<Begin Segment 26>

DG: So, let's talk about Korea.

BU: Yeah. Korea was a fascinating experience. I wouldn't miss that for any money because it was that, it was that important in my life. You see, in Korea, a MASH hospital -- well, there was four MASH hospitals in the entire, all of Korea and each one had a specialty kind of cases that they, like if you had brain case, you are sent to one. If you had to have plastic surgery, you went to another one. Ours, if you had, if you had what we call hemorrhagic fever, which is special disease that's (viral disease). It's very much like... right now in Africa they had this eco-virus, or they have a very bad viral disease that's deadly. We had one in Korea called hemorrhagic fever, and I was in and we saw lots of hemorrhagic fever. Very much like that one they have, eco-virus they have now in South Africa. And so we were in charge of that so we saw all the patients with this hemorrhagic fever.

DG: So what city was that in?

BU: Huh?

DG: What city was that?

BU: This was all of Korea so that the army was, was in charge of it. And one of the problems that the army had, also one of the syndrome that occurred with hemorrhagic fever is they go into kidney failure. That's why they came to us because we had the kidney machine, and then, because I was the one of only two internists. They put all the problems in our lap and said, "You learn how to run that machine."

DG: So that was the early days of the kidney machine.

BU: That's right. Early days was called Klopf model. It's a cumbersome thing and I learned to use it and that's why I got stuck there. When my tour of duty finishes they kept me because they say, "You can't go because we got the kidney machine, and you're the only one that knows how to run it," so I got stuck. That was all right.

DG: But you were saying that you thought it had something to do with your being Japanese, too.

BU: Yeah, well, I think because I was Japanese, and number two, I got hepatitis and got free army time of five months. I really think it was still a carryover from World War II because we had very few Japanese doctors in the army overseas. So I figured that that's... it may have played a role.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.