Thomas Noguchi

is a Japanese-American medical examiner and coroner. He was the chief medical examiner-coroner for Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. He is known as the "coroner to the stars".

Noguchi was born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan and raised in Yokosuka. Hegraduated from Tokyo's Nippon Medical School in 1951 before interning at The University of Tokyo School of Medicine Hospital. Then, he emigrated to the United States in Los Angeles. He studied at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and Barlow Sanatorium in Los Angeles.

Noguchi helped find the cause of death in many celebrity cases in Hollywood during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He performed autopsies on many celebrities, including John Belushi, Albert Dekker, William Holden, David Janssen, Janis Joplin, Robert F. Kennedy, Harris Glen Milstead, Marilyn Monroe, Gia Scala, Inger Stevens, Sharon Tate, and Natalie Wood.

Noguchi was demoted in 1982 because of the media attention he was getting for his handling of Natalie Wood's autopsy.

Afterwards, he became a professor at the University of Southern California and at the University of California at Los Angeles.

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Category:1927 births
Category:Living people
Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States
Category:Japanese physicians
Category:American physicians
Category:Japanese writers
Category:Writers from Los Angeles
Category:Japanese academics
Category:Academics from California
Category:People from Fukui Prefecture