Vietnam:Continuing on, was there any operation that you performed or assisted another doctor with where a patient wasn’t expected to live but miraculously recovered?

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Sasaki: I’m sure we did. But, again, we received little or no feedback as to the recovery rate of our patients. I can vividly recall one soldier who was wounded in an armored personnel carrier (APC) and had burns over 95 percent of his entire body. This was a fatal injury; that is, we knew he was going to die. He asked me, ‘Doctor, am I going to die?’ What could I say? I lied to him and said he was going to live and we were going to take good care of him. Luckily for him, he was so severely burned that the nerve endings were gone and he was in no pain.

Vietnam: Do you think your time in Vietnam has benefited you today from a medical point of view?

Sasaki: It certainly taught us to operate under pressure. And since I had not been fully trained yet, it was extremely helpful. My surgical skills benefited greatly from having been over there. I remember coming back and not being terribly frightened by tremendous bleeding as my co-workers were. I had seen so much of it in Vietnam. Also, my surgical techniques were better. I also found the Army to be a good experience as far as developing leadership qualities. I learned that there is a definite hierarchy in rank. But being a good leader doesn’t always mean riding his people to death. You should care for the people you are responsible for, and they’ll pay your back by doing a great job. That lesson was very clear to me. It’s helped me in my civilian practice.

Vietnam: Any regrets?

Sasaki: I have only one regret about my Vietnam experience. It seemed to me that the medical staff who were Regular Army doctors rarely got assigned to Vietnam. The people sent over there, at least to my perception because I don’t have any figures or numbers, were largely reservists. Doctors just finishing their residency, or trying to, were being sent over there. I thought it was unfair. For example, with the exception of my commanding officer, who was Regular Army, we were all reservists. The military now has a vast majority of medical staff who probably have never experienced operating under combat conditions. It would seem to me that if one selects a military career, he or she should be exposed to those wartime conditions to sharpen his or her medical skills. At that time, I was angry about it. But now, I think to myself, I’m glad I was there. And if there’s ever another war, I would be a more competent military surgeon than the guy who is Regular Army.

< This article was written by Al Hemingway and originally published in the June 1992 issue of Vietnam Magazine.

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