<Begin Segment 24>

MN: You returned in '45, you started Redlands High School. You kind of shared about some of the incidents when you first returned, about Red. Tell me about Robert, is it Lage?

RW: Yes.

MN: Tell me how he made you feel when you returned.

RW: Well, Bob was probably one of the first Caucasian guys that really made me feel welcome. They had what they call a Hi Y group at high school -- you know how they have different groups. The Hi Y was affiliated with the YMCA, and he was very active there and he was in the Hi Y, and he got me to join them and we used to spend all our free time at the YMCA playing sports, playing basketball. When they used to have a dinner at the YMCA, big dinner for something like Thanksgiving or something, we went and worked in the kitchen or the mess hall, we cleaned up after the party and stuff like that. So we were always doing something together. We would play basketball at the YMCA. That's really where I became a little better player enough to get on the varsity, because maybe I wasn't that good as a sophomore and maybe I deserved to be cut, but I just took it that I was cut because I was Japanese. But Bob Lage made me feel very comfortable, and he and I are still close today. I visit, talk to him every few weeks on the phone. Retired as a Navy Captain and was a graduate of the University of Redlands.

MN: Now what year did you graduate from Redlands High School?

RW: 1948.

MN: At your fiftieth year reunion you were asked to be a speaker at your high school reunion. Can you share some of what you had said at the speech?

RW: Well, I told them that this gives me an opportunity to thank them for treating me as one of their peers, treating me equally. I mentioned to them that just after Pearl Harbor, I told them about the man in Mentone threatening me and I told 'em that that the fact that as a kid we couldn't go swimming in the city Plunge except on one day a week when it was for the minorities. And the next day they were gonna drain the pool, I told 'em a lot of those prejudices that happened, and then I just, I pretty much capped my talk telling them that I really appreciated after all these years to get a chance to thank them for treating me so freely, openly. I did tell 'em a little about Poston so that they would know what it was all about -- then I told 'em when I first came back and started school in September, I said I thought I was gonna have to fight with everybody and nobody was gonna talk to me and I was very insecure, but I said when I came on campus, I said I didn't have any problem making friends and not just the ones that were already my friends, but I made new friends, went out for the track team and made a lot of friends from that, and my varsity basketball junior, senior year, made a lot of friends from that. And it turned out to be the best years of my life when I went to Redlands High School.

And the funny thing is I take a mechanical drawing class and Mr. Hardy, he's an older man by then, but when I was taking the class he says, "Come here, Bob. I want to show you something." Takes me over to his displays along the wall within glass cases, and there's a drawing in there had Bessie Wada on it, and he says, "This is your sister." Through my different elementary school and high school I'd run into different teachers that would say, "Oh, are you another Wada?" Are you So-and-So's brother? And as the older teachers got older, the more they knew the kids, which was probably one of the fun things about growing up in a small town like that.

MN: Now you kind of briefly mentioned earlier about your brother Hank, or Henry, how he tried to enlist in the Marines and he couldn't enlist the first time around.

RW: Yeah, 1946 he went down to try to join the Marines and they turned him down solely because he was Japanese. And then in '47 he went back and then this time they let him in, and then in '49 he got discharged after two years. And then in the meantime, in '48, I had joined the Marine Reserves in high school 'cause they came kind of like recruiting and I though yeah, I'll just join -- and so then when the Korean War started, then Hank reenlisted in '50, even though he was discharged in '49. And I was discharged in '50, May, and the war started in June, so then I decided to join too.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.