Densho Digital Archive - Albert A. Oyama Interview (denshovh-oalbert-01-0015)

<Begin Segment 15>

JK: Then you went back to school and continued your education.

AO: Yes. I finished two years of school at the University of Oregon. At the beginning of the second year, I would have been a senior, after having been at different schools, I would have been a senior, and so I applied to the medical school here in Portland. Fortunately, I had studied very hard and got good grades, and so my GPA was the highest GPA of any of the medical school applicants from the University of Oregon. So I won the McKenzie, A.J. McKenzie Scholarship fund to go to the medical school. So once I had won that award, then I was assured that I would be accepted into medical school, because anybody who wins the award is automatically awarded a position to medical school. So I found out that I was accepted at the medical school, so my life, last year at the University of Oregon became a teacher because I knew I'd been accepted into medical school.

JK: And then you went to medical school. How did the path go there?

AO: At the medical school, I became a member of the class of 1953, and there were two other Japanese American students in the class. So there were three of us Japanese Americans in the class of '53, and there was one Chinese fellow that was also in the class. I was able to maintain my grades there, and so I kept the scholarship for all four years. They have a medical school honoring group called Alpha Omega Alpha, which I became a member of. And so my life at the medical school was pretty easy. The only thing I didn't have is much money, so after I told Mas -- she wasn't my wife then -- she was at the University of Oregon, I told her that I had enough money to go to two years of medical school, but I didn't know how I was going to finance my last two years. "So if you can work and save money for two years, then we could get married at the end of the second year of medical school and then you can support me my last two years." She said, "Okay." So she worked hard the first two years while I was in medical school. We got married between my second and third year in medical school, so I was able to finish with her support. And now I have to support her through the rest of her life because of those two years. [Laughs]

JK: Well, things worked out well for both of you.

AO: That's right. We're both very happy.

JK: And you had three boys.

AO: Yes.

JK: And is there anything you did differently with them than you did with your, than your dad did with you?

AO: No, I think all three boys, we tried to stress the importance of education to all of them. The first and the oldest one was not interested. He was more interested in cars and things, so he spent one year at the University of Oregon, but didn't stay. He didn't graduate. The second son also went to University of Oregon. It's funny how everybody in our family went to University of Oregon. He went there and graduated in the business school there. The third son also went to University of Oregon, he decided he liked science, so he decided to become a physician also. And so he took pre-med down there, and he got accepted to the University of Oregon medical school when he finished school in Eugene. Now he finished medical school, he finished his training in pathology at the medical school, and he's now a pathologist at Good Samaritan Hospital here.