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The keepsake was returned to the family of a Japanese soldier who died in World War II
Toshihiro Mutsuda was making preparations for his mother’s funeral in late March when he made a miraculous discovery. His mother, Masae, had lived a long and full life. But most of those 102 years had been spent without Shigeyoshi, her husband and Mutsuda’s father, after Shigeyoshi died in the Second World War.
Shigeyoshi died in 1944 somewhere on the island of Saipan in the western Pacific Ocean, Japanese authorities told his family. His body was never recovered. Mutsuda, now 82, and his two siblings grew up with few memories of their father.
Then an acquaintance sent Mutsuda a photo. It showed a Japanese flag hanging in an American museum, covered in Japanese names written in black ink.
Mutsuda recognized those names. They were his relatives and family friends. Near the center, in a larger script, was Shigeyoshi’s name.
It felt like fate. Just as he was arranging to say goodbye to his mother, Mutsuda had discovered his father’s most treasured belonging: a Yosegaki Hinomaru flag, a keepsake Japanese soldiers carried for good luck in World War II, adorned with the names of their friends and family. He postponed the funeral, determined to reunite his family with the flag.
It was returned to Mutsuda and his siblings in a ceremony in Tokyo on Saturday, concluding an unlikely effort by a nonprofit and American and Japanese researchers to reconnect the family with a piece of their father.
“We are all so happy together finally,” Mutsuda told The Washington Post in a statement translated from Japanese.
News of Shigeyoshi’s flag only reached Mutsuda because of an offhand exchange between two historical researchers. Frank Thompson, an assistant director at the Naval History and Heritage Command, photographed the flag on a visit to the USS Lexington Museum in Corpus Christi, Tex., in February.
The USS Lexington, a World War II aircraft carrier, battled Japanese ships in the Pacific before being converted into a naval aviation museum in 1992. Its curators didn’t realize that it was now carrying a Japanese family’s treasure. Shigeyoshi’s flag had been donated to the Lexington in 1994, said Steve Banta, the museum’s executive director. There was no record of its donor.
The flag was described by the Lexington as the relic of a kamikaze pilot. Thompson sent the photo to a friend in Japan. The photo circulated between curious researchers there, who narrowed down its origin using a red seal on the flag unique to a shrine in the Gifu region. Eventually, they found the Mutsudas, who told them the museum’s label was incorrect. Shigeyoshi was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1943 and died a year later in Saipan at the age of 23, according to Thompson.
“I recognized immediately that picture of the flag was my father’s flag,” Mutsuda said. There, hung belowdecks in an American warship, was the closest remaining link to his father. But how could he get it back?
Mutsuda found someone else who understood what was at stake. Keiko Ziak saw her mother reduced to tears when her grandfather’s Yosegaki Hinomaru flag was returned to her family in 2007.
“My mother said, ‘[The] strong spirit of the grandfather really wanted to come home. So finally he came back to see us,’” Ziak recalled.
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Ziak’s flag was returned to her family by a collector from Toronto. Like Mutsuda’s, it had probably been recovered as a souvenir by Allied forces and brought back across the Pacific. Ziak and her husband, Rex, said there are many more.
“This item became the most popular souvenir of the whole Pacific theater,” Rex Ziak said. “They came home by the tens of thousands.”
The Ziaks, who live in Oregon, knew what returning the flags meant to bereaved Japanese families. They formed a nonprofit, Obon Society, to take on the challenge, accepting donated flags from American collectors and poring through records to match them with the Japanese families whose names were still inked on the fabric.
Mutsuda came to Obon Society in April with a slam-dunk case. He showed the Ziaks a black-and-white photo of his family — one where Mutsuda was only a toddler. Shigeyoshi loomed above him, carrying a flag. The writing on it matched the photo from the Lexington.
When the Ziaks contacted the museum, Banta was stunned to learn of the significance of his exhibit. But the former Navy helicopter pilot needed no convincing.
“We knew that this flag did not belong to us,” Banta said. “And we needed to return it to the family.”
The repatriation began on July 20 when staff at the Lexington removed the flag from its frame in a ceremony in the ship’s hangar bay. Banta and the Ziaks then accompanied the flag to Tokyo. On Saturday, they gathered at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese soldiers killed in the country’s wars, to return the flag to the Mutsuda siblings.
Masae — Shigeyoshi’s wife and the Mutsuda children’s mother — had traveled to the shrine yearly to remember her husband after the war, the Mutsudas told Rex Ziak. She made the trip once more this year with her children, who brought her cremated remains in an urn so she could be with them when they received the flag.
The Ziaks said Mutsuda’s story was a highlight among the roughly 500 flags they’ve been able to return to Japanese families so far. They want to scale up their work as the 80th anniversary of the end of the war approaches, Rex Ziak added. He advocated for a wider effort to return flags, with support from the U.S. government.
“Here’s an opportunity for America to reach out and touch these families, one by one, by returning the remains of their missing relatives,” Rex Ziak said. “It would be one of the most spectacular humanitarian gestures the world has ever seen.”
Mutsuda added that the repatriation was a heartening gesture of cooperation between American and Japanese organizations — and a reconciliation that his parents would have been glad to see.
“[Shigeyoshi’s] flag made us feel that my father and mother wanted to tell us, ‘Please do not repeat this horrible and painful experience [that] we had been through ever again,’” he said.
After the ceremony, the group joined Mutsuda and his siblings in a private room for lunch. Before they sat down with their bento boxes, the Mutsudas arranged their mother’s urn and their father’s flag next to each other on a shelf and bowed to pray.
Mutsuda imagined his parents deep in conversation, finally able to catch up on almost 80 years’ worth of stories together.
“We want to let both my parents [get] acquainted together as long as they want,” Mutsuda said. “Then when they are ready, we will put my mother’s ash into the temple in Kyoto for her departure to heaven to be with her husband forever.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/04/wwii-japanese-flag-returned-lexington/?fbclid=IwAR1WHuHW8kSIOvU-PTkK1g4caQcxSQc63uRn1tMCvgUwjqwccRp5am0FfY0
【北海道新聞】７月２６日に北海道は松前町で執り行われました「鈴木秀二命日章旗返還式」について紙面が届きましたので掲載させて頂きます。
米南部テキサス州の博物館に展示していた養老町出身の陸田繁義さんの「寄せ書き日の丸」と呼ばれる日章旗が七月二十九日、靖国神社（東京都）で長男の敏弘さん（８３）に返還された。敏弘さんと次男の靖則さん（８０）＝いずれも養老町大跡＝が一日に町役場を訪れ、川地憲元町長に喜びを語った。
日章旗は日の丸の上に「武運長久」と書かれ、繁義さんの義父らとみられる九十四人の署名が日の丸を囲んでいる。入手経緯が分からないまま一九九四年に博物館に寄贈され、二十九年間展示されていた。
敏弘さんは日章旗を手に帰宅した後、すぐに自宅にある母の仏前に供えた。父の記憶はほとんどないため、返還後は三人の子どもを育てた母の顔が浮かび「親戚など周りに助けてもらった。苦労してきた母に見せたかった」と思いを巡らせたという。
戦争の悲惨さを後世に伝えるため、日章旗は靖国神社への展示を検討している。敏弘さんは「若者に戦争の裏でどれだけ悲劇があったのか考えてもらう史料になれば」と力を込める。
川地町長は「よく返還してもらえた。八十年の歴史には重みがある」と話した。
https://www.chunichi.co.jp/article/740695?rct=gifu
![Toshihiro Mutsu...]()
Toshihiro Mutsuda, center left, and USS Lexington Museum executive director Steve Banta, center right, hold the good luck flag of Mutsuda’s father, Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo
![USS Lexington Museum executi...]()
USS Lexington Museum executive director Steve Banta, left, hands over the good luck flag of Japanese solider Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, to his son Toshihiro Mutsuda at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo
Toshihiro Mutsuda was five years old when he last saw his father, who was drafted by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1943 and killed in action. For him, his father was a bespectacled man in an old family photo standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to war.
On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a US war museum where it had been on display for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, said: “It’s a miracle.”
The flag, known as Yosegaki Hinomaru, or good luck flag, carries the soldier’s name, Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, and the signatures of his relatives, friends and neighbors wishing him luck.
It was given to him before he was drafted by the army. His family was later told he died in Saipan, but his remains were never returned.
The flag was donated in 1994 and displayed at the museum aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII aircraft carrier, in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Its meaning was not known until it was identified by the family earlier this year, said museum director Steve Banta, who brought the flag to Tokyo.
Banta said he learned the story behind the flag earlier this year when he was contacted by the Obon Society, a nonprofit organization that has returned about 500 similar flags as non-biological remains to the descendants of Japanese service members killed in the war.
The search for the flag’s original owner started in April when a museum visitor took a photograph and asked an expert about the description that it had belonged to a kamikaze suicide pilot.
When Shigeyoshi Mutsuda’s grandson saw the photo, he sought help from the Obon Society, group cofounder Keiko Ziak said.
“When we learned all of this, and that the family would like to have the flag, we knew immediately that the flag did not belong to us,” Banta said at the handover ceremony. “We knew that the right thing to do would be to send the flag home, to be in Japan and to the family.”
The soldier’s eldest son, Toshihiro Mutsuda, was speechless for a few seconds when Banta, wearing white gloves, gently placed the neatly folded flag into his hands.
Two of his younger siblings, both in their 80s, stood by and looked on silently. The three children, all wearing cotton gloves so they would not damage the decades-old flag, carefully unfolded it to show to the audience.
“After receiving the flag today, I earnestly felt that the war like that should never be fought again and that I do not wish anyone else to go through this sadness [of separation],” Toshihiro Mutsuda said.
The soldier’s daughter, Misako Matsukuchi, touched the flag with both hands and prayed.
“After nearly 80 years, the spirit of our father returned to us. I hope he can finally rest in peace,” Matsukuchi said later.
Toshihiro Mutsuda said his memory of his father was foggy.
However, he clearly remembers that his mother, Masae Mutsuda, who died five years ago at age 102, used to make the long-distance bus trip almost every year from the farming town in Gifu to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where 2.5 million war dead are enshrined, to pay tribute to her husband’s spirit.
That is why Toshihiro Mutsuda and his siblings chose to receive the flag at Yasukuni and brought framed photos of their parents.
“My mother missed him and wanted to see him so much and that’s why she used to pray here,” he said. “Today her wish finally came true, and she was able to be reunited.”
With the flag on his lap, he said: “I feel the weight of the flag.”
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2023/07/31/2003804026?fbclid=IwAR1D2VbWcDAOsprKK-s-9in6yRzq2NbhZ2aCXeRftCzoDB4pgAI1luKe8Bw
![【読売新聞】令和５年７月２９日...]()
父の日章旗 米博物館から遺族に返還
８０年ぶり再会 靖国神社で
太平洋戦争でサイパンに出征し、戦死した岐阜県出身の旧日本兵、 陸田むつだ 繁義さんのものとみられる日章旗が米国の博物館で保管されていることがわかり、千代田区の靖国神社で２９日、遺族に返還された。約８０年ぶりに戻った父の遺品を受け取った長男の敏弘さん（８２）は「奇跡的なこと。うれしい気持ちで胸がいっぱい」と喜んだ。
日章旗には「武運長久」の文字や陸田さんと思われる名前のほか、家族や近所の人など数十人の名前が寄せ書きされている。敏弘さんらによると、陸田さんは１９４３年、２６歳で陸軍に召集され、４４年にサイパンに出征したといい、その際に日章旗を持参したとみられる。
今春、退役した空母を改装した米テキサス州の「航空母艦レキシントン博物館」にこの日章旗が展示されていることを知った敏弘さんの長男が、旧日本兵が戦地に持参した遺品の返還に取り組む米国の民間団体「ＯＢＯＮ（オボン）ソサエティ」に相談。出征前に撮影された写真に写った旗と、博物館に展示された旗の特徴が一致することが確認され、返還が実現した。
(A Japanese flag believed to belong to Shigeyoshi Rikuta Mutsuda, a former Japanese soldier from Gifu Prefecture who was killed in action in Saipan during the Pacific War, was returned to his bereaved family at Yasukuni Shrine in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, on March 29. Toshihiro, 82, the eldest son of Shigeyoshi's father, who received his father's belongings back for the first time in 80 years, said, "This is miraculous. I am filled with happiness.
On the Yosegaki flag, there were inscriptions of the words "Bu-un Choukyu" (Long Live the Warrior), the name of a person believed to be Mr. Rikuda, and dozens of other names, including family members and neighbors. According to Toshihiro and others, Mr. Rikuda was drafted into the Army in 1943 at the age of 26 and went to Saipan in 1944.
This spring, Toshihiro's eldest son learned that the flag was on display at the Aircraft Carrier Lexington Museum in Texas, a renovated retired aircraft carrier, and consulted the OBON Society, a private U.S. organization that works to return artifacts brought to war by former Japanese soldiers. It was confirmed that the flag in the photograph taken before his departure for war matched the characteristics of the flag displayed at the museum, and its return was realized.)
２９日に靖国神社で行われた返還式には、敏弘さんのほか、長女の美佐子さん（８１）、次男の靖則さん（８０）も岐阜県から駆けつけた。来日した同博物館のスティーブ・バンタ館長から日章旗を受け取ると、敏弘さんらは頬をすり寄せ、父との「再会」に感激した様子だった。
２０１８年に亡くなった陸田さんの妻、まさ江さんは毎年靖国神社を参拝し、夫の遺品が戻らなかったことを嘆いていたという。敏弘さんは「最も喜んでいるのは母だと思う。墓前に父の帰りを報告したい」と話していた。
(In addition to Toshihiro, his eldest daughter Misako (81) and second son Yasunori (80) also came from Gifu Prefecture to attend the restitution ceremony held at Yasukuni Shrine on March 29. Toshihiro and his family rubbed their cheeks together as they received the Japanese flag from Steve Banta, the museum's director, who had visited Japan, and seemed thrilled to be "reunited" with their father.
Masae Rikuda's wife, Masae, who passed away in 2018, visited Yasukuni Shrine every year and lamented the fact that her husband's belongings had not been returned. Toshihiro said, "I think it is my mother who is most pleased. I want to report my father's return to the graveside.")
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/.../news/20230729-OYTNT50200/
![USS Lexington Museum executi...]()
USS Lexington Museum executive director Steve Banta, left, and Toshihiro Mutsuda, the elderly son of Japanese soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, hold together Mutsuda's good luck flag during the handover cer
USS Lexington Museum executive director Steve Banta, left, and Toshihiro Mutsuda, the elderly son of Japanese soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, hold together Mutsuda's good luck flag during the handover ceremony of his good luck flag at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, Japan, on July 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
USS Lexington Museum executive director Steve Banta, left, and Toshihiro Mutsuda, the elderly son of Japanese soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, hold together Mutsuda's good luck flag during the handover ceremony of his good luck flag at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, Japan, on July 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
TOKYO (AP) -- Toshihiro Mutsuda was only 5 years old when he last saw his father, who was drafted by Japan's Imperial Army in 1943 and killed in action. For him, his father was a bespectacled man in an old family photo standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to war.
On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a U.S. war museum where it had been on display for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, said: "It's a miracle."
The flag, known as "Yosegaki Hinomaru," or Good Luck Flag, carries the soldier's name, Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, and the signatures of his relatives, friends and neighbors wishing him luck. It was given to him before he was drafted by the Army. His family was later told he died in Saipan, but his remains were never returned.
The flag was donated in 1994 and displayed at the museum aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII aircraft carrier, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Its meaning was not known until it was identified by the family earlier this year, said museum director Steve Banta, who brought the flag to Tokyo.
Banta said he learned the story behind the flag earlier this year when he was contacted by the Obon Society, a nonprofit organization that has returned about 500 similar flags as non-biological remains, to the descendants of Japanese servicemembers killed in the war.
The search for the flag's original owner started in April when a museum visitor took a photo and asked an expert about the description that it had belonged to a "kamikaze" suicide pilot. When Shigeyoshi Mutsuda's grandson saw the photo, he sought help from the Obon Society, group co-founder Keiko Ziak said.
"When we learned all of this, and that the family would like to have the flag, we knew immediately that the flag did not belong to us," Banta said at the handover ceremony. "We knew that the right thing to do would be to send the flag home, to be in Japan and to the family."
The soldier's eldest son, Toshihiro Mutsuda, was speechless for a few seconds when Banta, wearing white gloves, gently placed the neatly folded flag into his hands. Two of his younger siblings, both in their 80s, stood by and looked on silently. The three children, all wearing cotton gloves so they wouldn't damage the decades-old flag, carefully unfolded it to show to the audience.
"After receiving the flag today, I earnestly felt that the war like that should never be fought again and that I do not wish anyone else to go through this sadness (of separation)," Toshihiro Mutsuda said.
The soldier's daughter, Misako Matsukuchi, touched the flag with both hands and prayed. "After nearly 80 years, the spirit of our father returned to us. I hope he can finally rest in peace," Matsukuchi said later.
Toshihiro Mutsuda said his memory of his father was foggy. However, he clearly remembers his mother, Masae Mutsuda, who died five years ago at age 102, used to make the long-distance bus trip almost every year from the farming town in Gifu, central Japan, to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where the 2.5 million war dead are enshrined, to pay tribute to her husband's spirit.
The shrine is controversial, as it includes convicted war criminals among those commemorated. Victims of Japanese aggression during the first half of the 20th century, especially China and the Koreas, see Yasukuni as a symbol of Japanese militarism. However, for the Mutsuda family, it's a place to remember the loss of a father and husband.
"It's like an old love story across the ages coming together ... It doesn't matter where," Banta said, referring to the Yasukuni controversy. "The important thing is this flag goes to the family."
That's why Toshihiro Mutsuda and his siblings chose to receive the flag at Yasukuni and brought the framed photos of their parents.
"My mother missed him and wanted to see him so much and that's why she used to pray here," he said. "Today her wish finally came true, and she was able to be reunited."
Keeping the flag on his lap, he said, "I feel the weight of the flag."
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230730/p2g/00m/0na/011000c?fbclid=IwAR3LnJfdvxET2Q9I-kGojmJVVh83SFhL_P-J-Jfrvdbm2Y_vR-TlxzQ1h_Q
![【The Associated...]()
TOKYO — Toshihiro Mutsuda was only 5 years old when he last saw his father, who was drafted by Japan's Imperial Army in 1943 and killed in action. For him, his father was a bespectacled man in an old family photo standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to war.
On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a U.S. war museum where it had been on display for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, said: "It's a miracle."
The flag, known as "Yosegaki Hinomaru," or Good Luck Flag, carries the soldier's name, Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, and the signatures of his relatives, friends and neighbors wishing him luck. It was given to him before he was drafted by the Army. His family was later told he died in Saipan, but his remains were never returned.
The flag was donated in 1994 and displayed at the museum aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII aircraft carrier, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Its meaning was not known until it was identified by the family earlier this year, said the museum director Steve Banta, who brought the flag to Tokyo.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/29/1190933123/japan-soldier-flag-world-war-ii-returned?fbclid=IwAR0BtR0oSZ0CavhzBWYxUqpZabus6FQsEwzpVWZKi-OT27ogdlujiIl1VH8
![USSレキシントン博物館に展示...]()
USSレキシントン博物館に展示されていた日章旗を見せる、同館のスティーブ・バンタ館長（右）と、遺族への返還の橋渡しを務めるNPO「OBONソサエティ」のレックス・ジーク共同代表＝東京都千代田区の日本記者クラブで
東京都千代田区の日本記者クラブで27日、これまで600枚近い日章旗を遺族に返還してきた米西部オレゴン州のNPO「OBON（オボン）ソサエティ」と、退役空母を改装して太平洋戦争にまつわる品などを展示する米南部テキサス州の「USSレキシントン博物館」の関係者が記者会見を開き、返還を明らかにした。
博物館によると、日章旗は開館2年後の1994年から額縁に入れて展示しており、入手経緯は不明。敏弘さんによると、博物館で日章旗を見かけた人が写真を撮影、専門家の分析を経て父・繁義さんの遺品ではと連絡があったという。
敏弘さんから今年4月、出征前の繁義さんと署名入り日章旗を写した写真などを受け取ったオボンソサエティが、博物館に協力を依頼。博物館が日章旗を額縁から出し、文字の見え方を確認したところ「完全に一致」し、返還を決めた。
◆「旗の意味を知り、私たちの手元にあるべきでないと理解した」
会見したスティーブ・バンタ館長は「（展示していた）29年間、旗に込められた意味が分からなかった。その意味や家族が返還を希望していると知り、私たちの手元にあるべきでないと理解した。あるべき場所に返すことができ、光栄に思う。返還を通じ、日米の平和友好関係を促進できることを願っている」と話した。
敏弘さんは「父が出征したのは、私が4歳くらいの時。父の印象はあまり残っておらず、日章旗があることは知らなかった。旗が残っていたこと自体奇跡で、父の帰りたいという願いがずっとあったのだろう」と話した。
https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/265938?fbclid=IwAR0BsN9PC3Ik9aTNljS_amxwcDS9xKG-kPC0-vINyhKZ9J40nAg5fSMe3vs
【松前】太平洋戦争末期に多くの住民を巻き込んだ１９４５年（昭和２０年）の沖縄戦で戦死した鈴木秀二さん（享年３８）が戦地で持っていた日章旗が、戦後７８年を前に町内在住の遺族の元に返還された。旧日本兵の遺品返還に取り組む米国のＮＰＯ法人「ＯＢＯＮソサエティ」の仲介で実現した。長男の一弘さん（８６）は「父親の形見がひとつもなかった。うれしい」と話した。
同団体や遺族によると、秀二さんは留萌市出身。旧陸軍第２４師団輜重兵（しちょうへい）として、武器や弾薬などの運搬を担当していたという。旧日本軍が組織的な戦闘を終えたとされる６月２３日の２日前の２１日に死亡した。最期の様子は分かっていない。
今月２６日に町役場で行われた返還式には、遺族７人が出席した。一弘さんと妻の玲子さん（８３）が石山英雄町長から日章旗を受け取った。縦約６５センチ、横約８０センチの旗には「必勝」「大和心」などの寄せ書きが記され、出征時に渡されたとみられる。一弘さんは「優しい父だった」と在りし日の姿に思いをはせ、玲子さんも「夢のよう」と涙ぐんだ。日章旗は自宅の仏壇に供えるという。
日章旗は、沖縄戦に参戦した元米国陸軍大佐が持ち帰った。その後、孫が旗に込められた思いを知り、２０２０年に同団体に返還を依頼した。直後に連絡を受けた札幌在住の同団体スタッフの工藤公督さん（４８）が留萌市内などで調査を開始。６０年ほど前に松前町の企業に就職し、現在も町内で暮らす一弘さんの存在を知り、１カ月ほど前に連絡した。
一弘さんは小学校入学前に秀二さんと別れ、「連絡が来た時はびっくりした。工藤さんや団体には感謝しかない」と話した。
https://www.hokkaido-np.co.jp/article/884427
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