A Soldiers Battle

Lt. Ehren Watada: ‘Experience Makes You Stronger’

‘These Roots’
Born and raised in the farming community of Fort Lupton, Colorado, Ehren Watada’s father, Bob, remembers growing up amidst racism as one of the few Japanese in Colorado.
“Imagine going into a restaurant and sitting in the corner and not being served,” Bob Watada said. “You could sit there for two hours, and they wouldn’t serve you, even if they served everybody else. After a while, we would just walk out.”
But he would not continue to walk out quietly for long. “I was always an activist,” Bob Watada explained. From protesting the war in Vietnam and joining the Peace Corps in the 1960s, he instilled these values, “these roots” as he calls them, upon his son.
“My father has always been very community-minded, sometimes putting community things before family things,” says the younger Watada.
Ehren Watada’s mother, Carolyn Ho, a Chinese American born in Honolulu, is a descendant of a Chinese migrant who came to Hawai’i in the late 19th century to work on sugar plantations. Ehren was born in Honolulu in 1978, and Ho describes her son as always determined and a bit precocious. “Every time kids would fool around during soccer practice, I would see Ehren with a serious look on his face, calm and composed,” Ho laughingly recalled.
Growing up, Watada was a Boy Scout, which he views as a precursor to the military. “The rank, the discipline, the patriotism, the ribbons, the merit badges – it’s very similar.” Watada attained Eagle rank by the ninth grade — an extraordinary feat for a 13-year-old since the average Eagle Scout attains his rank at age 16.
Being a Boy Scout was a primary motivation for joining the military. “The sense of adventurism you get from scouting is the same that you perceive in the military,” he says, “Also, there’s that really deep sense of service and giving something back.”