Speaking of flags
by digby
Considering the bloodthirsty nature of the modern GOP it’s ghoulishly fitting that the first presidential primary debate would be held on the anniversary of the dropping of the bomb of Hiroshima. The way they’re all talking about Iran and the middle east, it’s fair to say they’re all pretty excited at the possibility of dropping another one.
I was wondering if the Fox News team would ask any of these presidential candidates about the controversy over the Confederate flag but then realized that unlikely. And yesterday Dennis Hartley sent me this story of reconciliation that brought home just how ridiculous that controversy really is:
Some aging veterans of World War II are embarking on one more mission. The object is to return Japanese flags taken as war souvenirs from Pacific battlefields.
In some cases, wives or children are taking on the mission if the vet has passed away.
Back in WWII, Woodburn, Oregon’s Leslie “Buck” Weatherill fought across the beaches and jungles of Southeast Asia with the U.S. Army’s 41st Infantry Division. After one bloody engagement late in the war, he says he and his comrades looked for souvenirs on the battlefield.
“It was on a dead Japanese soldier,” Weatherill recalled. “The flag was in his pocket, sticking out. I took it off him.”
The Japanese flag Weatherill picked up measured about three feet by two feet. Calligraphy bedecked the white spaces around the red center… personal messages from the soldier’s family and friends. This war prize was so common, it has an English name: a good luck flag.
The Japanese name for “good luck flag” is yosegaki hinomaru, which literally translated means “group-written flag.” It was traditionally presented to a serviceman prior to his deployment.
‘They should get the flag back’
Seventy years later, Weatherill is 93 years old. At the suggestion of his daughters, he decided to try to return the captured memento to the dead soldier’s family.
“I just thought, the war is over. We’re not enemies anymore, we’re friends,” he said. “They should get the flag back.”
They did. And they’re not the only ones.
The Japanese consulates in Seattle, Portland and elsewhere have gotten dozens of inquiries from American veterans or their wives or children asking how to return war memorabilia. And now a Northwest-based nonprofit has sprung up. A Japanese-American couple from Naselle, Washington, Rex and Keiko Ziak, co-founded the group Obon 2015 to facilitate the return of flags.
“Each one is in most cases the last surviving trace of that one individual,” Rex Ziak said. “Back home are wives, children, brothers and sisters who lost that person. Nothing ever came back.”
Meanwhile we have 25 yahoos here in America, still angry about a war from 150 years ago who can’t give up their lost cause flag.
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