Daniel Wu

Education

While helping to manage both missions (since Drant soon left for another assignment in the East), Wu also studied for the priesthood at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

Career

Ng Gee Ching, born in China, arrived as a child in Honolulu, Hawaii. When Drant moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1905 to assist the Chinese community by establishing the True Sunshine Episcopal mission in San Francisco, California, Wu initially remained in Hawaii. However, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (which with the resulting fires, killed 3,000 people and destroyed 80% of the city), he responded to her call for help with the mainland community.

Chinese immigrants were especially hard hit, and many moved from Chinatown across the bay to Oakland, California where Drant and Wu established another church, which became known as the Church of Our Savior.

Upon his ordination in 1912, Wu became vicar of both missions, which thrived despite the racial discrimination and other hardships still faced by congregation members. Wu frequented the port of entry, making contact with newly arrived, many of them Cantonese people.

About 250 persons attended the daily classes at each school. In 1933, with the assistance of All Saints Church, Palo Alto, another Chinese Sunday school began, which in three years had grown from 15 to 45 children.

Wu retired from both his congregations in 1944, and they called the Review

Clarence Lee from Canada to succeed him as vicar. He died on April 6, 1956. They now offer services in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as continue to offer language and sewing classes.

Furthermore, the Chinese Young Women’s Christian Association, which King Yoak Wu helped found, continues to this day as well, although the original building (designed by Julia Morgan) is now the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Achievements

• In 1913, after a three-year courtship, Wu married King Yoak Won (1890-1982), the granddaughter of immigrants from Toi San county in what became southern Guangdong Province, and whose father (by then deceased) had arrived during the California Gold Rush and worked to build railroads. Wu and his wife King Yoak Won (and the two congregations) offered English and sewing classes for adults, as well as Chinese language classes for children. King Yoak Won Wu also assisted immigrants through the Chinese Young Women’s Christian Association, founded in 1916 and on whose board of directors she participated for many years.