<Begin Segment 17>

DG: Okay. Let's, what about the microscope?

BU: The microscope. Remember I was telling you that Father did one year of houseboy work at Dr. Kitasato, who was famous, world famous bacteriologist.

DG: This was when your father was young?

BU: Yeah.

DG: In Japan?

BU: Yeah in Japan, and he spent one year after he left high school, he went to Tokyo and became a houseboy with Dr. Kitasato. And then, and then back here when I was going to grade school and I professed an interest in science. And when I went to high school the year afterwards because I had a lot of projects I wanted to do and I needed a microscope so I egged him a little bit and finally, finally he gave me $283 to buy a microscope. And I got that and I had a lot of fun with it.

DG: Like you were what year in high school?

BU: I was starting in freshman, freshman, sophomore in high school.

DG: So did you know you were going to go into medicine by then?

BU: By then I knew I was going to be a doctor. Only one out of that class, the class of 500 and something, that got to be what he was going to be, what he wanted. That year that annual, the school annual put down, each one they put down, "Going to be this." And looking at the whole thing, I'm the only one that ever got to be what I wanted to be.

DG: No kidding? This is at Garfield?

BU: No, Broadway, Broadway High School. Broadway is an interesting place. They still got a Broadway Alumni Association and each year they give eight or nine thousand dollars to scholarships to the community college. Thinking about all that, you know, those are the little things, little by little, that influence you in how you behave or act in later life.

DG: It does, huh.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.