USS Lexington Museum govt director Steve Banta (left) and Toshihiro Mutsuda, the son of Japanese soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, maintain collectively the late soldier’s “good luck flag” throughout a handover ceremony in Tokyo, on Saturday.

Shuji Kajiyama/AP

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Shuji Kajiyama/AP

USS Lexington Museum govt director Steve Banta (left) and Toshihiro Mutsuda, the son of Japanese soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, maintain collectively the late soldier’s “good luck flag” throughout a handover ceremony in Tokyo, on Saturday.

Shuji Kajiyama/AP

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 photograph standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to warfare.

On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a U.S. warfare museum the place it had been on show for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, mentioned: “It’s a miracle.”

The flag, referred to as “Yosegaki Hinomaru,” or Good Luck Flag, carries the soldier’s title, Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, and the signatures of his family members, mates and neighbors wishing him luck. It was given to him earlier than he was drafted by the Army. His household was later instructed he died in Saipan, however his stays have been by no means returned.

The flag was donated in 1994 and displayed on the museum aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII plane service, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Its that means was not recognized till it was recognized by the household earlier this 12 months, mentioned the museum director Steve Banta, who introduced the flag to Tokyo.

Banta mentioned he discovered the story behind the flag earlier this 12 months when he was contacted by the Obon Society, a nonprofit group that has returned about 500 comparable flags as non-biological stays, to the descendants of Japanese servicemembers killed within the warfare.

The seek for the flag’s unique proprietor began in April when a museum customer took a photograph and requested an knowledgeable concerning the description that it had belonged to a “kamikaze” suicide pilot. When Shigeyoshi Mutsuda’s grandson noticed the photograph, he sought assist from the Obon Society, group co-founder Keiko Ziak mentioned.

“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 mentioned on 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 just a few seconds when Banta, sporting white gloves, gently positioned the neatly folded flag into his arms. Two of his youthful siblings, each of their 80s, stood by and regarded on silently. The three kids, all sporting cotton gloves so they would not injury the decades-old flag, rigorously unfolded it to point out to the viewers.

The soldier’s daughter, Misako Matsukuchi, touched the flag with each arms and prayed. “After nearly 80 years, the spirit of our father returned to us. I hope he can finally rest 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 virtually yearly from the farming city in Gifu, central Japan, to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the place the two.5 million warfare useless are enshrined, to pay tribute to her husband’s spirit.

The shrine is controversial, because it consists of convicted warfare criminals amongst these commemorated. Victims of Japanese aggression in the course of 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 the framed pictures of their dad and mom.

“My mother missed him and wanted to see him so much and that’s why she used to pray here,” Toshihiro Mutsuda mentioned. “Today her wish finally came true, and she was able to be reunited.”

Keeping the flag on his lap, he mentioned, “I feel the weight of the flag.”