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BY: So you mentioned your military service, so I want to talk a little bit about that. So when did you join the Navy and why did you join the Navy, and why the Navy versus some other branch of the service?

HY: Well, in 1954, when I was just finishing my three years of surgical residency, in those days, to become a board certified resident, surgeon, you had to have three years of extra training above your internship. So I'd finished that in '54, and then just as I was finishing it in August of '54, we were living in Salem then, I get a notice, you might call it a draft notice, a notice from the army saying that we are going to draft you into the armed forces of the United States by such and such a date, unless you choose another branch of the service. So I thought it over and I said, gee, I don't want to troop and stomp with the army, so the navy sounds pretty good. It was clean and neat and all that. [Laughs] So I said, well, all right, if I have to go, then I'll go to the Navy. But the interesting thing about that, Tom, is that for three times before I got this notice in 1954 from the army, I was considered 4-F, not draft eligible. I was physically unfit, which is the 4-F classification. And that was during World War II, twice, because I was seventeen by then, by the time the war started. And I was rejected because I have a heart murmur. I still have this murmur, but in those days, in 1942, the medical profession thought a heart murmur was tantamount to a death sentence; you'd live a year or two or three and that's it. So they rejected me twice during World War II, and then once the Korean War started in 1950, I had another -- this was in Philadelphia now -- of course, I still had the murmur, which I still do. And they said, no, you've got a heart murmur, you're not fit. But it may be because they would have made me a regular foot soldier at that time, I don't know. But anyway, by 1954, then I'd already been a graduate doctor for four years and they said, "Well, we wouldn't draft you as a foot soldier, we'd draft you as a doctor." And maybe that made the difference. That's why I got this draft notice for the fourth time. And they took me this time, even though I still had the heart murmur. So I elected to go to the Navy because, as I say, I didn't want to do a lot of foot stomping around the mud and all that, which I found I'd have to do. So I joined the Navy and they sent me to Bremerton for my so-called indoctrination, which was practically non-existent. But I joined the Navy in 1954, and Christmas Day in 1954, the Navy sent me to Iwakuni, Japan, which at that time was a U.S. naval air station. It's a Marine Corps, U.S. Marine Corps station now, but when I went there in '54, it was a naval air station and that's where I became a surgeon, a doctor at the naval air station in Iwakuni.

BY: And so what did you do?

HY: I did surgery.

BY: And so people were sent from Korea to Iwakuni for surgery, is that what happened?

HY: No, no. By that time, the Korean War, in '53, there was an armistice. The shooting lasted from around 1950 to '53, but I was in '54. But the Korean War was not declared over until January of '55. So therefore, that makes me a Korean War veteran. Not because of anything great that I did, but by the nature of the bureaucracy and so on.

BY: So who were your patients, then?

HY: Oh, base hospital, base people. There were maybe five thousand people at the base, only the base people and their dependents. Because by that time, there were a lot of dependents at Iwakuni. You were a dependent, Mon was a dependent, you were a dependent, yeah.

BY: So what was it like, serving in Iwakuni?

HY: Oh, it was great. It was like a picnic, I mean, except for the medical thing. But that was not difficult because the medical practice was easy. I mean, there weren't that many sick people that needed surgery in the beginning to begin with, so a lot of it was kind of routine. But the time off, we had plenty of time. The Navy was so good to us, they told us base housing, great base housing, schools and all that, and all kinds of entertainment on the base. Plus, the meals were made at the base itself. But also, they sent the household goods over from the United States, and they also transported my car, all free of charge from Portland to this naval base in Japan. So we had lots of time, and we'd go traveling, driving all over. So I'm so sorry that Barbara and Meredith were too young to remember anything about it, because it was a great time.

BY: So are there any particular experiences about that time, either good or bad, that you remember or want to talk about?

HY: Well, it was beautiful. It was very interesting seeing places like Hiroshima, because it was still pretty devastated. It wasn't like it was obliterated by the bomb, or that bad. And wonderful places like Miyajima and there were some great Oshodo cave, and Kintai Bashi in (Iwakuni), the travel was... and then we got to see your relatives for the first time in Annai.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.