<Begin Segment 20>

MN: So you finished your contract, you came back to Manzanar and you found out you're accepted to Morningside College, you and Sam Ono.

BK: (Yes).

MN: When you got to Morningside, how did the students and faculty treat you folks?

BK: We got there early, before the semester started. We were there even before Christmas. Semester started early February, but we went to register and pay our fee and they say you have to find quarters where you're gonna stay, so they referred us to a reverend who had a home close by and rooms to rent, so we rented a room and shared a room together. Then we had to find jobs because we need sources of income. Sam found a job in a local restaurant. They referred me, because I was pre med, to the Methodist hospital in town, so I took a street car and went to the Methodist hospital, and they were looking for an orderly for the operating room. And they said, "Have you ever worked as an orderly?" I says, "Yes, at Manzanar. But," I says, "never in an operating room." Says, "Well, I think the nurses will tell you what to do once you get up there, but you fill out the form and you're on the staff now. The staff is entitled to, to eat in the restaurant any time. We'll give you identification so you can just go in there and eat." That's what I was worried about, a place to eat. So as long as I traveled from school in a streetcar down to the hospital, I could eat, so I was just worried about eating. But then meeting the people up at the surgery room, they needed someone to clean out the surgery room after operations, and so the nurses up there says, "Have you ever done that?" I said no, not really, so they told me about the procedures that they go through. The doctors usually come in and they already have the kind of operation they're gonna work on, and so you have to put out the kinds of surgery linen that's required. If it's appendectomy, well, you have a sheet where the appendectomy takes place, there's an opening so that it's not cluttered and they can operate. For every operation there's a different kind of covers. They were tellin' me how to do that, and once the operation is over the linen is then sent down to the laundromats and the sanitizing place, so they go down and they clean and they're sanitized and then brought, brought back. And they just stack them in places where they store the linen. So I learned a lot about the operating room. And one day I noticed all the containers they had in the operating room, there's no labels on them, so I asked the nurse, "How can you tell what they are?" Said, "Oh, the doctors know what they need." I says, "Yeah, but what if they pick something that they thought it was and it wasn't the right thing?" She says, "Well, they haven't made any mistakes." I said, "Could you get me some black ink? And then what I want to do is if you give me what they are, the description and I could fill it in, label it." So I did that and the doctors said, "Wow, this is the first time we've had any labeling." Says, "Now we know we can't make any mistakes." So I got along with the doctors and they were grateful for even that little bit.

But I got along with the cadet nurses, and I was in music so I said, "Do you know of any bands coming into town?" I think that's the time that Yoshindo was, he was also a member of Manza-Knights and also a member of Jive Bombers, he was there before me at Morningside, and so he used to go to listen to the bands, so he would tell me who's in town. I says, "Well, let's go together," so we used to go listen to the band. It was a new experience, because this was the first time I, I'm hearing the big bands. Who was it? I forget the band leader's name. Anyway, when we went there to the music hall and the band is playing, nobody's dancing. Everybody's in front of the, the stage, and they're performing and they're just listening to the music. Nobody's dancing. And it's catching, because everybody's moving. That's (...) when I was seventeen, eighteen years old. That's the time when you're growing up and really full of energy.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.