<Begin Segment 32>

LH: Can I ask you a little more about your experience at the U? Well, how did you decide that you wanted to become a dentist?

FK: I went into, I was in pre-med and I think I, I had a choice between, in my mind I had a choice, between engineering or pre-med and I think my father preferred that I go into medicine. I think he probably thought it had some prestige and stuff. And I started out in medicine and I just, the more I thought about it, I thought, well I don't know if I really want to spend that many years. So, I switched to dentistry. And I, I got to admit that I don't know, that I didn't know, anything about one or the other, but I'm glad I chose the field. Mostly because, I'm not a very traditional dentist, I'm more into holistic things in dentistry, which is really a real new field. So...

LH: Well at the time, did you have anybody to guide you? To tell you... any Japanese dentists in the community that were...?

FK: There, there were a few dentists, like my own dentist was Dr. Uchida and he wrote a letter for me. And I think the... two brothers were orthodontists, the Takano brothers -- one in fact taught at the school -- who wrote letters for me, and that's mostly because they didn't really know me, but they knew my father, which got me into dental school. And it was, it was a tough school, it was a real tough school. And again, I just, sometimes you feel like you don't really know what you're doing, but somebody up there must be telling you what to do or guiding you a certain way, because I would not be very happy if I practiced as a traditional dentist. But in a, a, alternative care dentistry and helping people with their... being healthy, which isn't the same as having your teeth filled. It's, it's, I mean, I'm, I'm... it's interesting, because I used to think my father used to do dumb things. He used to do things like yaitoucopper bracelets, he did, he came home one day and decided he was going to make tofu and I thought, God, who would eat that stuff. [Laughs] Now, everybody's eating tofu and everybody believes in magnets and stuff. But he... but it's interesting now, because I'm getting that kind of stuff in my practice. I'm interested in...

LH: Do you think it was based on influence from your father?

FK: I don't have the slightest, because he had to be up there someplace influencing me. Because I'm doing things like working with acupuncture meridians and that kind of stuff. And I'm going, "Wow, maybe my dad wasn't so dumb after all." [Laughs]

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.