Dr. Bill James, Part 1, Transcript Section 2

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Dr. Bill James, Part 1
Transcript Section 2

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DR. JAMES: And when we were in Nome, the first atomic submarine could go from east to west under the ice pack, came to Nome. And Nome has no harbor so they used us for the harbor. They attached, you know, they hooked up to the ice breaker.

KAREN: So your ship was anchored off shore and they --

DR. JAMES: Yeah.

KAREN: -- anchored next to you?

DR. JAMES: And they anchored or tied on to us.

KAREN: And was that a Russian submarine?

DR. JAMES: No, it was an American. I don't remember the name for sure. I think it was the Sea Dragon maybe or something.

KAREN: That's kind of interesting. That was 1960?

DR. JAMES: So we toured the -- this was in the summer of '60.

KAREN: And what were the conditions like? I mean, is it rough seas or -- you must not get seasick.

DR. JAMES: No, not -- it wasn't bad.

And we were supposed to go back, be back in Seattle in October. And on the way back from the Bering Sea, we stopped at Adak, and then at Kodiak again, got orders to take several oceanographers back up into the Arctic Ocean.

So we turned around and went back up north and we would just make a zigzag pattern in the Arctic Ocean taking water samples.

And we went -- we got east of the Canadian border and it started to freeze up, and we thought for a while we may not get out. But we got back to Seattle in December, and then I went to Tanana. So that was in December of '60 when I went to Tanana.

KAREN: And so that, working for the Bering Sea patrol, that was -- you were employed by the Coast Guard then?

DR. JAMES: Well, I was still --

KAREN: You were still employed --

DR. JAMES: I was still a physician in the Public Health Service, but the Public Health Service provides medical care to the post office -- to the Coast Guard.

KAREN: Hmm. I never knew that.

DR. JAMES: Uh-hum.

KAREN: They still do?

DR. JAMES: I think so.

KAREN: Okay. And so then how did you end up in Tanana?

DR. JAMES: Well, there was a vacancy there. And I wanted to get out of the Bush and so I asked to be assigned there and I was. It was a two-doctor station. And the -- one of the doctors that summer had gone to Dillingham, I believe, so there was just one doctor there for about six months until I got there.

And the doctor had a very young family. I was still single. So I started making field trips to the villages that January. And I would charter a 180 and go to Ruby for a day, Galena for a day, Koyukuk for a day, Nulato for a day, and then -- what's the village past Nulato?

KAREN: Kaltag?

DR. JAMES: Kaltag for a day. And then fly back on Saturday.

There were no health aides in the villages so there were no -- there was very poor communication between the villages and Tanana. There was no phone -- in fact, in the hospital, we had no phone in the hospital.

Once a day -- once a week we would go out to the Wien station at the airport and have a call, Anchorage, and I would talk to the medical director, and head cook would talk with the cook, and the nurse would talk with the director of nurses, and so forth. There was a scheduled time that we talked to the people in Anchorage.

So that was the only phone communication we had. We had a sideband radio that sometimes we could talk to some of the villages and sometimes we couldn't.

Another week I would go to Galena and then Huslia, Hughes, Allakaket.

Another week I would go over to Fort Yukon and went -- I tried to go to Fort Yukon every month. It was a big -- biggest village. And I would go to Fort Yukon and then go to, say, Arctic Village and Venetie the next day. Next time go to Circle and another village, kind of alternate.

KAREN: And your region also included Anaktuvuk, right?

DR. JAMES: And we also, Anaktuvuk Pass was in our service unit at the time.