Densho Digital Archive - Jim Tsugawa Interview (denshovh-tjim

<Begin Segment 21>

AC: So after Zweibrucken, and you've got this wonderful job keeping paperwork going, what happened after that? Did your term, did your enlistment end while you were stationed there?

JT: Well, yeah. Then they released me and I came back in February of 1955, I was discharged. I had to stay one day over my enlistment period because it was a Sunday that we would have got released. And then I came back and I spent that summer helping my brothers, and then I enrolled at Oregon State College. At that time it was named Oregon State College. And I studied my butt off because I didn't know if I had the ability to do what I wanted to do, medicine or dentistry. And I was studying morning, noon and night. Then I'd get tired and I'd go down to the Peacock Tavern, have a few beers, and then go back and study. I got my degree from Oregon State in science, Bachelor of Science, and was accepted to OSU dental school in 1958.

AC: Did you play any sports while you were in college, Oregon State?

JT: No, no, geez, I was too small. [Laughs] I did, after high school, I did go down, somebody took me down to University of Oregon and Oregon State to interview, and this guy was named Jim Aiken. He said, "Jim," he said, "you may become the best running back going, but they'll kill you eventually," which I took very seriously. Because I was just, what, 5'3", about 130, you know.

AC: So you got accepted to the school of dentistry.

JT: Yes.

AC: What made you decide you wanted to become a dentist?

JT: You know when your mother says, "Jimmy, be a doctor, be a doctor, be a doctor." I thought I would like to be either a medicine or dentistry, and then I decided, I studied with a bunch of guys that were going into medicine, and I decided that I didn't want to have a beeper, deal with life or death. I thought dentistry would be more... and it was the right fit. I enjoyed dentistry. I started practice in '63, and practiced for thirty-two years and enjoyed it. Going through dental school, I met my future wife at Oregon State, we got married between my freshman and sophomore year in dental school. She had to do summer school, and then student teach in the fall, and then she took a job with, substituting, and then she had a substituting job at Ainsworth grade school on Vista Avenue, and then that teacher became pregnant and so Amy spent two months there at Ainsworth grade school, which was great because we'd come up out of, across Barber Boulevard, and she would go to dental school and she'd be off, and then she'd go to Ainsworth, which was up farther yet. And then when she'd be done, she'd come down at five o'clock, pick me up, and then we'd go home. It was kind of a life when you didn't know anybody else, you know. So then she taught for three years, and then the baby came in 1963. And thank god she taught school the first year I was in practice, because it would have a cold winter.

When I was going through dental school, I worked for the Beaverton School District as a maintenance man. I learned a lot putting in windows, building fences, building walls. But it was one of the best things I ever did. I met a lot of schoolteachers, office personnel, principals, superintendents, and that really helped me get started in practice, because a lot of those people came to me as a dentist. And I'll never forget the incident, after I had graduated, I didn't want to work for somebody else, I was waiting for the building to be built, and I was in the superintendent's office painting his room. And Mr. Hassel, who was a good friend of mine, I can't remember the name of the superintendent, said, "Dr. such and such, I'd like you meet Dr. Tsugawa." I was up on a ladder painting. [Laughs] But he came to me as a patient, but I don't remember his name. But that's really, I got my practice off going pretty good with the people.