Irma Tam Soong

Irma Tam Soong (15 July 1912 – 11 January 2001) was a historian specializing in Hawaiian-Chinese history, and was notable for writing about her experiences during World War II in China during Japanese occupation. She founded the Hawaii Chinese History Center.

She was a distant relative of Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen.

Personal life

She was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, attended the University of Hawaii and graduated from Yenching University in Peking before receiving a Master's degree in English literature from Mills College in Oakland, CA. She married Norman Tet Fo Soong, a photo journalist and war correspondant. At the time of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong she escaped as a refugee with her infant son, Colin, to the war time capital of Nationalist China, Chungking. She returned to Los Angeles after a DC3 flight over the "hump", the Himalyas, to Bombay and then by freighter to Los Angeles. Soong was raised in Honolulu's Chinatown by Cantonese-speaking parents. She loved to read as a child and later wrote poetry as a young woman. She had seven siblings: sisters Pina Lee, Fannie Ching, Janet Lee; and brothers Peter Tam, Paul Tam, James S.T. Tam and Edward S.T. Tam.^[1]

She is the mother of one son—Dr. Colin Soong—a physician in Carson City, Nevada. She also had two grandchildren: Tamara Thunder Soong and Andrew Soong. She also has four great-grandchildren: James Benjamin Soong, Ian Thunder, Avery Thunder, and Hannah Soong. Irma taught English at Hwa Nan College in Fuzhou, China, Pomona College in Claremont, California, and Kaimuki High School in Honolulu, Hawaii. She retired from teaching in 1970.

After retiring, Soong was the founder and executive director of the Hawaii Chinese History Center (HCHC) in Honolulu, Hawaii. She established the center on October 31, 1970 and incorporated it on March 17, 1971 with the help of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the United Chinese Society.^[2] The goals of the center are to stimulate interest and research about Hawaiian-Chinese history; assist and guide Chinese-Americans in Hawaii to make their experiences available; and collect, inventory, record and preserve historical materials, documents and photographs related to the Chinese in Hawai'i.

Soong died in 2001.^[1]

Published works

Soong devoted most of her life writing about her experiences during World War II in China during the Japanese occupation.

Proceeds of her war memoir went to Mills College, the Community Church of Honolulu and the Hawaii Chinese History Center.

"Five Hsing Chung Hui Men of Valor" is a history of the revolutionary society founded in Hawaii by sun. The book was printed as part of the 200th anniversary commemoration of the arrival of Chinese in Hawaii.

Soong wrote the foreword of Tin-Yuke Char's autobiographical The Bamboo Path.^[3]

She wrote "Sun Yat-sen's Christian Schooling in Hawai'i" (1997) published in The Hawaiian Journal of History about Dr. Sun Yat-sen's four years as a sojourner in Hawai'i in 1879-1883 and his attendance at three Christian educational institutions.^[4]

References