<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Besides, any other activities? I think I read someplace, Boy Scouts, you were involved in the Boy Scouts?

EW: Uh-huh. I was in the Cub Scouts like my brother was, and then I made, a lot of the same friends that I had in grade school also were in Cub Scouts, and so we graduated over to Boy Scouts together, and then that's when we started doing the "big boy" stuff, you know, like camping and hiking and community service work, and earning merit badges and tying knots and things like that. So it was a great time. And a lot of our time was, if we weren't playing sports or in school, we were in Boy Scouts and doing all kinds of activities.

TI: And how high up in the Boy Scouts level did you go?

EW: I eventually reached the Eagle Scout, Eagle rank.

TI: Now, is that, is that fairly common for people to reach that rank?

EW: No, it's not. Many, many boys have other obligations or other things that take up their time, so they don't end up finishing. It takes some commitment, and it takes, usually, when I first came to that troop, most of the older boys didn't attain the Eagle rank until they were almost juniors or seniors in high school, even after they graduated. But the guys in my class, we really worked hard for it, and we -- or the guys in my class, the guys that were my age around the same time, we finished it when we were, I think, sophomores or juniors in high school.

TI: And so how many of you were there that, you mentioned your class or your same age, was there a group of, what, two, three?

EW: Maybe five or six that went in, we were all in grade school together, and we went into that same troop. And we were in this area called Kaimuki, and it was, it was pretty neat because most troops, they meet in either churches or community centers and things like that, but we, we were able to meet in this place called the "bowl." And what it was, it was this cement kind of circular structure, and it used to be a water reservoir. Well, anyways, they drained the water out of there, and they made this little opening and a gate in there, and we could go in there and they had a little half shelter...

[Interruption]

TI: Okay, so we were just talking about -- you were explaining the "bowl" to me, which was this old reservoir that was drained, and there was this little shelter or structure there.

EW: Uh-huh.

TI: So it sounds like that's where you guys met?

EW: Right, that's where me met every night -- or I'm sorry, it was every Friday night, where we had our troop meetings. And so it was a pretty big area, and they had a half shelter with some bleachers in there, and some desks and things like that. And right next to it was a, was a house, and in the basement were all the supplies, and the top was, was more of a, a gathering, it was a lot nicer, some offices and things like that. So it was, for a Boy Scout troop, we were pretty well-supplied, and had some pretty nice facilities to use.

TI: So it sounds like, just the way you talk about this, it was a, sort of a fond memory, these guys going through this. Five of you eventually getting Eagle Scout, or working towards that?

EW: I think there were about maybe four of us who eventually attained Eagle, so that was pretty good. And then the friend that didn't, I don't worry about him because he's a pilot in the Air Force right now. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so, yeah, he's...

EW: So he did all right. But, yeah, it was, it was a good time, and I wouldn't trade those experiences for the world. A few of us even went to the National Jamboree at one point, over... where was it? In Virginia, Chapel Hill, Virginia, they have an annual jamboree every year. And then after that, a few more of us went to, on this hike in New Mexico. It was a fifty-mile hike, we went backpacking and camping along the whole way, we had to pack all our own food, and we didn't have a shower for a whole week. It was a good time.

TI: During those times, you were really close and on these camping trips, did the five of you ever talk about what you guys wanted to be when you grew up?

EW: No, I don't think so. Not in terms of in-depth conversations of what we wanted to be. So, no, I can't say we did.

TI: Okay, I was just curious.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.