During World War II, some 350,000 women served in the United States armed forces, with over
86,000 (or roughly 25%) serving in the Navy.
While all of these women deserve to be remembered, today we are highlighting the remarkable story
of Susan Ahn Cuddy, who was the first Asian American female officer in the U.S. Navy and
the first female gunnery officer.
Susan Ahn was born in 1915 to Ahn Chang Ho and Lee Hae Ryun, who had arrived in California
in 1902 as some of the first Korean immigrants to the United States.
Ahn’s parents were active in the Korean independence movement, as Korea was occupied
by Japan from 1910-1945, with her father one of the most famous leaders, commonly known
as “Do-San.”
Growing up in Los Angeles, Ahn remembered her father telling her and her siblings to
“be very good American citizens, and to never, never forget our Korean heritage.”
After graduating high school, Ahn went to Los Angeles City College and then San Diego
State College.
In 1938, her father Do-San died while in Japanese custody.
After Pearl Harbor, it was only logical that Ahn continue her father’s struggle against
the Japanese by joining the military.
As she put it, “It was one way to serve your family’s country and your own.”
After the WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, was established in July
1942, Ahn went to join.
But she was turned away for being Asian.
As she later told an interviewer, “We were unusual in those days, and we looked like
the enemy.”
Undeterred, she reapplied and was accepted into the Navy in December 1942 as an enlisted
WAVE.
At that time, the Navy had just set up a centralized recruit training center in Cedar Falls, Iowa
for enlisted WAVES.
Ahn was part of the first group of women to go through the 5 week training course there.
Next, she went to LINK Training in Atlanta, Georgia, to learn how to work with those early
flight simulators.
She graduated the training as a Petty Officer Third Class Specialist T, or “Navy Instructor,”
in March 1943.
After being assigned to NAS Miami, Ahn worked as a LINK operator, training pilots.
But while there, she was temporarily reassigned to be an aerial gunnery instructor, helping
the air crews aim correctly at the moving targets.
During this time, an officer also recommended Ahn for officer training.
So by the late summer of 1943, she headed to the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School
at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for a 90 day officer’s training course.
Once she finished this training, Ahn was commissioned as an officer in the WAVES in the fall of
1943.
Due to her prior experience as an air gunnery instructor, the Navy used Ahn as the first
test case for women gunnery officers.
By November 1943 she was going through the full gunnery school at Pensacola, getting
trained on a variety of weapons.
When she graduated the course, she became the first female gunnery officer in the Navy.
Ensign Ahn was featured in newspapers for this feat.
Ahn remembered, “I’m very proud of the fact that I’m able to say that I am a Korean,
I am an American, and I am fighting for the country.”
In January 1944 Ahn was sent to Naval Air Station, Atlantic City to train naval aircrews.
As the first female gunnery officer in the Navy, she had to establish her authority from
time to time.
Once, as she recalled, there was a “tall, good-looking, three-stripe commander and he
said to me, ‘I'm not shooting until I see the whites of those Japs' eyes.’
And I said, ‘I don't care what you do up there; here you do what I tell you.’”
Late in the war, Ahn was sent to Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C. for her ability to speak
Korean.
However, for the first 6 months, she was not given any meaningful tasks due to racial fears
and mistrust.
Eventually she received more important intelligence tasks and proved what she was able to offer.
Sometime later she became the liaison between Naval Intelligence and the Library of Congress
until she left the Navy in 1946.
After Ahn left the Navy, she worked as a civilian at what would later be called the National
Security Agency.
In April 1947, she married Chief Petty Officer Frank Cuddy, who also worked in the Naval
cryptological field.
The couple married at the Navy chapel in Washington, D.C.
Due to Jim Crow-era anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia and Maryland, they were not able
to marry anywhere else.
Their marriage was unusual for the time period, and both families frowned upon the marriage
at the beginning.
Susan Ahn Cuddy worked with the NSA through the 1950s, running a think tank involved in
top secret work related to the Soviet Union and Vietnam before she left the government
in 1959.
Active in the Korean American community for many decades, she passed away in 2015.
Susan Ahn Cuddy was a trailblazer for both women and Asian Americans.
She was proud of her WWII service in the WAVES.
As she said later, “I was American.
I was very American, raised to honor and love America.
There was actually no choice, I mean, that was it….The WAVES program showed the world
what women were able to do outside of their housekeeping home.”
Undoubtedly, Susan Ahn Cuddy showed the Navy, and the world, what she could do and helped
open future opportunities for both women and Asian Americans in the Navy.