Johnny Ikeda, Newport Harbor

Don Cantrell

One of the most inspirational players ever to play Newport Harbor

High football in the early days was a youngster who weighed 124-pounds,

soaking wet.

He arrived at a critical hour when the late Coach Wendell Pickens

could only count up 13 players on the 1941 varsity. Out of desperation,

Pickens went to the Bee grid team and called on four of them to turn

varsity. The list inluded George Matoba, Ed Stephens, “Chili” Chaplin and

a 124-pound scatback named Johnny Ikeda.

The addition of the four Bees made the 17-man varsity made the team

one of Harbor’s smallest-ever grid teams, if not the smallest, but it

advanced to achieve a superb season. The won-loss-tie record was 4-2-2,

with the defense shutting out five rivals.

Pickens had nothing but praise for the lightweight Bee teamers, who

became a solid force on the ’41 outfit.

The club also featured big and powerful juniors like future All-CIF

fullback Harold Sheflin and future All-CIF second-team tackle Manuel

Muniz, who would lead the ’42 Tars to the championship and into the small

schools CIF Playoffs against Bonita High.

Two of the first backfield handoff men were Ikeda and the late star

quarterback Vernon Fitzpatrick, who lost his life in World War II as a

parachutist over the Philippines in December of 1944. He and Ikeda were

long-time friends.

A sharp observer among the early gridders, blocking back Joe Muniz,

1943-44 team, said, “Fitzpatrick and Ikeda were about nip-and-tuck for

guts with each other.”

Shock struck the Harbor High students in the spring of ’42 when its

Japanese-American students, like Ikeda and Matoba, and their families,

were ordered off to internment camps in the western United States by

President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

None of the Japanese-Americans were guilty of any illegal acts against

their country, the United States, but the panic of the times prevailed.

In time, Ikeda would find a release so he could join the U.S. Army and

serve his country.

A saddened Coach Pickens made every effort to meet up with Ikeda

before he and his family were taken away and gave him all the wisdom and

direction he could. Ikeda said Pickens’ compassion went deep and held a

solid place for a lifetime.

Prior to varsity football, Ikeda had also been an exceptional athlete

in other middleweight sports, such as basketball and track and field.

The late Ikeda made a last return to visit Harbor High during the 1989

25th grid reunion and was able to meet with old gridmates like Harold

Sheflin and Ed Stephens one last time. After the big war, Ikeda moved to

San Diego and became a noted landscaper.

Humor was still there with Sheflin when he saw Ikeda in ’89. He told a

friend, leaning toward Ikeda, “He used to be small.”

Ikeda said the impression was that he should have stayed small, but he

would make it up next time by wearing elevator shoes.

Johnny Ikeda, forever an icon in Newport Harbor High lore, and a

member of the Daily Pilot’s Sports Hall of Fame, celebrating the oncoming

millennium.