The US Naval Museum will return a Japanese flag to the family of the soldier to whom it belonged

July 22 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Almost 78 years after the end of World War II, a naval museum in the state of Texas, in the United States, is ready to return a flag to the family of the Japanese soldier to whom it originally belonged.

During a ceremony at the Texas facility, which took place in the Lexington hangar, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, the flag of former soldier Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, who is now dead, was handed over to an Oregon-based organization that helps find and deliver personal items lost during war, according to Kyodo News.

The Obon Society, represented by Rex Ziak and his wife Keiko, along with representatives from the Lexington museum, plan to return Hinomaru’s flag, which bears a “good luck” message and some 90 “yosegaki” signatures from people close to him, to Mutsuda’s family on July 29 in Tokyo.

The flags were often signed by the soldiers’ friends and family, before being brought to war as a wartime good luck charm in Japan.

According to the society, it was recently discovered that Mutsuda’s flag belonged to him after his grandson compared old photographs of Shigeyoshi with his flag to the one on display in the museum.

“I did not imagine that this miracle could happen. My mother would have been happy if she were alive,” said the soldier’s 83-year-old son.

The museum has housed the flag since it was donated in 1994. Steve Banta, the museum’s executive director, has said that while they knew the flag “was an amazing artifact to commemorate Japan’s service in the war, we didn’t know what it meant to a specific family” until the society contacted them.

The society has returned more than 500 of these flags to families and communities in Japan since its establishment in 2009.