San Diego Union-Tribune on 1/9/2004
Janie Chu, one of a handful of remaining survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, has died. She was 101. Mrs. Chu, an Oakland resident who taught Sunday school for 68 years until the 1990s, was 3 years old when the earthquake leveled the city and set off a storm of fires. Mrs. Chu died Dec. 30 at her home. " She remembered it very vividly, " said Mrs. Chu ' s daughter, Evelyn Wong, 74, of Saratoga. Wong said her mother remembered chunks of the ceiling falling that morning, and running upstairs to the roof of her family ' s home to look out over the devastation. " The sun was burning, " Mrs. Chu later recalled. After the earthquake hit, Mrs. Chu ' s family trekked up to Nob Hill and camped out in a park with other evacuees. The young Mrs. Chu thought it was a big picnic, Wong said. Mrs. Chu, who was interviewed to create an oral history of the earthquake, participated in a gathering of survivors last year. Wong said her mother was thrilled to go to the meeting of the 1906 quake survivors.
In 1908, the family moved to Tucson, Ariz., where she was the first Chinese student to graduate from high school in that city, her family said. Mrs. Chu was one of the few students of Chinese descent at the University of California Berkeley when she enrolled in 1921. She graduated in 1924 and the following year married Ju Siang Chu, who died in 1995.
Mrs. Chu ' s daughter described her as a feisty woman who refused to live in an assisted living facility even after having hip surgery a couple of years ago. Mrs. Chu is survived by a younger sister, seven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.