TOKYO – Toshihiro Mutsuda was solely 5 years previous when he final noticed his father, who was drafted by Japan’s Imperial Army in 1943 and killed in motion. For him, his father was a bespectacled man in an previous household picture standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to battle.
On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a U.S. battle museum, the place it had been on show for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, mentioned: “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.
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 realized all of this, and that the household wish to have the flag, we knew instantly that the flag didn’t belong to us,” Banta said at the handover ceremony. “We knew that the fitting factor to do can be to ship the flag house, to be in Japan and to the household.”
Toshihiro Mutsuda, second left, the elderly son of Japanese soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, greets USS Lexington Museum executive director Steve Banta, right, before the handover ceremony of his father’s flag, in Tokyo, Japan, on July 29, 2023. 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.
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.
The soldier’s daughter, Misako Matsukuchi, touched the flag with both hands and prayed. “After almost 80 years, the spirit of our father returned to us. I hope he can lastly relaxation in peace,’ Matsukuchi mentioned later.
Toshihiro Mutsuda mentioned his reminiscence of his father was foggy. However, he clearly remembers his mom, Masae Mutsuda, who died 5 years in the past at age 102, used to make the long-distance bus journey nearly yearly from the farming city in Gifu, central Japan, to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the place the two.5 million battle lifeless are enshrined, to pay tribute to her husband’s spirit.
The shrine is controversial, because it contains convicted battle criminals amongst these commemorated. Victims of Japanese aggression through the first half of the twentieth century, particularly China and the Koreas, see Yasukuni as an emblem of Japanese militarism. However, for the Mutsuda household, it is a spot to recollect the lack of a father and husband.
“It’s like an old love story across the ages coming together … It doesn’t matter where,” Banta mentioned, referring to the Yasukuni controversy. “The important thing is this flag goes to the family.”
That’s why Toshihiro Mutsuda and his siblings selected to obtain the flag at Yasukuni and introduced framed images of their mother and father.
“My mother missed him and wanted to see him so much, and that’s why she used to pray here,’ Toshihiro Mutsuda said. “Today her want lastly got here true, and she or he was in a position to be reunited.”
Keeping the flag on his lap, he said, “I really feel the burden of the flag.’