Toyo Shimizu was born on 1/29/1911 in Los Angeles, son of immigrant parents from Nara, Japan. His father was a master gardener for homes in Hollywood, and in his youth, Toyo worked as a newspaper delivery boy and delivered groceries to the large homes of the rich and famous. He graduated from Hollywood High School and UCLA, and was accepted into the USC School of Dentistry and graduated in 1934 with honors. Toyo opened a practice in Japan Town in Los Angeles in 1935, and married Kiyo in 1937. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his family was evacuated to the Santa Anita Assembly Center, then temporarily stayed at a camp near Prescott, Arizona waiting for completion of the permanent camp at Poston, Arizona.
At Poston, Toyo volunteered to serve as a clinical dentist, the camp's health board, and was part of a developing public health and TB control intervention using public health nurses and volunteers. He worked with the TB campaign with fellow internee, Dr. Kazu Kasuga, a TB specialist, and acquainted with Dr. Ralph Snavely, a US Public Health Service medical officer, serving as the Office of Indian Affairs District Medical Director for the Colorado River Indian Reservation.
Toyo and his wife, Kiyo and son, Russ, lived at Poston for about two and a half years. He volunteered and transported his dental equipment on donkeys into the Havasupai Canon to serve the Indians living there. When he was finally accepted in to Yale University for graduate public health training, he was rejected after they discovered his Japanese ancestry. He contacted Dr. Ralph Snavely, and was offered a job as the first Indian Health clinical dentist. He worked as a traveling dentist, and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and later able to set up his own traveling clinical practice at Whiteriver, Arizona.
In 1951, he moved his family to Fort Defiance where he accepted a commission in the US Public Health Service and worked without a dental assistant. He was finally able to complete his Masters of Public Health degree in 1958 at the University of Pittsburg, and became the Area Dental Officer in the same year in Albuquerque. In 1964, he transferred to Phoenix to become the Area Dental Officer, which he held until retirement in 1973. He died in 1990.
Survived by his wife, Kiyo, daughter Margo (Dr. Rick) Snyder and Dr. Russ T. Shimizu.
Source: The IHS Primary Care Provider, March 2009, Vol 34, No 3
