<Begin Segment 56>

TI: Okay, so let's talk about your career a little bit. So you went into pre-med, and then to med school.

HS: Then I went, pre-med goes directly into med school, so it's like a six-year course, so you get two years of pre-med, you end up, and then you get four years of medicine. And by the fourth, by the second year of medicine, you've spent four years in, in university. So at that point, if you can get, you're still in medicine, if you haven't flunked out by then, they'll give you a B.S.C. So, and then at another two more years, you finish your med school, now you get your M.D. So by the time I ended off in the six years I put together, they gave me what you call a B.S.C.M.D. So you had a Bachelor of Science --

TI: B.S. is Bachelor of Science...

HS: Science, plus an M.D. So at that point, you end up as, then you decide, "What am I gonna do next?" You're, so I had no desire to continue and, say, become a general practitioner, although the ones I knew, the Japanese that had gone through, previously all, most of them become general practitioners. A few, there was one guy who had gone into obstetrics and became an obstetrical specialist, and he had been there before the, he had been there before the war. He actually came from Victoria, and he had been there before the war.

TI: Well, I'm curious now, what, why did you decide medicine?

HS: Hmm?

TI: Why medicine?

HS: Well, when I, we discussed this, my mother to some degree thought that might be a good area, what else am I gonna go into? We had no, had no experience in other areas, medicine, they decided, would be, if I can get into medicine, it would be a, a profession other than law, that some were going into. I didn't know of any other. Now, a lot of them, a lot of Japanese that went into commerce, which I had no, we had no background for that. My mother knew a number of doctors, Japanese doctors, and she always admired them and what they were able to do. So she --

TI: So this decision was influenced by your parents. Your parents --

HS: Parents to a large degree, and by, and we'd always, and we did discuss this, as to what area should I go into, and medicine sort of won out. And so that's how I got into medicine. Once I finished my medical career, I thought, well, graduated in '54, decided, well, what am I gonna do now? I could, I was reluctant to go into general practice, I didn't know, I was still, mentality, I was still back in the ghost towns. Here we were, amongst all Japanese people, now I'm in Edmonton, and I don't see any of them. I lose all my Japanese contacts and my Japanese language because I'm not speaking Japanese again anymore. So the only contacts I had were some Japanese Canadians who only spoke English, and they were, they were people who lived, had lived in Alberta all their lives. They had not been affected by the war, like Roy Kiyoko, who was, became a big Canadian artist. And he couldn't speak Japanese anyhow. I decided, well, I should go into a specialty, and then I thought about that. And I was working at the time, I was in surgery, a resident in surgery at the University of Alberta hospital, resident in surgery, and one day, I got a call from the chief of surgery, who was a very powerful, politically powerful medical person. 'Cause he was directly connected to the American College of Surgeons, and he had many friends, and he was, in fact, at one point, he was the regent of the American College of Surgeons. Although here he was, a surgeon in Edmonton, Alberta, but he was, he was so well-liked, and he was so knowledgeable that he became a regent of the American College. He called me down to, from the OR, and I went down there, not knowing what was going on. And he said to me, "Henry," he said, "got to think of your future. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna just stay in general surgery, or what are you gonna do?" I thought, "Well, gee, there's this new area that's just developing, plastic surgery." He says, "Okay, you want to be, you want to consider treating, going into plastic surgery?" I said, "I'd love to." He said, "Okay," picks up the phone, phones the chief of surgery at three places: one in New York, Pittsburgh, and a fellow in Kansas City, and another guy in Galveston, Texas. And these are areas where plastic surgery was really strong. And he says, "I think these are areas," so he talked to these people, and he said, the guy said, "Well, I think these three, I can give you three places you should go to. One in Pittsburgh, one in New York and Albany, and one in Duke, North Carolina." Duke was, at that time, was what you call the Harvard of the South. So I go to all three places, and eventually, the place in Pittsburgh takes me on. And that's --

TI: So why, why did this chief of surgery single you out like this?

HS: Well, he was, he wanted all his, he was the chief of surgery, and he wanted all his boys, as he called them, to do well. He wanted them to become prominent. That's what he wanted. And he wanted me to be, says, and, "Henry, you've got the potential to become a surgeon," but from the reports that he gets from all of his staffpeople, what I was doing in the hospital. So he decides he'll give me a chance to see what I can do. So I go to Pittsburgh, and, with the idea that he will, then I will come back to Edmonton, and that I would then work at the university hospital and we would develop a division of plastic surgery. That was in the back of his mind, he's thinking ahead about how he was, he was always having like that, research, he wanted the research department to become big time. He had big, big ambitions for everybody in his division, in the department of surgery. He was very, we don't have very many people like that anymore, but he was, he knew everybody. He knew the people in England, he was, he was well-known in the British medical schools, medical area, and he was really well-known to Americans. In fact, he was so well-known that somebody remembers him being at the College of Surgeons in Chicago where he was introducing surgeons from eastern United States to the surgeons from western United States. He was the one guy that knew both of them. He knew them all.

<End Segment 56> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.