Minoru Tetsuhara

As a descendant of Jackson Hayes, who had changed the family name to Tetsuhara, Minoru Tetsuhara was a black man of african ancestry and a loyal servant of House Kurita. Theodore Kurita remembered him as one of his teachers at the Sun Zhang MechWarrior Academy and considered him one of his more important sensei.

Minoru Tetsuhara had three sons:

• The eldest son was Minobu Tetsuhara, whose noble but tragic fate caused Jaime Wolf, CO of Wolf's Dragoons, to declare war (and a personal vendetta) on the Draconis Combine and its Coordinator, Takashi Kurita, over Minobu's death in 3028. This had a great impact on the course of the whole Fourth Succession War. Following the events surrounding Minobu's seppuku, Michi Noketsuna (by then impersonating the Bounty Hunter) and Dechan Fraser presented the head of former warlord Grieg Samsonov to Minobu's widow on 10. January 3030, but she refused the gift and told the men to present the head to Minobu's father instead, telling them that the old man would appreciate the gesture.
• His second son was Fuhito Tetsuhara, who was first degraded following the failed Galtor campaign and sent to the Legion of Vega, only to rise through the ranks again as a member of Theodore Kurita's command lance, attaining the rank of Sho-sa (Major) by 3040.
• Yoshi Tetsuhara was dead by December 3027. He had the rank of Tai-i and received the posthumous black-and-red dragon banner (Glory of the Samurai) for great leaders fallen in battle.

Minoru Tetsuhara was presumably a a MechWarrior himself, as he was a teacher at the renowned Sun Zhang Academy and the Tetsuhara family owned a "family 'Mech", Katana Kat (a PNT-9R Panther). It was piloted by Minoru's eldest son Minobu by 3021 but later passed on to the second son, Fuhito.

References

• Heir to the Dragon (Novel)