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PY: So I was born in Cincinnati and I don't think they were there for more than eighteen months before he decided to accept a position with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.

PW: How did that come about?

PY: One of his mentors at Cincinnati Children's just knew of his interest in environmental medicine and knew that there was, like, the beginnings of this... that there was no pediatric nuclear studies whatsoever. And so he just thought this would be a good career opportunity for a young physician to be with my dad's interest in environmental issues. And so suggested that, and helped him get the job.

PW: And the job required going to Japan, correct?

PY: Yes.

PW: This is now a year or two...

PY: So this is 1949.

PW: '49. So it's several years after the bombs had been dropped, but there's devastating medical...

PY: The studies are just getting going, like nobody really knows very much at that time about what the long-term effects of a nuclear explosion is going to be, just like what the various levels exposure that people had.

PW: Do you know if your mother had a say in making this big move with a baby?

PY: In general, they were a very consultive family. So I'm assuming that she had a lot to say about that, but that she was also interested in going. So, I mean, because of Hiroshima, where he was originally going to work, was in the British zone of occupation. And the British would not allow or give housing to my parents because they were non-European, they were Japanese. And so obviously my dad was extremely pissed off. And so again, after, I guess, I don't know exactly when, but I'm going to say weeks of negotiation, then he took a position in Nagasaki. But my mother had English friends subsequent to all this, and they would sometimes have English-style holidays, and my dad was always pissed off about going to those things. It's not that he didn't like those individuals, but he remembered those things, and he felt that it was kind of overt racism.

PW: But they weren't supportive in Hiroshima?

PY: Yeah.

PW: Do you know what kind of housing they did settle into?

PY: Yeah, and he always felt badly about this, and he also speaks at great length in Densho about this, but in Nagasaki they didn't have housing so they kicked people out. So they had a, basically a palace, just something that, for a middle class Japanese American, seemed like, "Holy shit," just kind of nicely tended grounds, like shoji screens and mats and all over the place, just like, by my standards, with the photographs I've seen, that was pretty luxe. And it came with two young people to look after me, at least, two young, nice, Japanese women. My uncle Peter was in the occupation forces and so he was based out of Tokyo. And one of his suggestions to my father as they come over is buy a car, have it shipped over, make a, just be a statement kind of thing. So my dad didn't have the money, so this I didn't know, and this is the one thing that I actually didn't, that was new information to me in the Densho interviews, that Pete paid for that car.

PW: So it's an interesting... the word isn't coincidence, but it's interesting chance that both his brother and your father were in Japan at the same time. And your father, I'm kind of guessing, is on a regular work schedule going in to do research and studies on hibakusha.

PY: Basically he and the Japanese doctors have to invent this whole thing from scratch. I mean, there is no epistemology whatsoever about that, just in that... until my dad gets there, there had been very little activity on the pediatrics side. So most of it had been for adult survivors. And there have been no, kind of, looking at what are the possible long-term genetic things. And so that and their surviving Japanese doctors collaborated together and developed all these studies which are still kind of the foundation for long-term environmental effects, natal and pediatrics studies.

PW: And what about your mother? So you explained that there were two different people who were available to help take care of you during the day. Did she ever talk about the time in Japan and what that was like for her?

PY: She found that kind of isolating. Her Japanese wasn't that good and because they were part of an occupation force, even though they were Japanese ancestry, and that they had displaced somebody presumably pretty prominent within the community, because that was a nice residence. Then it wasn't easy for her, so like my dad's busy all the time, and just kind of... and she tends to be a shyer person.

PW: And her parents might have had family still in Japan, do you know?

PY: Okinawa.

PW: That's right.

PY: And so I don't know what the family experience was during Okinawa except we all know that it was, like, holy shit, they couldn't get this wartime experience and just kind of, no Okinawan who lived there at the time was, that was...

PW: Yeah, it was terrifying and brutal. So how long was this period that you were...

PY: About eighteen months. So we're there for the beginning of the Korean War. My mother was always sensitive to environmental... just weather really has a huge impact on her day-to-day well-being. The weather in Nagasaki did not agree with her and so she was having... that was the other reason why she was also isolated, because she was physically not feeling great during large portions of that. So because of, kind of, Korean War and then being in southern Japan, that was one of the closer access points to American fighter pilots are flying out of southern Japan, doing sorties out there. So anyhow, they came home. But a large part of it was, I think... my mother wasn't feeling really comfortable there, and spending another year was out of the question, basically.

PW: Well, I worry about all of you, too, because you're in a heavy radiation zone, too, throughout this time period, and your father is researching this.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.