By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

You probably didn't know there's a small, squat, concrete blockhouse by a parking lot off South King Street where cancer patients in Our Honolulu got their first dose of radiation, or what it has to do with the 100th anniversary of our Korean community.

Well, this is the year that residents of Korean ancestry are toting up their contributions, and this out-of-the-way blockhouse is one of them. Its walls are 15 feet high and 3 feet thick, with a 1,500-pound lead door. It was designed by well-known Honolulu architect Alfred Y. Lee.

It is a medical landmark. Songwriter and singer Kui Lee was treated there. Today it houses a piano studio, all because of one man's contribution to his heritage.

Philip Lee was born on the slopes of Punchbowl to Korean immigrant parents. When he was in high school, his father was diagnosed with cancer but couldn't pay for hospitalization. Every day on his way home from school, Lee stopped by the charity ward to visit his father, who wasted away from 200 pounds to 90.

That is why Lee chose to go to medical school under the GI Bill after serving in World War II. That is why he specialized in radiology when he opened his little office by the parking lot off South King Street.

Surgery was the accepted way to remove a cancer at that time. When Lee brought in a cobalt-60 radio isotope machine in 1969, it was the only one in Honolulu. The machine weighed 7,000 pounds and cost $150,000. Lee had a blockhouse built for it to Atomic Energy Commission specifications.

In a short while, hospitals all over town were sending patients to him. One was songwriter Kui Lee, who was dying of cancer. He'd been invited to receive his diploma at the Kamehameha Schools, where he'd been expelled as a student. He wanted to perform but he couldn't sing because of the lump in his throat.

The machine dissolved the lump and Kui Lee gave his last performance.

The doctor said he treated 30 to 40 patients a day. "I bought it because I knew that patients in Hawai'i had to go to the Mainland for treatment and that was very expensive," he said. People came from Tahiti, Japan, Samoa and Australia for treatment.

In time, hospitals in Honolulu began installing their own cobalt machines. Dr. Lee's mother kept telling him he should do something for Korea, the country of his heritage. So Lee decided to give his cobalt-60 machine to the Korea University Hospital.

Lee also donated his $20,000 dot scanner tracer lab to the Soodo Women's Medical College.

The reason I'm telling you this is that at the time, doctors weren't allowed to advertise such donations so nobody ever heard about it.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-0873.