the only other hapa or biracial guy in the Asian American Movement was Kenwood Jung.[6] We were all starting to look at Mao and a more strident interpretation of the War. The two of us formed the Asian American Student Alliance.[7] We had a vision that this would be an umbrella group that would welcome individuals from any and all groups affiliated with the Center. This included members of radical study groups as well as Agape, the Asian Christian student organization, and the ethnic-specific Chinese Student Association. There were four or five other student groups including the Van Troi Anti-Imperialist Youth Brigade, an Asian American anti-war group.[8] We were individuals coming together to produce guerrilla theater. We sponsored events. We also tried to support community work. I worked with Gidra and Steve Tatsukawa.[9] I later worked with Yvonne Wong’s Little Friends Playgroup, an offshoot of the Chinatown tutorial project.[10] But it was all very loose. We did this for a couple of years.
We were mostly in our early twenties. We were still maturing, but also with a lot of passionate young adult energy. While we were committed ideologically to certain causes, we were also meeting new people and even developing romances. I met my future wife. We weren’t sure about our long-term political vision. There were many in our group that endured in community engagement. But some folks were adventuristic, although sincere, and caught up in the moment. We were serious enough about what we believed that we wanted to bring a strident political consciousness to whatever else we were doing. It certainly influenced my career.
I was at a Gidra party once and ended up in a walk-in closet smoking dope with two others. One starts saying my name, “Sam Chan, Sam Chan.” And from there, we start singing “Sam enChanted evening…” (laughs). We were young. But both of these guys went on to do important work for decades. One became the executive director of a community-based agency, and the other was a judge.
At Campbell Hall, we were in the same hallway with African American and Latinos, but we didn’t have many formal collaboration projects. I did get to know some of the staff, faculty, and students. For me, there was more of a natural alliance with Native Americans. Later, some of our Asian American mental health programs supported the American Indian community. When I worked as a senior administrator and faculty member at the California School of Professional Psychology, I secured grants to support American Indian grad students in focusing their dissertation projects on urban American Indian community needs and issues in L.A. County.
Graduating to Professionalism
By the mid-1970s, the Asian American Studies Center had more academic professionals. Dr. Lucie Cheng (Hirata) would come in; she and Dr. Kenyon Chan were the external faculty on my dissertation committee. I also had three psychology faculty. My dissertation topic focused on Asian families with children with developmental disabilities, their cultural orientations, and how they viewed disability and accessed services. The psychology faculty were concerned that my topic was too practical, too applied, and not research-oriented enough. But Lucie and Kenyon were very supportive. I completed my Ph.D. in 1978, and I was already working then at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
By the mid-1970s at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, Lucie Cheng became a tenured sociology professor and director of the Asian American Studies Center. Russell Leong came to the Center in 1976 and Amerasia Journal took off. The Center would come to sponsor many post-docs and researchers. By the early 1980s, more faculty invested in Asian American studies would be tenured at UCLA.
The early 1970s “adventuristic” part of the Movement was fun. Kenwood and I were both showboats, and guerrilla theater got attention! When I was a kid growing up in Sacramento, my mother produced neighborhood variety shows with all the kids (laughs). So as a grad student involved with the Movement at UCLA, I learned from my stage mom. We were creative with a political message. We had fun – and we drew in a lot of people. We may have also given young people a license to be free, to be creative, and break the stereotypes of being quiet and shy. We took risks. I think the Movement influenced people for a long time. But did we keep the momentum? Many of us went our different ways. Some stayed focused on Asian American issues and are still the leaders of today.
My dissertation was actually the foundation to writing a grant to establish the Asian Rehabilitation Services Case Management Unit.[11] We needed data to justify the funding of bilingual and bicultural case managers for Asian American families in Regional Centers. My dissertation indeed had very practical outcomes. I also used the dissertation findings to secure state and federal funding for about ten years of multicultural programs at Children’s Hospital. We trained parents to do direct advocacy. That kind of work continues to the present day.
I got more mainstream in my career. I had to publish, do presentations, procure grants, train graduate students, and do administrative work. But, my entire career focused on community-based services for the marginalized. I wanted to be involved in multicultural, multiethnic community-based advocacy programs. In every agency or professional organization, I always joined the ethnic-specific subgroup. I was active with the Asian Pacific Planning Council.[12] The thread of my identity was a part of my whole career, even when I was a L.A. County administrator with the Department of Mental Health – which was hard to do. The Movement influenced me, but we grew more sophisticated – with time – in our professions. I continue to feel kinship with immigrant communities.
I married a Sansei. One of my grandchildren is a child of five continents – excluding Australia and Antarctica. Both my children are involved in the arts; one is a videographer and the other is a musician. They use their talents to express themselves; I couldn’t be happier with their success. My Japanese American wife was very close to my Cantonese father, despite his memories of Japanese imperialism in his childhood. He said he was happy I was with an “Asian” woman as it would allow me to embrace our heritage. He wanted an “Asian” daughter. I was very close to my mother-in-law, a Kibei woman. From the beginning, she called me “Sam-san”. Although I’m hapa and American-born, in some ways I’m more traditional village Chinese. Yet, I have comfort and attraction in all this diversity.
[1] George Brothers and Co. (Cantonese name Do Lee) was established in 1890 by immigrants from Shunde. It was a “Manufacturer of ‘Phoenix Brand’ Denim Goods and ‘California’ Flannel Wear, Play Suits, Overalls, Pants, Jumpers, Cotton Shirts, etc.” and one of the largest San Francisco Chinatown manufacturers of apparel for workingmen. From: The Free Library. S.V. Guilds, unions, and garment factories: notes on Chinese in the apparel industry.” Retrieved 17 Feb 2024.
[2] Dewey Kwoc Kung Lowe (1924 Oakland-1994) began his military service in 1944. He was the first Chinese American to be promoted to brigadier general and Major General in the United States Air Force. He was a recipient of the USAF’s highest peacetime decoration, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal.
[3] Soledad State Prison is near Salinas, California. In January 1970, a White prison guard was killed during prison yard riots in a racially volatile environment. Three African Americans were accused of first-degree murder. These three “Soledad Brothers” – especially George Jackson – had affinity to the Black Panther Party. The situation got worse with blatant racial underpinnings and leading to the death of George Jackson and the 16-month imprisonment of Angela Davis before her acquittal.
[4] Dr. Linus Pauling won the Nobel Chemistry Prize in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. In September of 1968 at UCSD, 48 athletes led a campus boycott demanding a physical education major in Third College. In October, Black Panther Party’s Eldridge Cleaver came to UCSD. In 1970, Third College – now Thurgood Marshall College – was established to focus on history, humanities, and liberal sciences.
[5] After a series of riots, on 25 February 1970, UCSB marchers had a confrontation with Santa Barbara Police. Governor Ronald Reagan contemplated sending in the National Guard. The Bank of America was viewed as a funder of the Vietnam War. From Victoria Korotchenko’s “Trouble in Paradise: The Isla Vista Riots of 1970,” in UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History, n.d. Retrieved 24 February 2024. https://undergradjournal.history.ucsb.edu/headline-history/headline-history-trouble-in-paradise-the-isla-vista-riots-of-1970/
[6] “Hapa” is Hawaiian pidgin meaning someone of multiracial ancestry. It comes from a transliteration of the word “half”.
[7] From the Asian American Student Alliance model, the Asian Coalition would be established in 1975 with Robert Mori as the first president. Now named Asian Pacific Coalition, it was an umbrella group of Asian Pacific student organizations to ask for funds and recognition from student government – parallel to the Chicano student group, MEChA, and Black Students Association. For many years, Asian Coalition, was guided by and housed in the Asian American Studies Center in Campbell Hall.
[8] Formed in 1972, Van Troi was a largely Asian American high school group that protested against the Vietnam War. Their name was meant to honor the Viet Cong Nguyen Van Troi, who led a failed attempt to assassinate Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Ambassador Henry Lodge in Saigon in 1964. The Van Troi Anti-Imperialist Youth Brigade marched in the Nisei Week Parade in August of 1972.
[9] Between 1969 and 1974, Gidra was the influential Asian American Movement community newspaper from the UCLA Asian American Studies core. Five students, Dinora Gil, Laura Ho, Tracy Okida, Colin Watanabe, and Mike Murase, each donated $100 to start this journal. Gidra eventually moved from Campbell Hall to a storefront on Jefferson and Tenth. Many writers and artists volunteered on Gidra including Steve Tatsukawa. Steve Tatsukawa also became the first Executive Director of Visual Communications, established in 1970.
[10] Yvonne Wong (Nishio) and other activists collaborated with working class immigrant mothers to establish Little Friends Playgroup, a childcare center, in Chinatown in 1973-74. Many women in Chinatown worked in garment factories and needed reliable low-cost childcare. Little Friends Playgroup also advocated for funding and other permanent social services for the Chinatown community. The Asian American students were leaving campuses and bringing attention to dire needs in Chinatown and other Asian communities. Later, Yvonne would serve on the Advisory Board of Center for Pacific Asian Family, established in 1978 under the leadership of Nilda Rimonte. Yvonne taught ESL for years at Evans Adult School, authoring several lesson projects for the LAUSD Adult Education Division and three ESL textbooks. Yvonne Wong was married to Alan Nishio, the interim director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center in the early 1970s, and later, Associate Vice President of Student Services at Cal State Long Beach. Nishio was a longtime community leader especially associated with Little Tokyo Service Center and Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress (NCRR).
[11] In 1972, Oriental Services Center (OSC) was serving a few clients in board and care facilities. In 1975, OSC became Asian Rehabilitation Services, a 501 C-3 nonprofit organization under the direction of Sachio Kano and Seigo Hayashi. Dr. Sam Chan served as Chair and member of the Board of Directors for many consecutive years.
[12] Asian Pacific Planning Council (APPCON) was established in 1976. It was a meeting of public agency staff, Asian American CBO (community-based organization) staff, and some academics to share information and strategies. Early presidents of APPCON include Ron Wakabayashi of Asian American Drug Abuse Program, Royal Morales of Asian American Mental Health Training Program, Mark Mayeda of Asian Rehabilitation Services, and Irene Chu of Chinatown Service Center. The group was renamed A3PCON in 1996 and then Asian American Pacific Islander Equity Alliance (AAPI Equity). An earlier federation was established in 1968 by LA County Human Relations Commission called Council of Oriental Organizations (COO). Special Service for Groups (SSG) was founded in 1952 in response to the Zootsuit Riots of 1943.