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MN: Now, when you became a senior in high school you started to think about your career plans. What were you thinking about going into?

BK: Well, in my senior year I was still thinking about going into medicine, and I was working in the (hospital) after hours, as (an orderly), helping out. And they had me working in the men's ward. So this fellow from San Fernando, he's teaching me how to give, take people over to the benjo and give them a bed pan, do all the things that you're supposed to do for sick people, and he says Mr. So-and-So, you have to be very careful with him. You have to take him to the benjo and pinch his cheeks before you let him go. [Laughs] Yeah, he's... you wanna scratch that, but he would tell me all the details about each patient. And it's (an eye-opener), it was interesting for me because that's the first time I dealt with people and their frailties and their problems. And then we had one of the camp employees, a Caucasian, he was in the hospital. I don't know if he has appendicitis or something, but he was stricken in bed and he called me. He says, "I got to have a urinal." He says, "I have to go." I says okay, so I brought the urinal to him, and then he's, he's buzzing me and I said, "What's, what's the problem?" He says, "It's topped out. You better..." [Laughs] So I took his urinal and emptied it. I says, I says, "You're the champ. You're absolutely the champ." So we'd do all sorts of, good relations with people, and every time, after he left the hospital and would come back, he says, "Hi, Bruce. How are you?" I says, "Hi, Champ."

MN: One time the hospital staff asked you to watch over the babies ward. How did that go?

BK: Yeah, that, I was working at night and the person in charge of the baby ward didn't show up, so the nurse ask, asked me to fill in. So I says okay, so I went over to the babies ward and I'm sitting there. Well, usually for the men's ward, they buzz you, you go over there and ask them what they want, and you do whatever they want and come back. But the babies ward, if they start crying you're supposed to go over there and check them out, so I have a flashlight and a baby starts to cry, so I go over there with my flashlight and flash it on and, oh, baby stops crying. So then I come back to the office and wait, then it starts crying again, and pretty soon another baby starts to cry. I go, flashlight... and then the nurse comes over and says, "Bruce, aren't you taking care of the babies?" I says, "Yeah, I'm checking them out, but I don't know what's wrong with them." She says, "You come with me." And so she says, "Now watch me." So she changed the diaper. She said, "That's what's wrong with the baby. They wet their diapers, so you got to change it." I says, "Oh," I says, "I didn't know that." Basic things, they don't tell you what to do and so you learn the hard way. But you remember all these things I told you.

MN: Now, you also got to see your first autopsy. How did that come about?

BK: Oh, that came about one day the news was out that one of the patients needed blood, and they says, well, they first had to find someone with the same type blood and I matched the patient's blood, so they said, "Are you willing to donate some blood for him?" I said, "Yeah, I guess so." And so they took some blood out of me and gave it to the patient, and that same night he died. And I said, "Oh, my God, I wonder if it was my blood that, that created the problem." So when they said that he passed away, they're gonna have a post mortem, I said, I was very concerned, I says, "Can I watch?" And they said, "You want to watch?" I said, "Oh yeah." He says, "Okay, you put on a gown and you observe what we're doing. Don't say anything. You just watch." So I went to the post mortem, and that's the first time I saw the, how they conducted a post mortem. I mean, they got a big, like a skill saw, just go across the chest and down, open it up and look at first the heart, then they go down the vital organs. And as they check each one they make the comments and then someone's recording everything. And it came down to the place where you're supposed to pass the water, and those things were little peanut size. They weren't normal. So he had uremia, which means that they think he couldn't pass water normally, and the water was all inside his body. He couldn't pass it on. So that's what he died of, uremia. And that's how I find out it wasn't my blood. He had another condition then. It was fatal to him.

MN: Did you throw up during the autopsy?

BK: (I saw) the first time autopsy. It, it's brutal. I don't want to see (another) one.

MN: But you didn't throw up?

BK: No, I didn't throw up. I was, I was kinda (queasy). There's another time in Sioux City, Iowa. I was working in, watching an operation, and this nurse says, "You want to watch this operation?" I said, "What it is it?" He says, "They're operating on the elbow, and you've never seen an elbow operation?" I said no. "You want to see it?" I said, "I don't mind." I watch it and the nurses are holding the arm, see, and the doctor's, is chipping into, taking the bone out because it's broken. They have to replace some part. I says oh, man. That was too much for me. Bangin' away. Those, she goes to the side, says, "Just take this. After you take it you can leave." They gave me a shot of scotch or something. So I took that and I left. I says, I don't want to see any kind of operation that has to do with people holding the arms or whatever. If you're lying down and they cut open or whatever, that's, that's okay. That's very, I would say, impersonal. But when the nurses are holding your arm and they're bangin' away like this and the arm is goin' up and down, this is a, I couldn't stand it. That, that was (bad). I was ready to pass out. I said, I wouldn't know what I would do if they did that to me (...).

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.