02/20/2026
Unlike most American kids, 12-year-old Robert Wada participated in Boy Scouts behind a barbed wire fence at the Poston concentration camps in Arizona during World War II.
Wada and his family were among the more than 120,000 Japanese American people, most of them United States citizens, uprooted from West Coast regions during World War II after President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.
Under the constant gaze of armed guards, inmates started schools, newspapers, sports teams, theater groups, and other civic organizations.
When Wada and other boys at Poston decided to establish a Boy Scout troop, they designated themselves as “Troop 100” to honor the 100th Infantry Battalion, a U.S. combat unit comprised of mostly second-generation Japanese Americans. In this Boy Scout uniform in our National Museum of American History, Wada went camping, earned merit badges, and participated in parades honoring American soldiers departing for World War II.
As an adult, Wada enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and served as a tank crewman during the Korean War. He proudly participated in veterans' organizations until his death in 2023.
