Ethnic Persecution Didn’t Stop Doctor : Y. Fred Fujikawa, Retired surgeon.

Y. Fred Fujikawa’s hands aren’t what they used to be.

His right forefinger is bent like a sickle from the painful arthritis that eventually forced him to retire from performing chest surgery. But the 81-year-old Seal Beach resident has a bull’s-eye memory.

Fujikawa was born on the Fourth of July, 1910, in San Francisco. His father had immigrated to the United States in 1900 and had lived a migrant life, working on the railroads and in fields.

Fujikawa was one of the first Japanese-Americans to attend medical school, paying his way by working at a fruit stand.

In 1936, he opened a general practice on Terminal Island, where his father worked in a fish cannery. On the island, a half-mile sliver of land connected to Long Beach by ferry, Fujikawa found a sense of community and a haven from the ethnic slurs and racial violence. Among the 3,000 Japanese-American fishermen and cannery workers, he counted himself in the majority.

“It was a unique settlement,” he recalled. “There were only two non-Japanese in the whole grammar school there, and they used to fly big Japanese koi (carp) flags over it.”

Then the United States entered World War II, and on Feb. 25, 1942, an unidentified plane flew over Los Angeles. Jittery antiaircraft gunners opened up all over the city, sending shells into neighborhoods that killed a few people.

The next day, Japanese-American Terminal Islanders were ordered to evacuate within 48 hours.

“It was one of the most chaotic situations I have ever encountered. Fujikawa said. “The younger generation asks why we didn’t resist. I’ve tried to explain we had been persecuted for most of our lives. The attitude was shikataganai : it cannot be helped.”

During the war, Fujikawa was one of eight doctors who cared for about 10,000 internees at the internment camp in Jerome, Ark. As the government loosened restrictions on Japanese-Americans deemed loyal, Fujikawa was allowed to move his wife and son to Missouri, where he worked in a sanitarium treating tuberculosis patients.

One patient, Jessie Greer, at first refused to be treated by a “Jap” doctor. But Fujikawa treated her anyway and later received a letter of thanks from Greer, who said that she owed her life to him.

“That is one of the most satisfying letters I ever received in my life,” Fujikawa said.

His presence at the hospital caused a stir in the Missouri Legislature, where one lawmaker introduced a bill to prevent Fujikawa from working.

Another lawmaker, O.K. Armstrong, defended Fujikawa: “Regardless of intolerance elsewhere, we’re not going to stand for it here in Missouri.” The bill was defeated, and Fujikawa continued working. In 1984, Fujikawa tracked Armstrong down and thanked him in a tearful reunion.

In Missouri, Fujikawa began to study chest surgery, which became his specialty for more than 40 years. He has treated tens of thousands of patients in his life.

Seven years ago, Fujikawa moved to Seal Beach. Terminal Island became part of a naval base and the Japanese-American community was forever dispersed, living only in annual reunions and the memories of people like Fujikawa.