Japanese Nikkea Health Care during the Internment:

Prior to the outbreak of war with Japan, 87 licensed Nikkei physicians and surgeons were practicing medicine in the four western states, 90 percent of them having received their primary medical training in the United States… Most prewar practitioners worked in urban areas where professional opportunities abounded…

With the coming of Executive Order 9066 and the eviction of communities from the military exclusion zones , beginning in April 1942 Nikkei practitioners were forced to close down their offices. Interns and residents lost hospital positions, and nurses their jobs. A new health care work environment soon awaited them–infirmaries and hospitals located behind barbed wire fences, accompanied by demeaning salaries of less than $20 per month.

Planning the Health Care Program

Executive Order 9066 authorized the Secretary of War to employ any federal agency he believed essential in carrying out the provisions of the president's order, including those of medical and hospitalization. Thus, design and supervision responsibilities fell to the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), with help from state, county, and city health departments. In June 1942 USPHS provided technical guidance for setting up the hospitals and producing the public health standards eventually employed universally.

WRA regulations resulting from planning seminars required an adequate program of health services that embraced both curative and preventive medicine, including all specialized fields, as well as selected fields such as dentistry, nutrition, sanitation, pharmacy, optometry, laboratory services, hospital and public health nursing, midwifery and nurses aides, medical social work, psychiatric social work, and health education services.

USPHS advisers recommended that one physician be made available for every 1,000 inmates, and one nurse for every 200. Even a physician-to-population ratio of 1 to 1,500 would prove unattainable because of the increasing drain on medical manpower caused by the war and because too few Nikkei physicians and nurses were available to meet the demand. More, turnover in Caucasian staff at WRA hospitals was high because of spartan and difficult living conditions and difficulties getting along with the Nikkei staff. Recruitment proved difficult because the WRA had to compete with hospitals and clinics throughout the country begging for help to replace staff going off to war and willing to pay higher salaries and provide comfortable working conditions.

Manpower shortages would later increase when the WRA implemented a resettlement program that enabled physicians, nurses, and other health workers to leave the centers to pursue their careers outside the military exclusion zones….

The hastily planned and erected WCCA centers—crowded, unhealthy, unsanitary, and demoralizing, posed strong threats to the public health of the inmates. As a result, the primary activities of the medical staffs centered on aninoculation program against typhoid fever, diphtheria, smallpox, and whooping cough. Medical staffs immunized thousands of inducteesthereby causing significant delays in preparations to open most infirmaries for general care. At Manzanar , during a three month period beginning March 22, 1942, the resident medical staff administered 28,923 typhoid inoculations and 11,475 smallpox immunizations.

The dentists had their own problems, however, that centered on the lack of equipment and supplies. Many had at their disposal only what they brought with them from their prewar practices. More than one dentist hired a carpenter to modify a straight-back wood chair to produce a working dental chair, which would remain in use until arrival of equipment retrieved from storage…

In addition, the clinic participated in a nationwide epidemiological survey of children sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to determine the causes of tooth decay..

The most frequent causes of death were cancer of all types (407), heart disease (293), tuberculosis (206), vascular disease (197), pneumonia/influenza (70), and kidney disease (70).

https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Medical_care_in_camp/