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MR: Let's go to after, after the war and after some of your schooling, you joined the navy?

HY: Oh, well, I didn't actually join the navy. I was coerced into the navy. [Laughs] It happened this way. When I was in medical school -- well, before that. I was 4-F through two times, three times; one time in Denver, I was eighteen by then, and when I went to medical school, I had two physical examinations. Each time, I have a heart murmur, still have it. And in those days, 1945, '46, they, the doctors figured that hey, a heart murmur is tantamount to a death sentence. That means this guy is not going to live very long. He's not good cannon fodder, so we won't take him. Well, okay, then I can go on and get my education. I did. I finished medical school, and then I went on got my internship and went on to my residency. I had another physical. He said, "Well, you're a doctor now, huh?" Yeah. I'm a doctor, licensed doctor, yeah. "Well, okay. You don't have to carry a rifle. So what we'll do, if you don't join a service of your choice, we'll put you in the army. In the army. You have to carry a rifle, and you have to troop and stomp and pitch tents and things like that. I don't want to do that. I think I rather be aboard a boat, and have food served to me and sleep in nice bunks and so on. So I said, "I want to go in the navy," and so the navy took me. But that's why I say I didn't exactly volunteer. I had a choice between the army and the navy or the air force because by that time, maybe you don't know it, but not until 1950 would the navy or the marine corps or the air force take Japanese Americans, so I was one of the early ones. I went in in 1954, but I wasn't the earliest, but it was different and up until '50. So I went in 1954. I just finished the tail end of my residency, surgical residency, and I was sent to... well, first I took my so-called indoctrination, military indoctrination, at Bremerton Naval Hospital which is in Bremerton, Washington, then I was shipped over to Iwakuni in Japan, and Iwakuni is about twenty, twenty miles south of Hiroshima. And when I went there in 1954 and I did visit it, most of that place was flattened. It was desolate. There were still some standing buildings and some were going up, so it wasn't like immediately after the atomic bombing. But there was still a lot of flat places there when we were there. Even when Miki was there, there were a lot of flat places. So I was there from December of 1954 'til October of 1956, nearly two years. And during that time, Miki and our oldest two children, Barbara and Meredith, were able to join me, and we really had a good experience. I was kind of dumb there. You know, I'm kind of a dumb guy sometimes. But one of the, another one of the dumb things that I did was I had a chance to live off base. See, I could have stayed on the base with military housing and paid maids and all that, but I could have equally stayed off the base with the Japanese population, and that's what I should have done. But I didn't do that because I said, "Hey, that's kind of inconvenient." I have to take a car and drive, go across the bridge, go through the gate, and have to salute the sentry every time and all that sort of stuff, and I don't want to do that. But I should have because I'd have learned so much more of the custom and tradition and the culture and the language and food. Everything would have been much better if I'd done that. But like I said, I was dumb, so I didn't do it.

MR: How old were your children when you were there?

HY: Oh, Barbara was just going on... no, I guess she was three, three, and Meredith was just a little past one, and both of them got measles on the way over. And neither one of my dear little children recognized Dad. They wouldn't come to me, that was so sad. But it had just been a few months, they wouldn't come to Dad, but it didn't take long. They got to know Daddy again.

MR: When you were in Japan, did you visit your family home area?

HY: Oh, yeah. Sure. We had a car. There were so many advantages of being in the American U.S. Navy when I was in there because we were able to bring our car, our household goods, the children, like my family can join me there, and that's what all happened. We'd get a car. I sold it for a profit before I left. But because we had a car, we drove to Tokyo once, no, Kyoto, Kyoto. Kyoto is, boy, it was really an experience driving those narrow, narrow roads driving to Kyoto. And of course, we couldn't read the Japanese signs. [Laughs] We can speak it, but we couldn't read the signs. We drove to Kyoto. And then amongst the other places we visited was my first cousin Yasuo Yasui and his family. We have some photographs there. It was great. It was real nice. Being in Japan was one of the highlights of my life. It was only for two years or so, but I still have fond memories. We have lots of pictures of that too.

MR: Since you were so close to Hiroshima and you're a doctor, did you have any interaction with survivors of the bomb?

HY: No. I didn't personally. I've known some after the war. But I'll tell you what, my brother-in-law is Toshio Fujikura, and he is a native Japanese born in Japan, and he's also a medical doctor. He's a pathologist. But he came to the United States after the war, and he graduated from Keio University School of Medicine. But he came to America, United States, and he took out a, took an ob-gyn residency at Johns Hopkins University in back east. And after he finished that, he took a residency in pathology, and he became a certified pathologist. Meanwhile, he married my sister, long story, but my sister went back to Japan on a Fulbright in 1955. She married this guy. My father didn't know about Fujikura. But anyway, long story. After, they came, Toshio came to the United States, and he became a naturalized American citizen which he still is. He has no Japanese citizenship. And the interesting thing is he owns a lot of land property, but he's an American citizen. He was born in Japan. His first language is Japanese. He's most comfortable in Japanese, but by virtue of being a doctor and a pathologist, he worked for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission for two, three years, first in Hiroshima. He was stationed right in Hiroshima and then later on in Nagasaki, the two places which were bombed, so he knows a lot about that stuff. He had some good experiences, good stories to tell; although, he's a reticent type of guy. So I don't know them, but he knows lots and lots of them or he knew lots and lots of them. But here in this country, Miki and I know two or three or four. In Portland, we know one, so we know a few, but not in Japan. I never knew any of them, but Toshio Fujikura does.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.