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MA: So when did you decide on the career choice that you did, as being a radiologist? Did you decide that when you were in, in medical school?

KB: No. I had no idea that I would go into radiology. After I finished medical school, then we had to do what's called an internship, and I did this in Pittsburgh. And fortunately Ruby was also in Pittsburgh at that time, so at least I had one friend there because it was a completely strange city for me. And during that internship, we'd go through, it was called a general internship. We'd go through different services, and we'd spend time with surgery, we'd spend time in medicine wards, we'd spend obstetrics, I think pathology. Anyway, rotate, it was called a rotating internship, so we would go through all the different fields. And at that time I had no idea what I wanted to do. Maybe, you know, just become a family physician. After I finished my internship, somebody got me involved, I'm not exactly sure, but one of the professors at the medical school suggested that I go to this hospital in Detroit which specialized in treating tuberculosis patients.

MA: I'm sorry, how long was your internship in Pittsburgh?

KB: One year.

MA: One year, okay. And then after you were completed with your internship, you'd go on to residency.

KB: Right, uh-huh.

MA: So after, after my internship, not really knowing what I should do, I said, "Okay, I'll take this residency in a tuberculosis hospital in Detroit." So kind of interesting is that the day I reported to this hospital, I got sick. Somehow I developed a fever and it turned out that I had fluid in my chest. So they did some tests and decided that it was probably a tuberculous condition, and so right when I started my residency, I ended up as a patient in this hospital. And I was there for about six months, because tuberculosis treatment was still pretty much in the hospital and they had just discovered chemotherapy for it. So I did receive the chemotherapy and was discharged. So at that point I returned to my family which by now had moved to Spokane. From the evacuation camp, they relocated to Spokane rather than returning to Seattle.

MA: So from Minidoka they ended up going to Spokane.

KB: Spokane.

MA: As the war ended, 1945.

KB: Right.

MA: Do you know why they didn't go back to Seattle?

KB: Well, one reason was that a family who lived near us in Seattle had settled in Spokane and they were farming. And they said, "Well, the farm next to us is up for sale." It was owned by a Japanese family and so my family decided, "Well, okay, we'll go to Spokane." As I think I told you before, the Japanese were not allowed to own property in Seattle, and so we had no real place to return to in Seattle, so I think they decided, "Let's go to Spokane." So that's when I returned to my family.

MA: Was that to, sort of, get better, to take time off?

KB: Right, just to take, just to take it easy.

MA: Right.

KB: And they basically, they don't feel this way about treating tuberculosis anymore, but at that time, they still thought rest was the important thing.

MA: So how, how long were you in Spokane with your family?

KB: I think it was like six months, and then I returned to Detroit as a, what they called resident physician, and started my career in, actually, it was treatment of tuberculosis patients. It was a big tuberculosis hospital in Detroit.

MA: Was there a particular group that you saw a lot of in the hospital that seemed to be more susceptible to tuberculosis, or that was more common to seeing?

KB: Well, I think the black population is a little more susceptible to a disease like that. Otherwise... there was a Japanese girl, but otherwise it was pretty much a mixture of whites and blacks.

MA: When you were, during your residency at this hospital, how did you see the treatment changing for tuberculosis? You'd mentioned you received a newer treatment. What was the treatment before that for tuberculosis?

KB: There was, there was very little that could be done. Mostly it was rest, and then a lot of the patients were also able to be operated on, they used to remove the whole lung that would be diseased. And they did what was called thoracoplasty, where they kind of collapsed the chest so that lung would be less active. And a lot of that, I'm sure, is no longer being done because of chemotherapy. Actually, the tuberculosis rate has gone down a lot, except I think more recently, some of the immigrants have come with the disease. But the treatment has changed so much. This hospital eventually closed as a tuberculosis hospital and became more like a public health hospital.

MA: Around what sort of decade or what time did you really see tuberculosis rates going down? Was it in the '50s?

KB: Well, this was '40s, '40s and '50s.

MA: When you were working at this hospital, what was the, I guess, survival rate of patients? Was it pretty common to sort of get over tuberculosis and be okay?

KB: I would say pretty much they got better. There were some, a few who may have been hospitalized for life, just never got better. But once the, once the drugs became better, then the treatment was more effective.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.