<Begin Segment 40>

TI: Yeah, I didn't ask this question, but did it help or hinder, in working with the Japanese doctors, that you were of Japanese ancestry, that you were Japanese American? Did that make it easier, do you think, or made it harder? And the second question is, and did you speak in Japanese when you dealt with the Japanese doctors?

JY: I spoke in my broken Japanese because that gave them a feeling of, "This guy really doesn't know too much about things Japanese, especially the bomb." So they were, eventually what they required was that we worked with the young doctors and make every attempt to convey to them the state of the art of medicine in the United States. That used to be part of my job.

TI: And then what about them just working with you? I mean, other than, so you're talking broken Japanese...

JY: Well, there's many ancillary problems that had to be... they would send their best young doctors to us. The caliber of the doctors was extremely fine, especially two or three of them that was first assigned to us. Obviously they were fine doctors. And the question was tenure in the university. You couldn't leave the university and work in another institution or you'd lose your tenure. And being a government, medical school was one of the national hospitals, so they had to follow the Monbusho rulings that if you left the university, you'd lose your tenure. So that had to be worked out. So some arrangements were made so they would be as a advisor or temporary worker, so that they didn't lose their position in the medical school. That's one of the kind of things that worked out.

TI: But you got excellent doctors.

JY: Yes, we did, yeah. One of them came over to the United States and eventually got top residents in New York in Texas, and developed the heart, children's heart program in Japan. That caliber of person.

TI: But I want to go back to this... you said earlier, though, you had access to the same people as the original study people, but you were able, in some ways, you thought, to get as good if not better information. And I was just wondering, in terms of getting information, if it helped because you were Japanese American or if it didn't make a difference.

JY: I don't know. All I could say is that the professors at the university, I'd say, were equivalent to the professors we had in the United States in the way they approached medicine.

TI: Well, in particular, were there any Japanese doctors that you really looked to as able to mentor or help you in the study?

JY: Yes, this was this Dr. Shirabe, extremely fine person and doctor. He just sort of took me under his wing.

TI: Now he was at Nagasaki during the war?

JY: He was there... he was, on that day of the bombing, he was the air raid warden for the hospital, he was on duty that day. And there was a, early in the day, there was a warning that there might be a bombing, and then they got an all clear. And then several hours later the bomb dropped at noon. So he was in his office at the time of the bombing.

TI: Well, and you mentioned in your original description of ground zero, you said the hospital was like a half a mile away from ground zero, which seems to me so close. I mean, how did he survive the blast?

JY: The casualties in the hospital, those that got killed within the hospital was about forty percent. And the reason for that was that the hospital acts like a shield because of the concrete buildings. And those that survived were in the concrete buildings. So that both the blast effect, the first impact is the heat, and then a few seconds later, the blast follows. And with the heat is also the radiation that comes in. So the concrete walls acted as a partial shield. For example, the people outside of the building all were killed. People in wooden buildings of the medical school were all killed. So that they were about as close as you could get to the bomb explosion and still survive. So you couldn't get a more vivid picture, reality of the picture than these doctors. So their expression never was focused on why they dropped the bomb or about the war. The discussion revolved against what did the bomb do to people? And we never discussed anything but that.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.