<Begin Segment 10>

SY: And what about you? You ended up going to high school in camp.

AM: Yeah. Well, school wasn't ready yet when we got to camp, so I got a job as a junior cook before school started. I was, I think I was cooking some rice. And then when I graduated high school, before I graduated high school I had gone to the hospital and applied for a job, and so we graduated on a Sunday and Monday I reported to work to become an orderly.

SY: Wow. You remember working as an orderly?

AM: I was working as an orderly until, until these orderlies in the surgery room relocated, went out of camp, and then I ended up in the surgery room. And we had to, we got more pay than the orderlies because we were on call after hours because of the shortage of workers. And people wouldn't believe me that we got nineteen dollars instead of sixteen, and I think we surmised that it was because we had to be on call.

SY: And were they other people your age, young people like your age? Or all different ages?

AM: Yeah.

SY: They were different ages, or all the same?

AM: No, they, you mean working at the hospital?

SY: As orderlies.

AM: Different ages.

SY: So you worked as an orderly after you went to school, or before you went to school?

AM: After.

SY: So there was a brief period before you started school that you worked.

AM: Yeah.

SY: And then you went to school, and then graduated?

AM: High school.

SY: From Manzanar High School. And when was that that you graduated?

AM: 1944.

SY: And then you worked as an orderly for...

AM: A little over a year.

SY: I see.

AM: And working in surgery was quite an experience because my primary job, other than sterilizing the surgical equipment and folding sheets and all of that kind of thing and cleaning the place, is, it was my duty to bring the patients down from the ward to surgery, and then putting them on the operating table and taking their blood pressure, and giving an injection when the doctor says either the pressure was too high or whatever. And I had to take them after surgery, or if there was a, happened to be a fly loose in the surgery area, it was my duty to chase it down, or wipe the surgeon's brow.

SY: So did that give you an aspiration to work in the medical field?

AM: Yes, I did. I don't know if it's because my folks always said, "You got to become doctor," or not. But when the eye surgeons from outside used to come in and operate, I noticed they were asking me, "Did it bother you to watch an eye surgery?" And I said no, and they were saying, "Good, good. That's good."

SY: So in general surgery didn't bother you.

AM: No.

SY: You ended up watching a lot of --

AM: The first surgery I watched was a tonsillectomy, and I don't know if it was, what bothered me, probably the blood or whatever, because I felt the blood draining out of my face. But that was, after that it was okay.

SY: Wow.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.