Bennosuke's family operated a small freight shipping business to Tokyo-Yokohama area. His father was able to read and speak English with the use of Japanese-English dictionaries before he immigrated to the U.S. in 1898. Bennosuke worked for the Santa Fe Railroad and then tried strawberry farming, operating a boarding house, worked as a houseboy/handyman for a bank president in San Diego before he finally settled down on Terminal Island and worked as a commercial fisherman. He married Matsuno Okuda, a picture bride, who immigrated in 1914. She was from the same fishing village in Tahara, in Wakayama-ken as Bennosuke, and both had a sixth grade education in Japan, and they raised four children: Benji, Masako, Minoru and Mary.
His father was the Captain of a commerical fishing vessel when he retired, and his parents returned to their native village in Japan in 1938. Min had been attending San Pedro High School at the time and went to Japan with his parents, and decided that life in America was better than in the military state of Japan and returning to San Pedro High School 10 months later. He had attended classes at the RCA Institute Engraving and Watchmaking School, when Executive Order 9066 forced him and his married brother, Benji and his wife, Fusako Rose Hara to evacuate Terminal Island and they were evacuated with the Boyle Heights area and stayed temporarily at a hotel run by the American Friends Committee. They arrived at the Poston, Arizona internment camp on May 29, 1942 and was assigned to the block 35-9-B.
After recruiting personnel from the Military Intelligence Service visited Poston, Min was one of several who volunteered for the Military Intelligence Service, since he had attended school in Japan for about 9 months and learned to speak Japanese from his parents at home.
Min Hara graduated from the MIS Language School in June 1943, and had missed being at Poston when his nephew, Kunihiro Lawrence Hara (35-9-B) was born in 1943. Min was assigned to join the 6th Infantry Division in British New Guinea, where the 6th Division soldiers alternated moving to the front for combat duty. Min interrogated the Japanese prisoners of war. Later, he transferred to Luzon, Philippines, where he remained until the end of the war.
During the Occupation years, Hara was assigned to the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) headquarters in Tokyo. Most of his work involved translating Japanese documents, including personal diaries of famous war leaders and Japanese Army generals. His parents had remained in Japan during the war. He stayed in Japan to help set up a new democratic government and to help the poverty-stricken Japanese people after the war.
S/Sgt Minoru Robert Hara of the U. S. Army earned many medals for his military service, including the Combat Infantryman's Badge, Bronze Star, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, Asiatic-Pacific Medal, and Bronze Service Stars. He died on December 2, 2000 in Carson, California. He is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. He was preceded in death by his brother, Benji Hara (1994).
Sources: http://www.nikkeiheritage.org/misnorcal/profiles/profile.php?id=1012
Terminal Island Life History Project
