<Begin Segment 9>

RP: This is a continuing interview with Jim Sugiyama and this is tape two. Jim, you were just sharing with us how you got involved working at the Manzanar hospital.

SS: Okay, so anyway, I went up to see the head nurse and she was very reluctant. Of course, to me, I didn't realize it at the time, but I think there's a matter of child labor laws. [Laughs] And under California state law, you know, you couldn't work more than two hours after school, but I finally talked her into it and so she put me on the rolls for two hours a day and eight hours on weekends. And as it turned out, I guess perhaps -- and here's an example -- but it works, and so by that time people were being encouraged to leave camp and hospital workers were in demand all over. And then a number of them, the orderlies were actually med or pre-med student and they were going to school and so forth. So they developed by the summer of '43, a shortage, so they started hiring high school students to work during the summer full-time and part-time after that. And so I guess it worked out. Interesting, when we moved to Topaz, Miss Wetzel was the head nurse at Topaz. And so I went up to the hospital, I didn't know it at the time, and I went up to the hospital there as soon as we moved to Topaz in November '43. And that time they already had a part-time student working at the hospital and I guess I assumed that Miss Wetzel had started that program there. But unfortunately they were full up and so I couldn't get a job right away, but '44 I got a call that I had to start working. So I worked at the Topaz hospital too until July when I left.

RP: And do you recall several folks that worked at the hospital, specifically Dr. James Goto? Were you there when he was there?

SS: He was not at Manzanar, he was at Topaz. I don't believe I ever met him personally, I knew he took care of my mother on one occasion for something, but, yes, he was quite a surgeon.

RP: He's always famous for removing your appendix whether you needed it or not.

SS: Well, no, that wasn't... no, he was way ahead of his time. He was quite good, I mean, a normal incision for appendectomy was about that big at that time or longer, anyway, it's a quite a length. He would make it a very tiny incision, very quickly, and on top of that he insisted that the patient, we used to keep them in bed for a week to ten days, right after the operation, you know, get them out of bed as soon as possible. And they'd be on their way home in three days ,whereas the conventional treatment was a week to ten days in the hospital bed rest. Matter of fact, when my wife came down with appendicitis, this was before we were officially married, in Japan she came down with appendicitis and so she was operated on in a local hospital and I told the doctor, "Get her out of bed," you know, 'cause over there they keep you in bed for weeks. [Laughs] And he was shocked and I said, "No, you got to get her out of bed," and he says, "Alright, I'll make the stitches a little stronger." That's what it was, he was a good... one incident that I recall, it happened in (Topaz), they did a number of tonsillectomies and one of the patients was -- as I understand, this was secondhand -- but one of the patients was the nephew or relative of Dr. Goto and there were complications, you know, a tonsillectomy, and the patient died. So it was a relative of Dr. Goto but, I mean, he didn't do any, I never heard of him ever doing any unnecessary surgeries. He was very good. Incidentally, his wife was Dr. Takayanagi and I understand she was a doctor here at the naval air station, either the naval air station or Oakland (Armory Base), I think the naval air station for a while after the war, I think.

RP: What were some of your duties at the Manzanar hospital?

SS: Well, ordinarily normally just... well, the medications were all handled by the nurses... but it's housekeeping type duties. Daily alcohol rubs, in other words, you give rub downs and in the morning, well, of course you'd feed them or take the food to them or feed them. Wash them daily, you know, I'm not sure what you call it now but give them the in-bed bath and so forth, enemas, catheterization, so forth, post-op treatment, pre-op preps. Those days we used safety razors, you know, Gillette, and those blades were in short supply and used them over and over again and they'd get pretty dull. And I recall one of the doctors... oh, that's the other thing, one of the advantages of working in the hospital was that I was allowed to observe operations in the operating room. And I recall one time one of the doctors commenting, "Sugiyama always makes the first incision," because when I'd do the prep, you know, and get cut up pretty bad because those things are... there's no way you can sharpen them.

RP: Did you ever get sick watching an operation?

SS: Pardon?

RP: Did you ever get sick watching an operation?

SS: One time, only one time. And that was... this was in 1943, and volunteers from the Shriner's hospital, I'm not sure whether it was L.A. Shriners, came to Manzanar to do a remedial surgery on orthopedic and so forth. And my brother had fractured his arm on three separate occasions, and one time it wasn't properly set and it was sort of bent. So he was one of those selected for this operation in order to have corrective surgery. And so I got permission to watch, and what they did was they had to break his arm again, re-break it and reset it surgically. And that's the one time I was watching and I felt this cold, cold sweat and so that's the one time I had to leave the operating room, I left and I think I threw up.

Another time, I don't recall all the operations that I watched, there's one, this old man, well, you know, I guess he was... I considered him an old man, had tried to commit hara kiri with a safety razor and so he had cut himself here and right across from the belly button and then cut himself again, well, it don't go deep enough to kill him, you know, with a safety razor. So after he did this, then he went to visit someone and the person he was visiting noticed blood dripping and so they brought him up to the hospital and they had him on... so that's one of the operations I observed and he was on the operating table and I held his hand. They used local anesthesia because all they were doing was sewing him up. And I'm holding this patient's hand and he's saying, "Itai, itai, it hurts, it hurts," and the doctor's saying, "Bakatare, you're a damn fool for doing this." [Laughs] You know, it's one of those incidences that sticks in your mind. And here there was a patient on the operating table and I'm holding his hand, the doctor's sewing him up saying, "You damn fool," and he's saying, "It hurts, it hurts." [Laughs]

RP: Is there any sense from him of why he tried --

SS: No, I never talked to patient after that. It wasn't... I wouldn't say he was crazy or anything like that but still a disturbed individual.

RP: Did you have any experience with dealing with people who had died in the hospital having to take them to the morgue?

SS: Yeah, that was one of the other things that I had to do as an orderly is that when a patient died, then you're preparing them for... clean them up, and there's certain things you take care of and then take them to the morgue. I wasn't there but I understand, well, we mentioned earlier that the morgue was up on a rise there. And it's right... the passageway was right next to the dining room, kitchen area, and there were heavy doors that lead up to the morgue. And I recall that one of the orderlies took the body up to the morgue and some nurse's aides played a trick on him. And when he was coming back, they were hiding behind the door or something, on the side and when he came down with the gurney, pushing it, they jumped out and said boo. And it was pitch black up there, and he came through that door I understand and they said that they don't how they came through the door because you couldn't push it open, you had to pull it open. [Laughs] No, I observed a number of post mortems up there and one patient particularly has always bugged me is that he'd been in the hospital, hospitalized for, oh, months, at least a half a year and he was initially diagnosed with thrombophlebitis, thrombosis and it turned out that he had cancer. And by the time he died it had metastasized all over his body. And so I had not gotten close to him but he was one of the patients that I cared for. And (...) I had to prepare his body after he died too. That was an ordeal, I'd never seen organs that had been so, shall we say, distorted, you know, saw the results of cancer and I made up my mind I never wanted to get cancer.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.