Yosegaki Hinomaru returned to Japanese family

Known as a Good Luck Flag, it is covered with the signatures of Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, his family and friends. The Corpus Christi museum where it was displayed for 29 years gave the flag to the Obon Society, a nonprofit organization that has returned about 500 similar flags, known as non-biological human remains, to descendants of Japanese service members killed during the war. "This is all that's left of this man" to return to his family, said Obon Society co-founder Rex Ziak. "They feel exactly the same as Americans when they receive the bones or teeth" of relatives who were identified and returned decades after being killed in war, he said.

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Hirofumi Murabayashi, consul general of Japan in Houston, expressed appreciation to the museum for willingly handing over the flag and said the transfer symbolizes the friendship between the United States and Japan. "He (Mutsuda) was killed in action and his body was not found ... there's no remains," Murabayashi said. "The only remains will come back to the family" to be reunited with his wife, who died in May at age 102, but whose funeral has been delayed until the flag is returned, Murabayashi said. The flag, known as Yosegaki Hinomaru, has been displayed at the museum aboard a WWII aircraft carrier since it was donated in 1994, according to museum director Steve Banta. He called the donation routine and said the museum has been unable to locate who gave the flag to the museum because of what he called record-keeping issues at the time.

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Toshihiro 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. For him, his father was a bespectacled man in an old family photo standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to war. On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a U.S. war museum where it had been on display for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, said: "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 museum director Steve Banta, who brought the flag to Tokyo.

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