Athletic greatness comes in all shapes and all sizes.

It doesn't come naturally, but is achieved from hard work diligence and adversity along the journey.

There's opportunity and there's always struggle.

There is triumph and there is defeat.

And there is always a story behind the glory.

There is so much more to know about Baton Rouge as Walter Imara, whose athletic journey includes NCAA titles, gold medals and numerous weightlifting championships.

He love the sport of weightlifting.

It's you against gravity, it's you against a bar.

But we all just assume that we just a regular guy.

I think his accomplishments or magnified, you know, 100, or 1000 fold because of of his early experiences and what he went through.

His story is also about a time in America when Japanese-Americans, including a young Walter, were forced to live in internment camps after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, which marked the beginning of World War II.

I've heard him say that his mother was the strength that kept him going.

She kept telling him, It's you against the world and you always trying to do something you've never done before, and that it gives you that self-fulfillment and determination to succeed.

Walter, welcome and congratulations to your induction in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

I am positive that you are unique to all these members of the Hall of Fame, and there are several hundred of them now, but nobody has started a Hall of Fame career the way you did being imprisoned, you and your family as a Japanese-American at the start of World War II on the West Coast.

It's been quite a ride, hasn't it?

The journey was long, but it was a good journey.

We had a we had a destination and we made it.

We had our own personal goal.

Okay.

It's really a nice, nice ride for the whole family.

And do you have any recollections of that time as a four year old, you and your many brothers and sisters and your mom and dad, do you have any recollection of that time as as you were forced into camps for the the end of World War II when Pearl Harbor hit in December 1st of 41.

We as children knew something was going on, but we didn't understand it.

Plus, most of us didn't know what Pearl Harbor was anyway.

But we knew that the Japanese made the attack and my parents inside, they knew something was going to happen, you know, because already there was some prejudice on the West Coast already of a few Japanese who were farmers because they became good farmers.

When we left camp, which was in Arkansas, my parents did not go back to California because they lost everything their 60 acre farm, the two story home.

So they chose to go to New Orleans.

And that was the beginning of the.

It was a lot of prejudice at that time in the in the New Orleans area.

But somehow or another, we got through it.

And my parents really pushed education.

That was the most important thing is.

And every evening when we had dinner you get sick of it is all about, study, make good grades.

I graduated from Istrouma in 1955 and that's a Billy Cannon days.

And they had weight on on the gym.

Okay, but no one knew what they were doing.

So we just play around bench, press squat, but really no weight lifting.

And that was it.

I graduated, I went to Southwestern and they had a coach named Mike Stansbury.

He came up to me, he says, You going to do the weightlifting?

But I said, No!

Weightlifting?, as a sport, No, I don't know what that is.

Well, that press snatch and clean and jerk, you have to learn how to do it.

But you look like you would be a perfect candidate for that.

As a student, Walter was given the nickname of Asian Cajun, a title he always held with high honor.

He was the very first Asian American to set foot on the campus, which was an SLI.

Now UL-Lafayette Imahara joined the weightlifting team and helped the school win its first ever NCAA team title in 1957.

Oh, When I was going to college at SLI, the president knew I was the only Asian Japanese-American on campus and I was bringing fame to the of the first national champion they ever had at the school.

Many of his teammates compared him to another world class athlete of the time.

But it was Walter's work ethic that always set him apart from the rest.

And the most famous lifter in the world was Tommy Kono from Hawaii.

He was Olympic champion in four different weight categories.

No human beings have ever done that.

And we gave the nickname to Walter.

We called him Little Kono.

He said, You ever heard of Tommy Kono?

I said, No.

Well, he's a Japanese-American.

I was in concentration camp in Tuder Lake California release in 1945.

His Olympic weightlifting champion, he said in he has the same physical shape.

The length of the leg, in the bottom position.

You body's upright, you catch the weight, you're not long legged.

So you won█t bend over and once you get up, you try it.

And then that was the beginning.

But the first impression was when you actually saw him lift and you really knew that he was something special and because of his lifts and because the way carried himself, his professionalism, how he trained.

So that kind of told us the younger guys there was a little professional side to the sport.

So when the graduation time came, I went to get my diploma and for some reason everybody was watching.

And there he held the diploma and he looked down at me.

I looked up at him.

He said, You're the first Asian Cajun ever graduated from this college and now 60 years plus i█m an Asian Cajun and proud to do that.

You know, after college, he served our country in the military and continued his lifting success.

Our parents, when we graduate from college, they ask, Which service are you going to go into?

Okay, they were drafting at the time, that was 1960, but was was ironic is, I didn't talk about too much about my what I did in college or my weightlifting.

So I had a lot of strength.

So I broke all the OCS records.

That's been it for many years, slowly, including a Pan Am gold medal, 26 consecutive national gold medals as Masters champion, you want to ask about how many championships I lifted in my lifetime is 191.

Okay.

Over a total of 38 years, I won 151.

So it's 40 that I didn't win and I don't second place on down.

I don't.

You're still sad about that, aren't you?

Yeah.

When Walt first came on the national weightlifting scene in the 1960s, the early 1960s, he was in the US Army.

And so he would show up at these meets in his army Army officers uniform and the the top leadership of the weightlifting community at that time took notice of him and said he was a model.

He was a man who was serving the army and was a weightlifting champion Japanese-American and of course, people knew the story of what had happened to the Japanese-Americans or World War II.

And so he is held up as a model.

And later on, I met him more personally when I moved to Louisiana in 1991, and I started training with him at the same gym.

And he was very friendly and very welcoming.

And immediately he had project ideas for me.

He knew of my background in mathematics and physics, and he asked me to take a look at the mathematical formula that was being used to compare weightlifters of different ages.

He could see that all these things were coming together in him.

He was a leader and a communicator and an idea person.

Dr. Meltzer and Imahara combined for four books on weightlifting, his autobiography, and the story of others who were detained during the war.

Outside of competition, Walter also found success and joy in creating beautiful landscapes and gardens.

Imahara█s Garden Center, a Baton Rouge based landscaping company, was the family business, started by Walter's father, which he would continue through the 1970s and 1980s.

Some of Baton Rouge█s most iconic landscapes, came from the mind of Walter Imahara, including the Imahara legacy, Botanical Gardens at Hemingbough Plantation near Saint Francisville.

What's different about Walt is that he not only has these dreams and ideas, he knows how to bring them to reality.

He knows how to do the kind of detailed planning he knows how to build the teams necessary.

And so he has all these ideas about all sorts of things, improving the sport of weightlifting, publishing books, the creating botanical gardens, many would say.

Walter Emma Harris Journey is the true story of the American dream from life in an internment camp to athletic greatness and decades of success in business.

Yet it's his humbleness through it all that makes him such a heroic character, always inspiring those around him to strive for perfection in every phase of life.

You know, he just came out and fought through all of that because he wanted to show everyone that he was a good American.

He does the work and he█s persistent, He█s somebody that actually makes dreams come true.

Well, it's nice to meet you.

And it's nice to know that what was a very angry beginning for you and your family has turned into a championship ending.

And it's been remarkable.

Your career has been terrific to meet you.

Congratulations on all you've accomplished.

Such a pleasure.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

It's been a long journey, but a good journey and more.

The places I've been to all around the world and all the people that I met and everybody has always have a smile wherever I go.

That's what counts, the smile.