It was a prank that brought a Navy reprimand for George Foster in 1947. Foster was the head dental surgeon at a prisoner of war camp in Japan, where Japanese Gen. Hideki Tojo was among his patients.

E.J. “Jack” Mallory, a local doctor of dentistry who practiced in Paradise and Chico from 1948 until the mid-1980s, was just a squared-away, 22-year-old Navy dentist in 1946 when he received the ...