His routine was mornings, he would open the office, which was... the building's still here on Gardena Boulevard, 749 Gardena Boulevard. And he would have office hours in Gardena. There were three or four rooms there, set up for an office. And he would see patients in the morning without appointments, they would just come in, take them in sequence.
And then my father had these young doctors working with him, one of 'em was Norman Kobayashi, and others lived with us. They were mostly, at that time, they were bachelors. Sometimes, along the way, people would find them a brideand they would... But they would all break for lunch, my mother and our housekeeper would feed them lunch.
And then they would change to their street clothes and all get into my dad's car, which was usually a four-door something or another, and they would drive into L.A. This is before, pre-freeways, and they would drive all the way up to Avalon or San Pedro Street, all the way up to Slauson, into Soto Street, to Boyle Heights and the Japanese hospital was there. And then from there, they would make hospital rounds, and then after the rounds, they would go into Little Tokyo and open up the office there and then see the patients there, and then reverse the procedure and come home.
They had no appointments. So when the last patient was seen, then they would close up and come home. Or, sometimes, they might have home calls to make, so they would have a list of people they had to drop in to see. And that was a typical day.
Date: September 21, 2009
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda, Martha Nakagawa
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
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