<Begin Segment 23>

DG: Okay. So in the meantime, were you applying for med school?

BU: For the first two years I applied and I got disappointed, and then you had to pay $25 every time you send in, send in the application. And I wrote on there and I said, "If you're not going to consider me on equal with all the others, don't bother sending me an application back." There was one, one doctor from West Virginia. I think his name was Jordan. He was a hematologist. He says, he wrote me and he handwrote this letter and he says that, "Wars don't last forever. If you want to, if you want to go to medical school after the war is over, write me a letter, and I will seriously consider it," because my grades were good. They were better than most of 'em. So that's the only letter that made me feel good, that this professor, a dean of the med school in West Virginia, was good enough to write a letter, but all the others said, "No." Then the last year I was there, one month before, before I was going to go into the army because the army drafted me about '43, '44, and they gave me, they told me to get a physical, which I did, and then they went to... they said, draft board says, "Well, you're going to advanced basic training and then you'll be in the army." But I decided well, I'll try this one. Found out about this private medical school in Rochester, New York, so I applied there and three weeks I had an acceptance. So I took the letter to the draft board, and they gave me a deferment to go to medical school.

DG: Because you told them that...

BU: Yeah, medical school.

DG: No, but what did you say to them? You were telling me you convinced them that they would be better off.

BU: Yeah, better off if they -- doctors were very badly necessary. They needed a particular, they didn't understand that they are going to get into the Korean War. So that I finished medical school and then they were going to ship me directly out to, to Korea, and I told them, "You know what? You'd be better off if I went to internship. I'd be more trained." They said, "You're right. Okay. We'll defer you for two years," because it's unusual that you're a intern for two whole years, but my school was a little different. My school was kind that was trying to make the best family doctors they could find. I mean, that was the orientation.

DG: This was in Rochester?

BU: Yeah, medical school. Dr. John Romano, who was my boss, he's a psychiatrist. But anyway, he arranged with me that I can use force with the draft board so they let me have two years training, but with the understanding that, "More likely you'll be going, at the end of the two years, you'll be going to Korea." Okay. But, anyway, so that I stayed in Rochester for two more years for a total of six.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.