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Translate some words from Japanese flag

Polikarpov

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8 Jul 2014
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Hello my friends!
Three years ago I started to be interested in Japanese history, but the great part related to the WWII. Since then, I have been collecting some medals from that period, and some months ago this flag, known as Hinomaru Yosegaki, and I have been trying to translate the words, but at the end I given up, and looking for information about how to translate Japanese, I arrived to this interesting page!

Thank you!! :emoji_grinning:

さようなら !

IMG_8120-1.jpg
 
upper
ジョニー トーマス
Johnny Thomas

left
東京
Tokyo

right
日本横須賀
Yokosuka Japan

lower
西暦1945 十一月十七日
November 17, 1945

That's not Hinomaru Yosegaki. (Seems like a forgery or souvenir.)
 
Thank you Toritoribe!

It's a pitty if this flag is a forgery, I had the hopeful it were original and firstly I thought that this flag could be acquired in 1945 by some american soldier called Johnny Thomas, and he wrote his name, the date and the area where he served or fought, but it is only that, a little bit of hopeful, because do not have any sense the english name "Johnny Thomas" in a japanese flag... obviously.

Thank you for your kind help!
 
it's plausible that it was an American soldier's souvenir from that time, and highly unlikely that he wrote that himself unless he was a calligraphy student (and how many American GIs in 1945 were really into Japanese language and calligraphy?).

By definition, a hinomaru yosegaki would have been made by family and friends for a Japanese soldier going off to war, and would have had well-wishing messages written vertically, radiating from the sun. By November 1945, the war was pretty much over and the allied forces were already collecting souvenirs in Tokyo.
 
The war was more than "pretty much" over in November of 1945....
 
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