FReeper Canteen ~ Hall of Heroes: Barney F. Hajiro ~ 19 July 2021
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Barney F. Hajiro (September 16, 1916 - January 21, 2011) was a United States Army soldier and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions in World War II.
Hajiro was born in Hawaii, the eldest of nine children born to Japanese immigrant parents who had moved from Hiroshima to Maui during World War I. Two of his siblings died in infancy. The family was poor, and Hajiro left school to work, first in the sugarcane fields of Maui and later as a stevedore in Honolulu. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and performed menial labor as part of an engineering battalion.