<Begin Segment 7>

Off camera: Okay, so you had just bought your car.

TI: We just bought this Model A Ford, and we had a hard time with it. It wouldn't start. Most of the time, it wouldn't start. There was a crank that I used to try to crank it, but this was difficult. So what I would do was I would park it on a hill when I stopped, and I would run it down the hill to start it. So we played with this car for a year or two. I finally had to abandon it, and I just, I had the junk man come and pick it up. [Laughs] Yes, I met my wife in Chicago when I was still a student at Wisconsin, and whenever I came to Chicago to visit my friend, Harry, somehow I met her, and then she moved away. She moved to Cleveland, so our correspondence was only by mail. She later moved to San Antonio to be with her sister and the family and her family too. So she came to Portland in 1949, and it was a savior for me because she supported me from there, thereon, which was a blessing.

DF: What did Shizuko do during that time?

TI: Pardon?

DF: What did she do, where did she work?

TI: She worked at the university in the x-ray department, so it was convenient. We lived by the university medical school, and I graduated in 1950 and became an intern at Saint Vincent's Hospital. The salary for an internship at that time was fifty dollars a month. So you can see I needed some of the support. I then remained at Saint Vincent's Hospital to take a residency in general surgery starting in 1951. And by that time, I was qualified to take the board examination in basic sciences for the State of Oregon which I did and got that out of the way. I stayed in general surgery residency until 1955. And during my last year in training, I developed an interest in vascular surgery which was a very new field just coming into prominence. And the reason my interest was aroused was that I saw a young boy in the emergency department who was bleeding from a groin wound, and what had happened was his brother had thrown a pair of scissors and the point of the scissors stuck into the femoral artery in the groin, and he was bleeding quite profusely. I stopped the bleeding by just applying pressure, and then the surgeon who I was working with decided that he would eventually tie the artery because of his experience during the World War II, and of course this meant interrupting the main circulation to the leg. But fortunately, the boy, was I believe eight, was young enough that he would develop circulation around the ligature, tied-off artery. And another event that occurred was that the patient came in in shock, and what had transpired was that he had a ruptured aneurism from which he was bleeding, and he bled to death. And this of course meant the artery, the aorta had ruptured, and at that time there was no way to repair this kind of a problem.

So I inquired whether around the country to see where I could take some extra training in vascular surgery; and fortunately, I came upon an opportunity to go to Boston to the Massachusetts General Hospital, and there was a vascular surgeon there by the name of Robert Linton who is widely known, he had done a lot of writing. He was a leader in the field at that time. I applied for a fellowship there, and I was very surprised that I was accepted to go to Boston to this hospital. Massachusetts General Hospital is a -- and it still is -- really a center of surgery, one of the leading centers. It is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. So in July of 1955, we moved to Boston, and the way we moved was I took my oldest daughter who was four years old at the time, and we took the train from Portland to Chicago and then to Detroit. I had, with help, bought a car in Detroit, a Ford, a sedan, and we picked up the car and then drove from there to Boston. I can still remember, it was so hot in July and my daughter was saying all the way, "Can I have a drink?" "Can we get some ice cream?"" It was difficult for her. But when we got to Boston, the summer heat was even worse, and they had a hot spell at that time, and we checked into a motel with air conditioning and just stayed there until we got oriented. I went out and rented an apartment and met my preceptor, my mentor, Doctor Linton and right away he wanted me to go to work. And my job as a fellow was to be on call to harvest blood vessels at autopsy, so I was on call from the very first day. But his wife, Mrs. Linton, was kind enough to babysit for me while I was doing this. We got to know them very intimately, and they were a wonderful family. Well, my wife came out later after we, after I was able to get the apartment. She flew out from Los Angeles. She had gone down there to be with her parents while I was gone, and she brought the two other children, and Jerry was just a year and a half, and Susan was only six weeks old, and so she had quite a time coming out. It took her eleven hours of flight time from Los Angeles.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.