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An update from OBON SOCIETY
Please click the link below to read about our return policy and past donated flags!
https://mailchi.mp/abb22909586b/obon-society-past-donated-flags
![Just a reminder of the import...]()
Just a reminder of the importance and history of the Yosegaki Hinomaru.
Please click the link below to read a short history lesson about the Yosegaki Hinomaru.
https://mailchi.mp/20214585c035/obon-society-history-lesson
When Norito Myochin disappeared, his family was unable to find closure. The forgotten keepsake of a Utah family helped heal the ‘incomprehensible wounds of war’
The year is 1968. The sea breeze tousled the sod of an Okinawa golf course. Dick Johnson stood on the fairway, 9-iron in hand, eyeing the green. The outing was a break from his high intensity work in the back of a B-52 bomber, manning the electronic defense systems while his crew flew missions to Vietnam dropping some 54,000 pounds worth of bombs on 8-square-mile strips of jungle.
Before this assignment, he flew more modern, G-model bombers, that carried nuclear weapons, though they were never used.
Johnson gazed at the concrete mounds bordering the golf course, originally built to fortify the island from the Allied invasion decades earlier. He imagined his father, Richard W. Johnson, landing on these same beaches in 1945, taking part in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific campaign, and the final major conflict of World War II.
It was this strange juxtaposition of fates that stayed with him, even after his service. A father and son, on the same island years apart, experiencing very different wars.
This moment on Okinawa flooded back to Johnson’s memory when his son brought him an old Japanese flag found tucked away in the family keepsakes of their Lehi home. The flag had handwritten characters circling the bright red sun in the middle.
It was as mysterious to Johnson as his father’s time spent as a Marine in the Pacific theater of World War II — a time Johnson’s father rarely talked about when he got home. In fact, Johnson only got his father to speak about the war once. And he certainly never spoke of the curious flag.
It was only when Johnson’s wife, Marlene, saw a similar flag in a magazine article, that the family began to understand what the object represented — and that it absolutely had to be returned.
War does not end with the signing of a treaty. A complex logistical process continues in earnest after the conflict. The rebuilding of infrastructure, rehabilitation of soldiers and the recovery of the dead.
After World War II, the U.S. began a massive program to bring more than 171,000 bodies home from more than 80 countries, according to historian Kim Clarke. Even today, the government continues to slowly recover the bodies of its fallen. In 2018, for example, the Trump administration successfully negotiated the release of 55 boxes of remains from North Korea, dating back to the Korean War.
In Japan, the issue of missing relatives casts a larger shadow, where many more are affected in a much smaller land mass. An estimated 2.4 million Japanese died overseas in World War II, and while numerous ministries and bureaus collaborate to repatriate remains, the bodies of nearly half are still missing.
For over 70 years, the Myochin family’s fate looked like the losing side of this coin flip. Their eldest son, Norito, volunteered to join the Japanese Imperial Navy. The eldest of 12 children, from a farm 10 miles outside Hiroshima, Norito was expected to help lead the household when he returned.
He was 22 when he was killed in action. Not a trace of him came home. Even the day of his death was unknown — records said Dec. 31, 1944, as a substitute. Heartbroken, the family grieved through the hard labor of their farm life. The next year, the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped, and Norito’s father went to help fight fires in the city’s suburbs. He died young, likely from exposure to radiation.
The large Myochin family began to fracture. The absence of Norito and his father contributed. Toshinari Myochin, the first son of the following generation, felt the heavy responsibility of his role in the family order. He spent weekends keeping the farm operating — the rest of the family had moved — while he managed a machine shop in the city during the week.
Then the Myochin family was notified of a flag, or yosegaki hinomaru.
It was the flag held by the Johnsons in Lehi, Utah. The discovery began to reunite the family under the promise of Norito’s return home. The Johnson family had mailed their flag to the Obon Society, which specialized in the collection and return of these unique artifacts, in hopes the family could be identified. Translators identified the names on the flag, tracing it back to Norito.
According to Rex Ziak, president of the Obon Society, the importance of these flags cannot be overstated. Along with that flag, he said, comes “the living spirit of that person.” So unique is this yosegaki hinomaru that their organization can “return a flag back to a family with a higher rate of accuracy than DNA can trace back a bone or a tooth.”
The Obon Society estimates there are still 50,000 similar flags in the U.S. at this time.
After seven decades, the Myochins learned that Norito died on the island of Peleliu, that this object was carefully taken and preserved by Richard Johnson for years and passed on to his children. 84-year-old Keiko Hirota, one of Norito’s two surviving sisters, was stunned by the news. She said she “couldn’t stop her tears.”
Richard reflected on the Battle of Peleliu during a recorded interview in 1977 — the only time he spoke of the war. The island reached 115 degrees during the day, and their water was tainted with oil from unwashed drums. “They told us we’d be off there in 48 hours,” Richard said. “Forty-eight days later, we were still killing those guys and they were still trying to kill us.”
Writer Eugene Sledge, in his account of the battle, wrote: “None came out unscathed. Many gave their lives, their health and some their sanity. All who survived will long remember the horror that they would rather forget.”
After the battle, craters pockmarked the coral island. Its jungle was denuded of all foliage, exposing ghostly limestone gullies and a vast network of caves. Richard would sail from that island alive, but 1,544 Americans and almost 11,000 Japanese would not. Despite the heavy toll, Peleliu would not play any significant strategic role in the rest of the war. “It’s a sad thing to realize you went through all this for a bunch of craters,” Richard said. “The whole thing was a big farce.”
The Johnsons were initially reluctant to meet the Myochins. “Would they think my grandfather killed the man?” they wondered. “Did they harbor resentments towards us?”
Months later, Dick Johnson and his son, Chris, sat around a table with the members of the extended Myochin family. They were “like old friends getting together for lunch,” Johnson said, “at a site where some of the most terrible things in history have happened.”
Lunch was held less than 100 yards from where the atomic bomb had been dropped in Hiroshima. Ziak said he is always amazed by this process of reconciliation. “Two modern families that have much more in common with each other than their differences,” he said, “just a magical, magical, unforgettable moment.”
“It was sobering to see the value the family placed on the flag, which was only an interesting memento for us,” Johnson said.
Remarkably, both Norito and Johnson were the eldest of 12 children. Both families also saw the sobering impact of the atomic bomb, but from vastly different vantage points. If the bomb had not been dropped, Johnson speculates that his father would likely have died fighting on the Japanese mainland. But Norito’s father died from the bomb’s effects.
Johnson ended up flying with nuclear weapons during his time in the Air Force. “It caused me to ponder about nuclear weapons. I never thought much about it,” he said. “Once I was in service, it was just what I did — it was my duty, if required, to drop nuclear weapons.”
When Keiko, Norito’s sister, was 7, she recalled seeing a brilliant bright flash from over the ridge line. Miles away, the atomic bomb had been dropped and tens of thousands were killed instantly.
“Her whole life has been tempered by (the bomb),” Ziak told me. “Who she met, who she married, what she did in her life, would have all been under the shadow of it.”
The families spent time together in Shinto shrines, the family farm and war museums. Though they spoke different languages, they managed to communicate through gifts and gestures of humility. With each passing moment, Johnson and his son grew in the belief that “even the incomprehensible wounds of war can be healed.”
Keiko tearfully held her brother’s flag at the family memorial site, among the stone markers of her parents and siblings. She got on her knees, no easy task at her age. She lit incense and said a prayer. Holding the flag in her hands, the only part of Norito to ever return, Keiko expressed only gratitude.
Her brother was home after a long, long journey.
https://www.deseret.com/2023/2/17/23583422/world-war-2-remains-returned-yosegaki-hinomaru?fbclid=IwAR0NegRG-ZSAD1oFS7gvpjLRsaw8rbygJTdEVNXVPTKfznRhlkeZ8uly_I8
第2次世界大戦に出征する兵士に贈られた日章旗が、約80年の時を超え、滋賀県内の遺族の手に戻ってきた。持ち主は寺崎徳蔵さん（甲賀市出身）と清水一郎さん（豊郷町出身）。米国の民間団体と日本遺族会などが協力して遺族を探し、県を通じて返還された。日章旗を受け取った寺崎さんの娘、川島淳子さん（93）は「今夜から抱いて寝ます」と話した。
返還式は1月30日、県公館で開かれた。県遺族会の今堀治夫副会長が「遺骨や遺品がひとつもない遺族もいる。返還は意義のある事業。米国と日本が恩讐（おんしゅう）を越え、現在の友好関係の上に成り立っている」とあいさつ。三日月大造知事から遺族らに日章旗が手渡された。1944年に北マリアナ諸島のテニアンで戦死した清水さんの日章旗は、おいの一雄さんが受け取ることになっていたが、返還式の直前に亡くなったため、同町の遺族会が代行した。
寺崎さんは旧満州へ出征し、終戦後に帰国。85年に83歳でこの世を去った。生前、戦争についてはあまり語らず、淳子さんは日章旗の存在はまったく知らなかったという。「祈武運長久」「元気で」などとびっしり寄せ書きされた日章旗を手に、「びっくりした。何とも言えない。戦争みたいな無意味なことはもう……」と語った。
米オレゴン州の民間団体「OBON SOCIETY」は、連合軍兵士が戦利品として持ち帰った日章旗などを日本の遺族に返還する活動を続けている。県遺族会によると、県内の遺族に遺品が返還されたのは、2015年以降、今回で18件という。
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASR2K73YVR2DPTJB004.html?iref=pc_photo_gallery_bottom
12月23日、午後2時から約40分間、山田賢司外務副大臣は、旧日本兵の「寄せ書き日の丸」を始めとする戦時遺留品の返還活動を行っている、レックス・ジーク及び敬子・ジーク・オボン・ソサエティ共同代表（Rex and Keiko Ziak, co-founders of OBON SOCIETY）一行の表敬を受けたところ、概要は以下のとおりです。
レックス・ジーク氏及び敬子・ジーク氏から、戦後の和解の重要性を強調しつつ、OBON SOCIETYの最近の取組や今後のビジョンについて説明がありました。
これに対し、山田副大臣から、日本兵の遺留品の返還は、日米の友情と絆を強固にする大変貴重な活動であり、引き続きの御活躍を期待したい旨述べました。
（参考）オボン・ソサエティ（OBON SOCIETY）
米国オレゴン州を中心に活動する非営利団体。主に第二次世界大戦時に連合軍兵士が戦場から持ち帰った「寄せ書き日の丸（日章旗）」を始めとする日本兵の遺留品を日本の遺族の元へ返還する活動を行っており、日本遺族会からも委託を受けている。平成27年外務大臣表彰を受賞。 https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/release/press4_009573.html?fbclid=IwAR36uP1uruJzGqsFVL4e4axIOKLQRJOqUD9qe3pvDTzF47EFjYiB2FHUx4Q
![SALT LAKE CITY ...]()
![The return ceremony was hel...]()
The return ceremony was held at Hiroshima Gokoku Shrine.
![Dick(Richard) Johnson]()
Dick(Richard) Johnson
![Chris Johnson]()
Chris Johnson
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — A father and son from Salt Lake County have recently returned from Japan after helping to solve a World War II mystery.
It was a life changing moment in the lives of a family in Hiroshima, Japan; Dick Johnson and his son Chris traveled from Utah to provide them with closure after 78 years.
"It was a very tender and sweet experience," Dick Johnson said.
"There was a very special feeling. It was intense. It was an honor to return the flag," Chris Johnson said.
The flag marked the homecoming for 21-year-old Japanese solider, Norito Myochin who was killed during the 1994 World War II battle.
"They consider that to be his spirit and it's coming home to them," Chris Johnson said.
Japanese soldiers kept these "good luck" flags folded under their shirts. They were signed by friends and family but if they were killed, the flags were often taken from soldiers' bodies as war souvenirs.
"The family and everyone associated with them, were so thankful to see this flag," Dick Johnson said.
Dick's father, a World War II Marine, brought the flag home after the way but just recently the OBON Society used the signatures and writing on the flag to trace it back to the long lost soldier.
"They consider it to be his non biological remains," Dick Johnson said.
Dick and Chris are now back in Salt Lake. 2News retraced their trip with an exclusive video from the OBON Society, which worked tirelessly to return soldier flags to their families.
A rare look inside the Shinto Shrine in Hiroshima, where the flag was blessed, then presented to the soldiers nephew and 83-year-old sister, Keiko Hirota.
"She seemed very touched by seeing this flag that had belonged to her brother," Dick Johnson said.
It was a very big event that brought local leaders and a lot of press. The families exchanged photos, gifts, a handmade quilt and took time to reflect at the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial, the site of the atomic bomb blast.
"Back then we were on opposite sides of the war. Now 79 years later, we're connected as friends," Chris Johnson said.
Dick and Chris Johnson said they visited the Myochin's family farm and home where the soldier grew up.
"It was a very personal connection between our family and their family," Chris Johnson said.
Now, a moment that almost never came, thanks to a father and son who followed their hearts across the world. Keiko could finally lay her brother to rest.
https://kjzz.com/news/local/salt-lake-county-father-son-who-helped-solve-world-war-ii-mystery-returns-home-hiroshima-japan-japanese-flag-returned-closure-78-years?fbclid=IwAR0bL5aJtzTikQP8QAB-tU2hDxQqMXUnzN36jPGZxasm3oOoXYLgr6gx4xk
![左からリチャードさん、クリスさ...]()
左からリチャードさん、クリスさん、明鎮俊成さん、広田系子さん
![デイリー新潮／81年ぶりに祖国...]()
多くのアメリカ兵が戦利品として持ち帰った “寄せ書き日の丸”
1941年12月8日、日本海軍による真珠湾攻撃で戦争に突入した日米両国。開戦から81年の時を経て、象徴的な和解の場が訪れた。太平洋戦争時に米海兵隊員が持ち帰った寄せ書き入りの日章旗が、遺族に返還されたのだ。
＊＊＊
「2年前、父から“寄せ書き日の丸”を受け継ぎました。その時はまだ、この旗に込められた意味を理解していなかった」
そう語るのは、米ユタ州に暮らすクリス・ジョンソンさん（54）。海兵隊員だった彼の祖父は、太平洋戦争に従軍して生還。その時に持ち帰ったのが、漢字の書き込みだらけの日章旗だった。
「ある時、母が僕に『OBONソサエティ』の記事を見せてくれた。それを読んだ時に、自分たちがするべき“正しいこと”が何なのか分かったんだ」
出征兵士の無事を願って故郷の親族や友人が寄せ書きした日章旗を、多くのアメリカ兵が戦利品として持ち帰った。それらを日本の遺族へ返す米NPO法人が、レックス＆敬子・ジーク夫妻が立ち上げた〈OBONソサエティ〉だ。
遺族は「伯父も喜んでいるはず」
彼らは広島に住む遺族を探し出すことに成功。12月4日、広島護國神社にて返還式が行われたのである。旗の持主は、南洋の激戦地ペリリュー島で戦死した明鎮憲登（みょうちんのりと）さん。遺族を代表して、妹の広田系子さん（84）と甥の明鎮俊成さん（56）が旗を受け取った。
「感無量です。これが日米の友好と平和の礎になってほしい。伯父も喜んでいるはず」（俊成さん）
クリスさんと父のリチャードさん（79）は返還のため自費で来日。二人ともクリスチャンだが、神社での返還式に備えて前日から神道の正式な参拝作法を練習した。
「キリスト教では、すべての人は神の創造物。だから私たちの考えでは、米国人も日本人もみんな兄弟なのです」（リチャードさん）
OBONソサエティはこれまでに400枚超を返還。なおも約2400枚の日の丸が、帰郷の日を待っているという。https://www.dailyshincho.jp/article/2022/12190600/?all=1
太平洋戦争の激戦地、パラオ諸島ぺリリュー島で戦死した三原市出身の海軍兵、明鎮（みょうちん）憲登さんが所持していた日章旗が4日、旗を保管していた米国人から明鎮さんの親族のもとに戻った。https://mainichi.jp/articles/20221208/ddl/k34/040/157000c
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