<Begin Segment 31>

DG: Let's talk a little bit about your private practice.

BU: My private practice, it starts off back when I was an intern. Dr. John Romano, who's a psychiatrist and also an internist, he drove everything into us, the fact that, "You're doctors, you're supposed to do good. You're to serve them, serve those who need it."

DG: He's the one in Rochester.

BU: Rochester, yeah. You see, as psychiatrist he has a different point of view. But, anyway, that's how he indoctrinated. There were sixteen doctors who were willing to put up two years of, two years of internship time to become better doctors, supposedly. Well, anyway, but anyway he inculcated us us as general practitioner or family doctor, and we all, we all ended up that way. We all family doctors.

DG: So were you planning to make it a all-Japanese practice?

BU: Well, it ended up that way because number one, I spoke fluent Japanese so, therefore, all our Isseis gravitated to me. This was nice about my Keiro job is the fact that they were all, most of them, somehow or another had seen me as their doctor sometime in their life. And so that Keiro, when these patients come to Keiro, they were your patients sometime in the past so that makes it nice, both Niseis and Isseis.

DG: Were there any special things that you had to consider by working in the Japanese community?

BU: No. They just came because I spoke Japanese, because they said it's like going, getting Sansei or Nisei, either they don't speak it or else they can't understand it.

DG: What about your own social network then, did you have to do more kosai in the Japanese community because of it or anything?

BU: No, it didn't. You can keep your medical life and your other community life different. I never objected to the community, community thing because that was part of my life, and I got involved in all kinds of things. I had fun.

DG: Who were some of your first patients that you remember?

BU: First patient? You know Sam Shoji? He's one of my first early patients. And then all my other patients, Shiro Kashino, Joe Nakatsu, they're all my, one of my early patients.

DG: Don't use any names, but tell me about the incident about the gun.

BU: Gun? Oh. Well, the wife of the man -- he's my, he's one of my cares at Keiro now -- but that was very interesting because the father had bought, bought a movie house up on Beacon Hill, and his competitor was Kokusai, Mr. Kitamura. He bought, he wrote to Toyo and other Japanese companies in Japan and said, "Don't rent him any, any films because he is competing against me." So they wouldn't let him have 'em, and then the father got mad and decided, decided that he's going to go down there and change that by killing him. And so it was very funny. The wife, mother -- the one that's sick up at Keiro now -- called me up and say, [Inaudible]. So I went over there -- it was only two blocks away -- with my bag, you know, and then he was waving a gun around, and then she told me what had happened. She said, "He is going to be down there to Kokusai" -- Kokusai is at Seventh or Sixth and Jackson -- "and then he says he's going to go kill him." And I said... so I got that message real quick. So he was waving his arm around with the gun around so I went back and I said, "Ojisan, kore kariru yo." So I took the pistol and put it in my pocket, and I said, "Ni, san-nichi de motte kimasu." Two, three days by that time they worked it out a little bit better so that Terry could now rent, rent Japanese films from Japan without going through Kitamura-san. So anyway, so in the meantime, in that three, four years afterwards the husband dies of tumor in the head, and the Kitamuras and Terry got along better. But three or four days later on, I went back up there with the gun, and I took out all the bullets in the gun and gave it to him. [Laughs]

DG: So there really were bullets in there?

BU: Huh?

DG: There really were bullets in there?

BU: Yeah. You know what, I can't understand how I had nerve enough to do it, but I did.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.