STOCKTON — Perhaps more moving for what you don’t see than what you do, a grainy black-and-white photo taken just before he was shipped overseas shows Pvt. Ben Mitsuo Hatanaka in full Army uniform in front of the Manzanar War Relocation Center.
There was no one on hand to see off young Hatanaka, who would later win a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his valor serving with the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry during World War II. His family was behind the barbed wire, interned along with tens of thousands more Japanese Americans by the very nation for which he was risking his life to protect.
The photo hangs in Sacramento’s California History Museum, starkly capturing the “juxtaposition of his family being interned and my dad in full uniform going off to fight for his country,” said his daughter, Jill Hatanaka.
“I tell his story to honor every single person who was interned,” said Hatanaka, social studies coordinator and grant manager at the San Joaquin County Office of Education. “To honor not just our family story, but all 120,000 individuals who were interned.”
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