Memory of the Pacific War

I was born in 1939, two years before Pearl Habor Attack and enrolled in grade school in 1946, one year after Japan’s surrender in the Pacific War. Our house in Tokyo was burnt to ashes by an air raid in February 1945 and our family had endured homelessness, unemplo-yment, poverty and hunger for 4 years since both my parents lost jobs and our family used up all our savings. Meanwhile, we moved to northern Honshu (main island) for temporary shelter. We built our own house in Tokyo in 1951 when Japan regained its independence. I graduated from Tokyo Medical and Dental University Medical School in 1965, one year after the Tokyo Olympic Games. I interned at Yokosuka US Naval Hospital for one year and was planning to apply residency program in the US but had to delay taking care my aging mother who was previously operated on the diagnosis of stomach cancer. My mother recovered from post-gastrectomy pernicious anemia by 1970, and I landed at St Louis, Missouri for residency program of Washington University Medical Center. After finishing residency program, I moved to Kansas City for further training at the University of Kansas Medical Center and was promoted to assistant professor there in 1975 and to full professor in 1985, where I served as a staff pathologist for 27 years until 2002. Then, I moved to El Paso, Texas for private practice and subsequently moved to Portland, Oregon to retire and I have been a clinical professor of Oregon Health and Science University ever since. I have published 140 scientific papers and two monographs, including Dr. Wataru Ide’s 'Nagasaki Hibakusha’s Prayer' , which I translated into English for my medical school classmate and my personal life story, entitled 'American Dreamer' both by Eliva.