Born: 2 March 1923, United States
Died: 2 November 2021
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Alice Jong, Alice Chin
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
On March 9, 1923, the headline on the first page of the Portsmouth Herald declared: “First Chinese Baby Is Born In This City.” This headline marked the birth of Alice Yick, the first Chinese American woman to work at the Charlestown Navy Yard and an advocate for military veterans.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Alice Yick spent her early years in New Hampshire. As the Yick family continued to grow, they eventually moved to Tyler Street in Boston’s Chinatown. Henry Yick, Alice’s father, began working in a local restaurant while the children attended public school and the Kwong Kow Chinese School in the late afternoon. In 1942 at the age of 19, Yick became the first Chinese American girl to enroll in the National Youth Administration’s mechanical training program.
Created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, the National Youth Administration (NYA) provided training and jobs for unemployed students and young people. Engaged in multiple sectors, many of these individuals were trained in national defense, welding, and aviation mechanics. Though the program shut down before World War II ended, the NYA trained and employed over 2 million young Americans. In this program, Alice Yick acquired crucial skills to help with wartime production, including the ability to use lathes, grinders, planers, and other machines.
On December 7, 1942, Alice Yick applied the Boston Naval Shipyard (also known as Charlestown Navy Yard). She was soon hired, becoming the first Chinese American civilian woman worker at Boston’s Navy Yard. Originally placed in a machine shop, Yick soon ran into a problem that many women have – the machines with their standardized proportions did not accommodate her small stature. She recounted in her oral history in 1994 that:
I was too short for the machine work so they put on another job and I was too cold so I worked there for a very short time and I left. After that I went to Gillette and there was a war program also and I was working for the government in the company. And so I operated a lathe.
Alice Yick was twice married, first to Frank Jong and later Adam Chin. She had three children in total. Alice Chin spent most of the next decades living in various locations in Boston’s Chinatown. As her children grew up and started to attend public and Chinese school, Chin worked at various positions and expanded her hobby of photography into a side business. Using her skills in photography and developing film, Chin volunteered at the Veteran’s Administration, helping veterans express themselves through the lens:
When I went to the V.A. Center, I saw all ages, even some men from World War II who were still there. I had a group of guys that was interested in photography. I volunteered, gee, I think about either five or six years. And out of the five or six years, from the day treatment center, these soldiers are ex-service men that had mental problems. Some of them are under control by medication. But some of them seem to, they want to do something, and they seem to get involved, and if they like it, they will finish up.
Alice (Yick) Chin passed away on November 2, 2021, at 98 years old.