Japanese flag of student-soldier killed in battle returned to family after 67 years

After 67 years, a Japanese flag signed by family and friends of a student-soldier who went into the battle that would claim his life, is returning home.

Tahei Watanabe, a student at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, was deployed in December 1943, and was killed in the Philippines in April 1945 at the age of 21. In his pocket was the flag carrying the best wishes of those nearest and dearest to him. The flag's journey did not end, however, with its owner's death, but instead was fished from Tahei's pocket by U.S. Army Sergeant Earl Zwicky as a war trophy and taken back to the United States.

There the flag stayed at Zwicky's home in Wisconsin, and seemed unlikely ever to return to Japan until about two years ago when he decided he wanted to know what was written on it, and went to neighbor and 51-year-old minister Rev. Steven A. Kaehr to ask for advice.

Kaehr was eager to help, and showed the flag to a Japanese scholar at a university in the state, who told the minister that one signature belonged to the dead soldier's older sister Fumiko Watanabe, and that another person had written "Rikkyo University." The fallen Japanese soldier, Kaehr and Zwicky discovered, was a Rikkyo student named Watanabe.

With this small slice of personal information, Zwicky told the story of the flag for the first time; how he had taken the flag after the Japanese soldier had been shot dead by another U.S. infantryman on his orders. Zwicky passed away just a few days later at the age of 85.

The story did not end with his death, however. In May this year, Rikkyo University received an e-mail from Kaehr saying he wanted to return the flag to Watanabe's surviving family. When Rikkyo staff visited the address in Tokyo registered as Tahei's family home in his student records, they found that the property had passed into different hands. They then went walking through the neighborhood and calling on the families of those who had signed the flag, until they finally found one of Watanabe's relatives in Tokyo's Nerima Ward. It was 58-year-old Toshiko Yokoo, the daughter of Tahei's big sister.

The flag returned to Japan in the autumn with Kaehr, who handed it to Yokoo at Rikkyo University on Oct. 27. Japanese flags carried into battle during World War II and taken as war trophies by American troops are still sold on Internet auction sites like eBay as "good luck" flags. Of the one left in his hands, Kaehr says he thought he couldn't let it be lost, adding that he hoped it would bring Watanabe's family at least some consolation.

Yokoo, born after the war, says that her mother Fumiko often told her stories of Tahei, and letters the student-soldier wrote from the front asking after his sickly family also remain. Fumiko passed away at the age of 89 last December.

"This is a miracle that woke the souls of both my mother and my uncle," Yokoo said of the return of Tahei's flag. She then donated the flag and the letters to the university, which is also her alma mater. Rikkyo plans to display the items along with wishes for peace in the school museum.

(Mainichi Japan) November 21, 2010