In 1949. As a result of a low back injury that I incurred in a judo tournament in Tokyo. At the time, I was a Japanese language interpreter at the war crimes trials. I had a lot of free time on my hands, so in addition to traveling around Japan, I got involved with judo and karate. After I was injured in a tournament, I couldn’t walk and my right leg was partially paralyzed. I was in the Yokosuka Naval Hospital, which had been taken over by the Allied Powers. After a couple of weeks there, with no results, my judo instructor came down to visit me and said, “Why don’t you try my own Oriental physician?” Well, at that point I’d try anything. So he came down, a short fellow in a silk robe. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a little pack of cigarettes. He pulled out some thin needles, looked at my tongue, palpated my wrist (not like Westerners do, but feeling for 27 different qualities), and said, “Chiryo shimasho.” “Let’s treat.”

The first thing he did was to put a needle in the back of my knee at the Bladder 40 point. I said, in Japanese, “My trouble isn’t in my knee, my trouble’s in my low back.” He laughed, and said to wait and watch. So he put the needle in the back of my knee on both sides, and of all places, put another one in my ear. And I said, “My back’s killing me and you are putting a needle in my ear? What kind of hocus-pocus is this?” But I went along with it. Soon, I had a feeling of warm water going down my legs. I thought, this is unusual. He says to me, “That’s the life force, qi. And we’re controlling it through the acupuncture points.” I asked him how many points there are, and he said, “Four hundred, 361 major points plus another 40.” I asked how many conditions acupuncture could treat, and he said, “Around 2000.” I thought, that’s interesting.

So he treated me and I started to feel very sleepy. When I woke up, all the trouble had gone. I had feeling back in my leg, the pain in my back was gone. So I warily climbed out of the bed, took a few steps, and there was no problem. Healed me up. And I’m thinking to myself, here we have this magnificent American hospital, with the best doctors available to me as a U.S. civilian, and they couldn’t help at all. And now the pain was gone. It’s like most chiropractors I’ve asked when I’ve had the honor of addressing a chiropractic group. When I ask, “How many of you are now chiropractors because you were first a patient?” most of the hands go up. They know from direct experience.

So this was a life-changing experience for you.

I had planned on returning to the United States after the end of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. I had planned to go to law school. But this event changed my mind. I now wanted to get into natural healing, the Oriental way, which I learned has four parts. The first is acupuncture, which deals with the electricity of the body. Next, there’s tui-na, which is manipulation. A lot of our techniques were ones that the Chinese were using at the time of Christ. The Palmers [who founded chiropractic] were Sinophiles, as you know. Third, herbs and nutrition. Fourth, qigong, mind-body, meditation for healing, also known in China as acupuncture without needles. I really got fascinated with it, so I returned to the United States looking for an acupuncture college. There wasn’t one. That was in 1950. Today, by the way, there are 80 acupuncture colleges in the United States and there are 25,000 or more licensed acupuncturists.

You trained in acupuncture before you trained in chiropractic. If we’re talking about the 1950s, to the best of your knowledge were you the first practitioner in the United States to combine chiropractic and acupuncture?

Yes.

And were you the first practitioner in the U.S. outside the Asian communities to practice acupuncture?

I was certainly one of the first. Back then, you could find acupuncture in upstairs backroom clinics in the Oriental communities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. I knew a lot of those practitioners because I searched around and developed friendships with them. When I attended Cleveland Chiropractic College, someone would say, “Now we’re going to adjust the low back,” and I would say, “Well, you’d better also get Small Intestine 3 and Bladder 54 at the same time.” And they’d say, “Yennie, what are you? Chinese or Japanese?” And I’d say, “No, I’m Scotch-Irish.” But I was just fascinated with the Orient and I still am.