Recalling John Ikeda, a true patriot

Don Cantrell

With Memorial Day on the calendar May 30, it prompts a fond

remembrance of the late John Ikeda, a 1941 quarterback at Harbor High,

who was interned during World War II with 120,000 other

Japanese-Americans. He always showed warm compassion for his mates and

the ones who went off to war.

Ikeda, who later came to serve in the Army infantry, always honored

“his country,” the United States, and flew the flag at proper times,

according to his family.

He long remembered his old friends who died in World War II. He would

buy colorful flowers for all and personally deliver them to their grave

sites. He also did that for his family. He never forgot friends and

family, his widow Margaret once said.

It confirms what many of the oldtimers felt about Ikeda as a rare

human being.

Two of his ’41 team favorites were legendary fullback Harold Sheflin

and the rock-ribbed tackle, Manuel Muniz.

Although he was a small fellow up from the Bee team to boost a 13-man

varsity, he geared up for the big guys his first day at practice, only to

find two of them, Sheflin and Muniz, grabbing him on the way out to

Davidson Field and carrying him the rest of the way. Ikeda once laughed

to recall, “They did that all the time, not just once.”

Years later, Sheflin pointed a thumb at Ikeda and told this corner,

“He used to be small.”

Ikeda was amused and said, “I’ll have to wear elevator shoes next

time.”

Ikeda only weighed 124 pounds when he played varsity. It is

interesting to recall that Ikeda was a lineman on the Bee team and his

Bee mate, Ed Stephens, who moved to varsity with him as a guard once

played left fullback on the Bee team.

Two other middleweights were called to the varsity by the coach,

Wendell Pickens, who then had 17 players to play out an entire season. He

could never afford heavy scrimmages due to injury concerns.

Stephens, a running guard next to Muniz, once recalled his

newspapering days prior to World War II. He sold the Herald on the

streets of Balboa with Billy Dickey, who became a three-year baseball

letterman at Harbor High.

He said, “They were three cents each and the front page was green.

Billy showed me how to fold the paper with your right hand as you took it

from beneath your left arm so you could hand the customer the paper and

cup your hand for the three cents all at once.”

He added, “If you had to make change, you were OK as long as you could

do it from your right-hand pocket. When they gave you a dollar it meant

putting down your papers. A dollar for a three-cent paper was a big deal,

lots of change, mostly in pennies.”

He said, “I remember the excitement when the trucks came down from

L.A. with extras earlier or later than the usual delivery time. We would

roam around the streets of Balboa shouting, “Extra and Extry and-I had

seen this in a movie-Wuxtry, Wuxtry and people would come running over to

buy all our papers and it was all very exciting. You would think I would

remember what some of the extras were but I don’t. I was too young to

understand what all the shouting was about, but it seemed important at

the time.”

One highlight in travel time came to Stephens once on a long flight.

One pilot passed by his seat and suddenly said, “Well, Eddie.”

Stephens said, “It was Billy Dickey.”

Dickey was an outstanding Navy fighter pilot in World War II and was

honored numerous times. His younger brother, Don, a ’48 basketball guard

at Harbor High, recalled the many efforts.

Sadly, Billy contends today from Alzheimer’s Disease, but is well

cared for in Dana Point.

One of the unfortunate happenings in 1934 was when the sophomores at

Harbor High lost the annual War Whoop to the freshmen, headed by future

grid stars Rollo McClellan, Glenn Thompson, George Lumel and Ralph Irwin.

The sophs chose to avenge the upset.

McClellan said he and a bunch of frosh were gathered up and tossed

into the back of a pickup truck and driven to Huntington Beach. He said

the student body president, Judd Sutherland came along to make certain

the sophs kept the rough stuff under control.

The sophs finally stopped and forced the frosh to take some Ex-Lax,

then forced them out to walk home.

McClellan laughed, then said, “We survived, but Judd didn’t. The vice

principal took him out of his student office.”