TOKYO, Aug. 13 (UPI) — Six World War II veterans flew from the United States to Japan this week to return 70 Japanese flags captured during the war.
Coinciding with ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the veterans brought back “yosegaki hinomaru,” or “good-luck flags” carried by Japanese troops in combat, typically send-off gifts from relatives or friends. The flags were regarded as informal war trophies or souvenirs when U.S. soldiers found them.
“This flag was taken off of a dead soldier, just happened to be a souvenir to be picked up,” said Dallas Britt, 89, of Auburn, Wash., a U.S. soldier during World War II. “It has a red rising sun in the middle of it. Then it has all this Japanese writing all around it.”
“It is like if you found a dead G.I. and taking his dog tags (identification tags) off of him and being able to send it back to his parents. That’s the only connection they would have because you wouldn’t know where he was buried or nothing else. What a wonderful thing to be able to return it to these people and get it back to their relatives.”
Britt was among those who returned to Japan for a mission of recalculation.
The trip was a project of “Oban-2015,” an independent U.S. group unaffiliated with the military but eager to return the flags, hand-delivered by former combatants, to Japan.
“We thought, ‘When in history has there ever been a time when soldiers who were fighting against an enemy return 70 years later with items that were taken from the battlefield as souvenirs showing I captured and dominated this enemy?’ And now they are being returned with the sentiment of, ‘Here, we hope this brings closure,’” said Rex Ziak, one of the organizers.
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