With an Idaho potato harvest kick-off during the week of Aug. 8, Idaho Falls, ID-based Wada Farms is seeing what Director of Marketing Eric Beck termed an “unprecedented” market this 2022-23 season.
Beck, who said in mid-September the grower-shipper operation was in “full force harvesting in all growing areas,” commented on current market conditions and demand.
Frank Wada, World War II nisei veteran, dies at 99 latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SPRING VALLEY
For most of his 99 years, World War II veteran Frank Wada Sr. didn’t talk about his service in the U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
But late in life, he could be talked into the rare media interview or photograph, so that his regiment’s history wouldn’t die after he and his fellow soldiers were gone. Wada passed away peacefully at his Spring Valley home on June 14. Family members say they believe Wada was the regiment’s last local survivor.
Wada served in E Company of the 442nd, an all-volunteer regiment made up entirely of
VAntage Point
Frank Wada: Which Side?
People doubted Frank Wada’s loyalties because he was Japanese-American. However, Wada readily volunteered to fight for his country when given the chance.
Born in Redlands, California, in 1921, Frank Wada faced racial discrimination throughout his childhood. He was only allowed to swim in the public pool on Mondays, which was the day that non-white children were granted entry. At the movie theater, he was expected to sit in the upper balcony. And, he was only one of the few Japanese American families in town, so he had difficulty finding a community he could closely identify with. No amount of education seemed to liberate Wada from discrimination. In his senior year of high school in 1938, a fellow student asked him, “Which side are you going to fight for?” Wada’s mother got wind of his harassment and told him that if he were to ever fight, it would be for America.