フィリピンのルソン島で戦死した石原力三さん。この写真が遺影となった＝撮影地不明
![米国から返還された日章旗を手に...]()
米国から返還された日章旗を手にする石原勝彦さん（左）と神座さん。164人分の寄せ書きがある＝郡上市白鳥町で
大平洋戦争末期の1945年にフィリピン・ルソン島で戦死した陸軍兵長石原力三さん（23）＝郡上市白鳥町那留（なる）出身＝の日章旗が、戦利品として持ち帰った米軍の元兵士の遺族から返還された。力三さんは未婚のまま出征し、きょうだいもみんな亡くなっている。78年ぶりの里帰りを果たした遺品は、13日に開く市戦没者追悼式で初めて公開される。
日章旗を受け取った元郵便局員石原勝彦さん（65）によると、力三さんは農家の6人きょうだいの長男として生まれた。戦時中は歩兵第63連隊に所属し、終戦間際の8月4日に戦死した。家を継いだ弟の忠治さんが勝彦さんの父で、6年前に90歳で亡くなるまで力三さんの供養を続けていたという。
連隊は旧満州（中国東北部）から台湾を経てフィリピンに向かい、全滅状態に陥った。激戦地で死んだ力三さんは一片の遺骨さえなく、重機関銃のそばで撮影された軍服姿の写真1枚だけが残されていた。
日章旗には「祝入営石原力三君」と書かれ、「祈武運長久」の文字の下に164人分の署名がある。日付は入っていないが、近所の人たちが協力して用意したらしい。旗には茶色に変色した染みがあり、血痕のようにも見える。勝彦さんは「平和な時代に育ったから、戦地に行くのが当然だった当時の生活は想像できない。まさか今になって伯父の遺品が戻ってくるとは思わなかった」と話す。
郡上市遺族会の神座（みざ）孝郎会長（80）によると、日章旗は米バージニア州の米軍兵士の遺族から、日本軍兵士の遺品を返還する活動をしている「OBON（おぼん）ソサエティ」＝オレゴン州＝に託された。日本遺族会は石原力三さんの名前を手がかりに、郡上市の出身者と判断。市遺族会白鳥支部長の原喜与美さん（76）が調査を進め、静かな山間部にある力三さんの生家を突き止めた。
自身も父を戦争で失っている神座さんは「日本からフィリピン、米国と長い旅をした日章旗が奇跡的に帰ってきた。力三さんもやっと、古里の郡上に戻ることができたのではないか」と話す。伯父が残した日章旗を手にした勝彦さんは、寺で供養してもらった上で、戦争の悲惨さを伝えるために市戦没者追悼式での展示に協力することを決めた。追悼式は13日午前10時半から、大和町のやまと総合センターで開かれる。
https://www.chunichi.co.jp/article/786639?rct=gifu
太平洋戦争中にフィリピン・レイテ島で戦死した滋賀県東近江市の門阪庄平さん（享年２２歳）が出征時に持っていたとみられる日章旗が米国で見つかり、終戦から７８年ぶりに遺族に返還された。戦地の無事を祈って寄せ書きされた友人らの名前が記されており、遺族は「これまで兄の遺品がなかった。まるで分身のよう」と話している。
庄平さんは２１歳で出征し、地元の神社で送り出される際に、肩に日章旗をかけて「弾に死んでも、病に決して死なん」と決意を述べたという。弟の 杢平もくべい さん（９２）は「父にしかられた私を慰めてくれる優しい兄だった」と振り返る。
返還された日章旗には「祈 武運長久 門阪庄平君」と大きく書かれ、何十名もの友人の名前が寄せ書きされていた。米兵が戦地から持ち帰ったものとみられ、米国で戦没者の遺品返還活動に取り組む民間団体から依頼を受けた県遺族会が、杢平さんを探し出して届けた。
８月２６日に大津市内で開かれた返還式には杢平さんと杢平さんの長女富美子さん（７０）が出席。三日月大造知事から旗を受け取った杢平さんは「父と母が待つ仏壇に供え、 冥福めいふく を祈ってやりたい」と旗を握りしめ、「戦争が二度と起こらぬよう語り継ぐことが遺族の使命だ」と話した。
太平洋戦争では、県内でも３万２７１５人が尊い命を落とした。返還式に先立ち、県が主催した「平和祈念県戦没者追悼式」では戦没者の冥福を祈って、参加者約６２０人が黙とうした。沖縄に物資を運ぶ輸送船で父が戦死したという今堀治夫・県遺族会会長（８２）は「かなしみの歴史を繰り返さない、繰り返させないと思いを新たにした」とあいさつした。
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/local/kansai/news/20230909-OYO1T50006/?fbclid=IwAR0Q-QSDNARryn7Sw4wIrhd-O7mvghTwHtuP-a-qsfZT2RPUOaTTqn2ToPo
８月２６日、滋賀県大津市にて執り行われました戦没者追悼式の後、東近江市出身の旧日本兵「門阪庄平」命の日章旗返還式がご遺族へ返還されました。
滋賀県の戦没者追悼式が26日、大津市にある県立体育館で開かれました。追悼式には、遺族ら関係者約620人が出席しました。
滋賀県の戦没者は、3万2715人。追悼式では、県遺族会の今堀治夫会長が「悲惨な悲しみの歴史を二度と繰り返さない、繰り返させない。戦争の愚かさと平和の尊さをかみしめて、次世代に語り継ぐ」と追悼の辞を述べました。このあと献花が行われ、出席した三日月知事や遺族らが、恒久平和を願っていました。
また追悼式の後、戦争遺留品の返還式が行われました。返還された日章旗は、1944年10月にフィリピンのレイテ島で、20代の若さで戦死した東近江市の門阪庄平さんのもので、三日月知事から弟の杢平さんに日章旗が手渡されました。
旗には「武運長久」の文字や庄平さんの友人の名前がびっしりと記され、陸軍へ入隊するために家を出発する際、庄平さんが肩にタスキがけにしていたものだということです。
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/9c19061b179063456af697cfb07cb09577ba1289
![News release from the USS Le...]()
--The Good Luck Flag Repatriation Ceremony will take place aboard the USS Lexington Museum on Thursday, July 20th, at 9:00am. This ceremony is open to the public.---
WHAT:
Japanese Good Luck Flag Repatriation Ceremony
WHERE:
USS Lexington Museum – Hangar Bay
WHEN:
Thursday, July 20, 2023
9:00AM
USS Lexington Museum is working in partnership with the OBON SOCIETY to repatriate the flag back to Japan for the flag to be reunited with the soldier’s surviving family members. OBON SOCIETY is a non-profit organization that over the past 13 years has repatriated more than 500 flags back to Japanese families and communities. The organization’s founders, Rex and Keiko Ziak, will act as representatives of the family to bring their long-lost patriarch home, including a ceremonial reuniting with his wife who recently passed at the age of 102. Representatives from OBON SOCIETY and the USS Lexington Museum will then accompany the flag on its journey back to Japan and the family.
https://usslexington.com/uss-lexington-museum-a-wwii-era-aircraft-carrier-will-return-japanese-flag-to-reunite-generations/?fbclid=IwAR3rxmlaH4u4PFzwm_VuUwnt8AD1HOGcoGGjj1wsOuLrl_L0v7o9R7k8Clo
きょうは、「終戦の日」です。戦後７８年、激しい戦場となった沖縄戦で亡くなった男性の日章旗が先日、北海道の遺族に届けられました。その家族の思いを取材しました。（2023年8月15日放送） #日章旗 #戦後７８年 #沖縄戦 #遺族 #戦死 #沖縄 #平和祈念公園 #遺品 #北海道 #ＳＴＶ
8月15日は終戦の日です。 戦後、アメリカに渡った旧日本兵の日の丸を遺族の元に返す取り組みを続ける男性に密着しました。
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2-ia8FiC9k&t=4s
The keepsake was returned to the family of a Japanese soldier who died in World War II
Toshihiro Mutsuda was making preparations for his mother’s funeral in late March when he made a miraculous discovery. His mother, Masae, had lived a long and full life. But most of those 102 years had been spent without Shigeyoshi, her husband and Mutsuda’s father, after Shigeyoshi died in the Second World War.
Shigeyoshi died in 1944 somewhere on the island of Saipan in the western Pacific Ocean, Japanese authorities told his family. His body was never recovered. Mutsuda, now 82, and his two siblings grew up with few memories of their father.
Then an acquaintance sent Mutsuda a photo. It showed a Japanese flag hanging in an American museum, covered in Japanese names written in black ink.
Mutsuda recognized those names. They were his relatives and family friends. Near the center, in a larger script, was Shigeyoshi’s name.
It felt like fate. Just as he was arranging to say goodbye to his mother, Mutsuda had discovered his father’s most treasured belonging: a Yosegaki Hinomaru flag, a keepsake Japanese soldiers carried for good luck in World War II, adorned with the names of their friends and family. He postponed the funeral, determined to reunite his family with the flag.
It was returned to Mutsuda and his siblings in a ceremony in Tokyo on Saturday, concluding an unlikely effort by a nonprofit and American and Japanese researchers to reconnect the family with a piece of their father.
“We are all so happy together finally,” Mutsuda told The Washington Post in a statement translated from Japanese.
News of Shigeyoshi’s flag only reached Mutsuda because of an offhand exchange between two historical researchers. Frank Thompson, an assistant director at the Naval History and Heritage Command, photographed the flag on a visit to the USS Lexington Museum in Corpus Christi, Tex., in February.
The USS Lexington, a World War II aircraft carrier, battled Japanese ships in the Pacific before being converted into a naval aviation museum in 1992. Its curators didn’t realize that it was now carrying a Japanese family’s treasure. Shigeyoshi’s flag had been donated to the Lexington in 1994, said Steve Banta, the museum’s executive director. There was no record of its donor.
The flag was described by the Lexington as the relic of a kamikaze pilot. Thompson sent the photo to a friend in Japan. The photo circulated between curious researchers there, who narrowed down its origin using a red seal on the flag unique to a shrine in the Gifu region. Eventually, they found the Mutsudas, who told them the museum’s label was incorrect. Shigeyoshi was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1943 and died a year later in Saipan at the age of 23, according to Thompson.
“I recognized immediately that picture of the flag was my father’s flag,” Mutsuda said. There, hung belowdecks in an American warship, was the closest remaining link to his father. But how could he get it back?
Mutsuda found someone else who understood what was at stake. Keiko Ziak saw her mother reduced to tears when her grandfather’s Yosegaki Hinomaru flag was returned to her family in 2007.
“My mother said, ‘[The] strong spirit of the grandfather really wanted to come home. So finally he came back to see us,’” Ziak recalled.
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Ziak’s flag was returned to her family by a collector from Toronto. Like Mutsuda’s, it had probably been recovered as a souvenir by Allied forces and brought back across the Pacific. Ziak and her husband, Rex, said there are many more.
“This item became the most popular souvenir of the whole Pacific theater,” Rex Ziak said. “They came home by the tens of thousands.”
The Ziaks, who live in Oregon, knew what returning the flags meant to bereaved Japanese families. They formed a nonprofit, Obon Society, to take on the challenge, accepting donated flags from American collectors and poring through records to match them with the Japanese families whose names were still inked on the fabric.
Mutsuda came to Obon Society in April with a slam-dunk case. He showed the Ziaks a black-and-white photo of his family — one where Mutsuda was only a toddler. Shigeyoshi loomed above him, carrying a flag. The writing on it matched the photo from the Lexington.
When the Ziaks contacted the museum, Banta was stunned to learn of the significance of his exhibit. But the former Navy helicopter pilot needed no convincing.
“We knew that this flag did not belong to us,” Banta said. “And we needed to return it to the family.”
The repatriation began on July 20 when staff at the Lexington removed the flag from its frame in a ceremony in the ship’s hangar bay. Banta and the Ziaks then accompanied the flag to Tokyo. On Saturday, they gathered at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese soldiers killed in the country’s wars, to return the flag to the Mutsuda siblings.
Masae — Shigeyoshi’s wife and the Mutsuda children’s mother — had traveled to the shrine yearly to remember her husband after the war, the Mutsudas told Rex Ziak. She made the trip once more this year with her children, who brought her cremated remains in an urn so she could be with them when they received the flag.
The Ziaks said Mutsuda’s story was a highlight among the roughly 500 flags they’ve been able to return to Japanese families so far. They want to scale up their work as the 80th anniversary of the end of the war approaches, Rex Ziak added. He advocated for a wider effort to return flags, with support from the U.S. government.
“Here’s an opportunity for America to reach out and touch these families, one by one, by returning the remains of their missing relatives,” Rex Ziak said. “It would be one of the most spectacular humanitarian gestures the world has ever seen.”
Mutsuda added that the repatriation was a heartening gesture of cooperation between American and Japanese organizations — and a reconciliation that his parents would have been glad to see.
“[Shigeyoshi’s] flag made us feel that my father and mother wanted to tell us, ‘Please do not repeat this horrible and painful experience [that] we had been through ever again,’” he said.
After the ceremony, the group joined Mutsuda and his siblings in a private room for lunch. Before they sat down with their bento boxes, the Mutsudas arranged their mother’s urn and their father’s flag next to each other on a shelf and bowed to pray.
Mutsuda imagined his parents deep in conversation, finally able to catch up on almost 80 years’ worth of stories together.
“We want to let both my parents [get] acquainted together as long as they want,” Mutsuda said. “Then when they are ready, we will put my mother’s ash into the temple in Kyoto for her departure to heaven to be with her husband forever.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/04/wwii-japanese-flag-returned-lexington/?fbclid=IwAR1WHuHW8kSIOvU-PTkK1g4caQcxSQc63uRn1tMCvgUwjqwccRp5am0FfY0
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フィリピンのルソン島で戦死した石原力三さん。この写真が遺影となった＝撮影地不明
米国から返還された日章旗を手にする石原勝彦さん（左）と神座さん。164人分の寄せ書きがある＝郡上市白鳥町で
