During the early days of World War I, a young Japanese man who had left his country behind seeking a new life enlisted in the British Army to fight the Germans.
In the four ensuing years of war, Harry Fusao O'Hara would be wounded almost 70 times, receive multiple medals for bravery, and become the first and only known Japanese national to have ever flown in the Royal Air Force.
According to his youngest and only surviving daughter, Geraldine Reedijk, 87, O'Hara was born in Yokohama in 1891. He attended Waseda University as a young man, where he developed "leftist ideas," dropped out and ran off to India to work as a reporter for Japanese newspapers.