Return of Japanese Flag

[RHY]

The local Fox news station ran this story of the effort to return a captured Japanese flag from WWII by the Marine who fought on a small island in the Pacific.

http://www.khon2.com/news/local/sto...anese-battle-flag/id3CgXLvX0ecb458X6MR4w.cspx

 

[Phantomfixer]

Would be awesome to find a person in Japan with ties to the flag. Needle in a haystack I guess. Neat story

 

[LaMedicine]

These kinds of flags turn up from time to time.
Ever so often, there's a story in newspapers (yes, we still have them around here, though it's giving way some to the net news interface) about a person having a flag and wanting to return it to a relative, or a relative being found and the flag returned.
Such flags usually have the name of the person it's given to, though that does't seem to be the case with this one.
Contacting a Japanese newspaper would be one way to do it, or bring it to the attention of the Japanese Embassy or Consulate for help. I think it's the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor that keeps the records relating to WWII now.
The Sumo Association may be another route to check out, since they are signed by famous sumo wrestlers, so it's possible that the owner of the flag was a young sumo wrestler or someone closely related to the sumo world, who was drafted.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I have one some place, was given to me by my Grand Father, he was "over there" during WWII.

 

[LaMedicine]

You know, these flags might turn out to be the only keepsake the family will ever have of the deceased. A lot of the families never knew where their sons/brothers/fathers were sent to, and lost their lives.
One of my great aunts spent a fortune trying to find out what happened to her son, but nothing was ever recovered, and though there's a tombstone for his grave, the grave itself is empty.

 

[RHY]

I have one some place, was given to me by my Grand Father, he was "over there" during WWII.

If you do not intend to keep it, you can contact the Fox news channel and try to contact the same retired marines who are trying to return the flag. An alternative is to donate it to a WWII museum with detailed information on how your grandfather acquired the flag and the battles he participated in. If your grandfather told you information about his war years, you may want to put it to paper for your own family's historical record.