SHINODA, MEGUMI YAMAGUCHI, M.D.

(February 9, 1908 – May 1, 2007) Dr. Megumi Y. Shinoda died peacefully in her Los Angeles home at the age of ninety-nine. Her achievements as a woman and a Japanese-American were remarkable. She graduated from Barnard College, and Columbia University School of Physicians and Surgeons, receiving honors as a Phi Beta Kappa in college and Alpha Omega Alpha in medical school. She was the first person of Japanese ancestry to intern at Los Angeles County General Hospital. She had a general practice in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo-Nihonmachi before World War II and resumed her practice there after the war. During these early years of her practice, she probably delivered over half of the Japanese-American babies in Los Angeles and is honored as a pioneer by the Japanese American National Museum. She later became a psychiatrist and was in practice in Hollywood until she retired at eighty-eight.

She married Joseph Shinoda, who died in 1964. Mr. Shinoda headed the San Lorenzo Nursery Company and was recently honored by Keiro on the fiftieth-year anniversary, as one of the founders of Keiro Nursing Home and Retirement Center. Their son, Stephen Joseph Shinoda died in 1999. She is survived by her daughter, Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D of Mill Valley, California, granddaughter, Melody Bolen of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and one brother, Mitsusya Yamaguchi, M.D. Dr. Shinoda was one of seven Yamaguchi siblings, four of whom--two daughters and two sons--became physicians, who followed in the medical footsteps of their father Minosuke Yamaguchi, M.D. She was born in Cleveland when her father was a medical student.