<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So what are some other memories of Jerome for you?

KM: Jerome was... oh, poison ivy. Oh my god, I don't know where I got it, I got it bad, and I even blistered on my whole arm, blistered. So I went to the hospital and the nurse would give me a shot. I remember she gave me a shot in my right arm. And when she pulled out the... she left the needle inside my arm, so she had to get a plier to pull it out.

TI: Ouch. [Laughs]

KM: Ouch, yeah. And then Dr. Taira came along, and he'd see that, he says, putting gauze on it, so he gauzed my arm, and then he put some zinc oxide, this was liquid, and they poured it on on top of the gauze, and they dried up the, all that wet pus that used to come out. And then the gauze, I guess, dried it all out and it cleared. It was surprising, gee, that suffering that poison ivy, oh, my god.

JS: So Dr. Taira was one of the main doctors from Fresno.

KM: Yeah, uh-huh, he was, right.

JS: Where was his practice in Fresno?

KM: Right on F and, I think Mono. Is the building still there? I don't know. I remember it's a wooden building. Everybody went o him. He was also the doctor for the Edison football team, too.

JS: And there was another doctor, Okonogi?

KM: Okonogi? Well, that was way before, yeah. He was my doctor. And then there was a Dr. Hashiba, the three doctors, yeah.

JS: But Dr. Taira, he's not that much older than you, right?

KM: Yeah, he must have been about four years older.

JS: Okay. So he was a young doctor.

KM: Yeah, he was pretty young.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.