WWII Marine vet returns dead Japanese soldier's flag

Marine Times ^ | August 15 | Mari Yamaguchi, 

[BenLurkin]

Marvin Strombo, who had taken the calligraphy-covered Japanese flag from a dead soldier at World War II island battlefield 73 years ago, returned it Tuesday to the family of Sadao Yasue. They had never gotten his body or — until that moment — anything else of his.

Yasue and Tatsuya’s sister Sayoko Furuta, 93...covered her face with both hands and wept silently as Tatsuya placed the flag on her lap.

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The flag’s white background is filled with signatures of 180 friends and neighbors in this tea-growing mountain village of Higashishirakawa, wishing Yasue’s safe return. The signatures helped Strombo find its rightful owners.

“Good luck forever at the battlefield,” a message on it reads. Looking at the names and their handwriting, Tatsuya Yasue clearly recalls their faces and friendship with his brother.

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The return of the flag brings closure, the 89-year-old farmer and younger brother of Sadao Yasue told The Associated Press at his 400-year-old house on Monday. “It’s like the war has finally ended and my brother can come out of limbo.”

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He had the flag hung in a glass-fronted gun cabinet in his home in Montana for years, a topic of conversation for visitors. He was in the battles of Saipan, Tarawa and Tinian, which chipped away at Japan’s control of islands in the Pacific and paved the way for U.S. victory.

In 2012, he was connected to the Obon Society, an Oregon-based nonprofit that helps U.S. veterans and their descendants return Japanese flags to the families of fallen soldiers. The group’s research traced it to the village of 2,300 people in central Japan by analyzing family names.

Tuesday’s handover meant a closure for Strombo too. “It means so much to me and the family to get the flag back and move on,” he said.

[Paal Gulli]

We still chanted racist epithets in training like bayonet drills all the way up to the war in Vietnam. Gulf War I was the first conflict in at least a hundred years in which the US militaries didn’t institutionalize racism from basic training on up. During WWII, it wasn’t just the military, in was endemic in the American culture, too.

That said, the Japanese raised it to a high art. But then that’s in their national character, isn’t it? Do everything to your utmost.