Nakahara, Minezo

Minezo Nakahara came to Hawaii island at the age of fourteen and toiled as a contract laborer on the Hakalau Sugar Plantation. Freed from his contract, he worked first as a peddler and then at various businesses. By the 1940s, Nakahara had come to own four family-run general stores along the Hamakua Coast: the flagship M. Nakahara Store in Pa'auilo and others in Hawi, Union Mill, and O'okala.

The outbreak of war tore apart the family, with eldest son Shoichi sent into internment in Hawaii and second son Jiro conscripted into the imperial navy in Japan. In the spring of 1943, third son Thomas Takashi volunteered for the U.S. Army, serving throughout the war with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team's medical unit. Some six months after Thomas Takashi's induction, Minezo himself was arrested and confined at the U.S. military prison in Hilo.

At the end of the war, the Nakaharas returned to running the family businesses. The Pa'auilo store would operate for 93 years, becoming the longest-running community business before it shut down in 2001.