Tomo Inouye (born 1870) was a Japanese medical doctor trained at the University of Michigan Medical School. She was the founder of the Japanese Medical Women's Society.
Early life
Inouye was born in Fukuoka. Inouye attended a Methodist girls' school in Nagasaki, Japan.
Education
Inouye began to study homeopathic medicine with an American doctor, Mary A. Gault, who was married to a Japanese man and who ran a clinic at Nagasaki. [1] She is said to have chosen medicine because she was too short to qualify for nurses' training. [2]
In 1898, Inouye graduated from the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College. [1] She was the only woman in a group of eight Japanese students enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1900. [3] She earned her medical degree there in 1901 and received her Japanese medical license in 1903. [4]
Career
Inouye was a delegate to the fourth world conference of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Toronto in 1897. [5] She returned to Japan after medical school [6] and was a practicing physician in Tokyo. She was also appointed a medical inspector for school girls in Tokyo and taught hygiene and health classes. She was active with the YWCA of Japan. [7]
In 1920, she revisited her alma mater with Ida Kahn, the school's first Chinese woman graduate. [8] Both women were in the United States to attend the International Conference of Women Physicians in New York City in 1919. [9]
Tomo Inouye founded the Japanese Medical Women's Society, and was a founding member and at-large board member of the Medical Women's International Society (MWIA) in 1919. [10] In 1923, she headed a relief project of women physicians responding to the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. [11] [12]
Personal life
Inouye lived through World War II, though her home and belongings were destroyed: "All my pictures, books, instruments, specimens, and everything were burned to the ground through that terrible bomb," she wrote to Michigan friends in 1948. "Therefore I have nothing remained, no keepsake, and made homeless, no relative to look after me, separated from all my friends." [13]
References
- ^ a b "Tomo Inouye M. D." Medical Era (May 1898): 79.
- ^ "A Pioneer Woman Physician" The Trans-Pacific (September 1921): 89-90.
-
^
"Japanese Students at the University of Michigan" Detroit Free Press (September 2, 1900): 14. via
Newspapers.com
- ^ "News" Michigan Alumnus (May 1903): 398.
- ^ Ian Tyrrell, Woman's World/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880-1930 (UNC Press 2014): 46. ISBN 9781469620800
- ^ "A Native Missionary" Bulletin of the Students' Christian Association (November 15, 1901): 2-3.
- ^ "Japanese Doctor is YWCA Official" Greencastle Herald (December 16, 1919): 4.
- ^ "Dr. Ida Kahn '96m and Dr. Tomo Inouye '01m Visit the University" Michigan Alumnus (January 1920): 177.
-
^ Marguerite Mooers Marshall,
"American Women's Styles Unhygienic, Inconsistent, says Dr. Tomo Inouye" Evening World (September 25, 1919): 20. via
Newspapers.com
- ^ Medical Woman's Journal (October 1922): 234.
- ^ Kimberly Jensen, Oregon's Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life of Activism (University of Washington Press 2012): 143, 205. ISBN 9780295804408
- ^ "Inouye, '01m, Writes of Tokyo Disaster" Michigan Alumnus (March 20, 1924): 701.
- ^ University of Michigan History (2014): 265.
External links
- A full-length portrait of Tomo Inouye from the University of Michigan Library's online exhibit, "Michigan's Story: The History of Race at U-M"
- A photo of Tomo Inouye later in life, in the collection of the Library of Congress
- A photograph of Tomo Inouye in the collection of the Oregon Health and Science University Digital Commons