Dosan Media Dosan Ahn Chang-ho Archive

Dosan Ahn Chang-ho

Photographs from the papers on this site.

01Who is telling you this

Philip Ahn Cuddy, grandson of Dosan Ahn Chang Ho.

  • — Son of Susan Ahn Cuddy
Flip, in his own words, on who he is and why this site exists.

02The Story

A sepia studio portrait of Dosan Ahn Chang-ho seated in a carved chair, in a dark suit, clean-shaven, 1908
Dosan, Korea, 1908

Who he was, from the documents I hold.

My grandfather did not pick oranges, found a Koreatown, or arrive from Hawaii. He organized Koreans wherever he stood, went home to fight, and died for it. This is his life, year by year.

The Story

03The Truth

Read this first

Nothing here asks you to believe us.

Every lie told in Dosan's name, and the documents that say otherwise.

7 parties · 23 claims

The Truth
Group portrait of Korean National Association members arranged in rows

Exhibit A

Edward T. Chang

I trace it back to Riverside, California, in 1911 [at the] third Korean National Association of North America Convention.

WBUR radio interview · 2 December 2021

The file

The record

The Korean National Association was established on 1 February 1909 at its first convention, in Redlands. The second was Claremont, 1910; the fourth, San Francisco, 1912. The 1911 convention made Los Angeles the headquarters.

A 1907 envelope with Korean and English handwriting addressed to Mrs C. H. Ahn, P.O. Box 448, Redlands, Cal., U.S.A., with Korean and Redlands postmarks

Exhibit B

Rowman & Littlefield

Not only did Dosan's family reside in Riverside, but Pachappa Camp was the center of independence activities during the early twentieth century in America.

Pachappa Camp, page 3 · 2021

The file
A photograph of a printed magazine page in Korean, vertical text, headed 島山을 파는 사람들, from Danbo, April 1949

Exhibit C

Dosan Memorial Foundation of America

Ahn's Market. Dosan Fro-Yo. Chang Ho Cleaners. Dosan Ahn Chang Ho Memorial Interchange.

Editorial cartoon, as reproduced by Philip Ahn Cuddy · June 2008

The file

The record

Two envelopes three weeks apart in 1907 are addressed to Mrs. C. H. Ahn, P.O. Box 448, Redlands, California.

Screenshot of a news article reproducing the 1908 Riverside Sanborn map of the Pachappa block, with a red question mark over the block and a handwritten red note asking why no Korean mission is marked

Exhibit D

City of Riverside

Pachappa Camp: Site of the First Organized Korean American Settlement.

City of Riverside, Resolution No. 23117 (City Point of Cultural Interest No. 1), as quoted in UCR Today, 12 December 2016 · 6 December 2016

The file
Colour scan of a 1908 Sanborn fire insurance map of Redlands showing W. State Street and Sacramento Avenue, with one building on Sacramento outlined in a red box

Exhibit E

Jill Cowan

it was a distinctly Korean community — the first in the United States, predating the founding of Los Angeles's Koreatown by the businessman Hi Duk Lee by more than half a century.

Jill Cowan, “Uncovering the History of America's First Koreatown”, The New York Times (California Today) · 14 May 2021

The file

04Media

Exposing the Impostors.
Showing the Record.

I am his grandson. I manage the collection their pictures come from. Every paper and every film here names who is doing it and puts the document next to the name.

Philip Ahn Cuddy

Media