By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
There is a small but significant subset of people born and raised in Hawaii who move to the mainland where they enter the religious life as priests, sisters and brothers, living a life of service of which folks back home are mostly unaware.
One such person was Sister Susan Kam, born in Wailuku in 1926, the daughter of Maui County treasurer K.K. Kam, who worked mostly in cities up and down California ministering to immigrants and adoptive families.
She was for 72 years a member of the Sisters of Social Service, a religious institute of women founded in 1923 who have adopted the social mission of the Catholic Church and a Benedictine spirituality. She entered the community in 1948, made her first vows in 1952, and her final profession in 1962.
Sister Kam came to the attention of the Hawaii Catholic Herald through her Oahu relative, Catherine Koike, who reported that she had died of COVID-19 on Nov. 19 in Encino at the age of 94.
The nun was the cousin of Koike’s mother, the late Hazel Koike. Catherine Koike would spend time with her relative when she was a student at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Times ran an obituary in January remembering Sister Kam’s service.
“Sister Susan Kam was just two years into her job supporting adoptive families at Holy Families Services in Los Angeles when she was tapped by the Catholic Welfare Bureau to direct its Indochinese Resettlement program in Los Angeles and Orange County in 1975,” the story said.
“It was an enormous undertaking.”
Saigon had fallen and Los Angeles had a huge resettlement program for the thousands of refugees streaming in from Southeast Asia.
Sister Kam headed the effort for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
According to the L.A. Times, she “identified local Catholic families willing to house new immigrants until more permanent housing could be found. The work also included helping families with other necessities, such as registering children for school.”
After joining the Sisters of Social Service, the St. Anthony High School, Wailuku, graduate “served in the Stanford Home for dependent high school girls in Sacramento and in the Stanford Settlement for children, as well as in the Catholic Youth Organization.
“In 1963 she and four other nuns were sent to Taiwan to help establish their social service ministry there,” the Times reported.
After seven and a half years, she came back to the U.S. and earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Hawaii. After graduation, she worked at Holy Family Services in Los Angeles, primarily with adoptive parents.
“Kam was skilled at quilting, woodwork and Chinese brush painting, and her friends said she was adored by everyone who knew her,” the story said.
A fellow Sister of Social Service, Patricia McGowen, remembered her as a “sweetheart,” never “harsh or short-tempered or anything.”
Near the end of her life, Sister Kam suffered from dementia. The care home in Encino where she lived suffered a COVID-19 outbreak in November and she tested positive.