<Begin Segment 7>

MN: Now, let's see, I'm gonna skip into your high school, your Reedley High School days. You were selected to join the Boys Club. What is the Boys Club?

LW: Well, the advisor, there was an advisor chosen to work with the high school advisor, along with the class there was also -- well, we had both the Girls Club and a Boys Club, and I was asked to join the Boys Club. It was supposed, I suppose it was because they chose certain, who they determined to be leaders of, in the class, so I was, I became a member of the Boys Club. And that, that was an unexpected honor that I received, and it made me feel, feel good to be asked to be join the Boys Club.

MN: You were also selected to a student body position, but you couldn't fill that.

LW: [Laughs] Yeah, I couldn't, the only subject I flunked in high school was typing, and when my, in a student body meeting when my, one of my friends nominated to be an officer, the dean got up and reported, "Lloyd Wake is ineligible to serve as an officer because he flunked typing." So that was, that was nice to be nominated, but I wasn't too disappointed that I didn't become a student body officer.

MN: But early on you were, sounds, seems to be you're very popular with your peers and you showed a lot of leadership.

LW: Oh, I don't know if I showed much leadership, but it was always nice to be with, with friends, and I got along well with them. I think part of that was because I played on the high school basketball team and the baseball team. In high school, the high school at that time had three classes of basketball, or was it two? I think it had two classes of basketball players. I played with the smaller kids, younger, shorter kids, and then we had a varsity. I never did, could play with the varsity. I was too small. But we had a, a league among the high schools there, basketball league for Class B players, so I was able to make friends, classmates, my class, basketball mates. I always had good friends with basketball mates. But in baseball we had only one team. It was the varsity, and I was able to play with the varsity team, so through that kind of relationship, not specifically academically, but through sports I had good relationships and probably became more visible in the student body through that, through that kind of extracurricular activities.

MN: Now, were you involved with the Boy Scouts before the war?

LW: Yeah, I was. I was, my parents encouraged me to join the Boy Scout troop, but I didn't get too far with the Boy Scouts. I enjoyed summer camp. I think I went to one summer camp, and the other activities with the Boy Scouts, enjoyed, but I didn't go very far. I gradually dropped out of Boy Scouts. But if you're asking about Boy Scout activity before the war, after high school, graduated high school, the chairperson of the JACL asked if I would be a scoutmaster of a Scout troop that the JACL wanted to begin, to organize with the Japanese American kids, so I decided to be a scoutmaster. So those were my two involvements with, with the Boy Scouts.

MN: So the JACL group, were they from the Fresno area?

LW: No, it was a Reedley JACL. We had, I guess that was one community that had enough older folks that were interested in performing activities for the youth.

MN: So at, at that point before the war JACL was basically more of a youth oriented, sports oriented group in Reedley?

LW: Well, we had a JACL made up of the older Nisei, but they also wanted to do a project of service, and I think taking up the Boy Scout program, organizing the Boy Scout program, was their way of providing community service for the younger people. But the JACL was made up of the older, older Nisei.

MN: So your involvement with them was basically as the scoutmaster, before the war?

LW: That's right, just before the war.

MN: Now, after you graduated from Reedley High in 1939, did you or your friends get any draft notices?

LW: No, I don't remember getting a draft notice.

MN: You did not go immediately into college after high school. Why not?

LW: Well, I had made up my mind, I had said to my mom and dad that I would, when they became concerned about who would take over the farm because my dad and mom were preparing for, for their aging, the aging process, they were concerned about who would take over the farm. And I knew that my brother Bill wanted, wasn't particularly interested in the farm. He wanted to go on to college, so I told, when I heard them talking about their concerns about the farm, I told them, well, when I graduated high school I would, I'm willing to take over the farm and start farming, so immediately after high school I began working with my dad to take care of the farm.

MN: Now your father seems to have done very well, and this is during the Great Depression era, the 1930s.

LW: Yeah.

MN: Did your family ever feel the impact of the Great Depression?

LW: Yes, we did. That was in the early '30s. Of course, by that time I was ten or twelve, so my mom and dad would always, the conversation at that time was, "I hope we can make it," or, "I wonder if we can," and so they were really pinching pennies and feeling the impact of the Depression.

MN: But somehow your father was able to purchase three pieces of property for the family.

LW: One at a time. Just, I think while I was in high school, my dad saw a, was able to purchase a twenty acre piece about a mile and a half from our original farm, our birth, birthplace, and by that time he was able to be successful enough to expand and purchase a twenty acre piece close by, so we, that was, that was two pieces of property that he was farming. But I do remember that there were a couple of other farmers, my neighbor, Nakamura family, also was able to expand, and the Kitahara family, both of them, I remember, purchased extra, another piece in addition to their home piece, purchased another piece of property three or four miles from their home. So that seemed to be the pattern, the desire to support their families, support their children in the, to really make, try to make a go of it to support their children, of making a go of it in, in the, in America. So my dad was very forthright in that desire. I think that's one reason why he was able to save up enough to expand the, the farm.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.