Toshihiro Mutsuda was only five 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 search for the flag's original owner started in April when a museum visitor took a photo and asked an expert about the description that it had belonged to a "kamikaze" suicide pilot. When Shigeyoshi Mutsuda's grandson saw the photo, he sought help from the Obon Society, group co-founder Keiko Ziak said.
"After receiving the flag today, I earnestly felt that the war like that should never be fought again and that I do not wish anyone else to go through this sadness ," Toshihiro Mutsuda said. The shrine is controversial, as it includes convicted war criminals among those commemorated. Victims of Japanese aggression during the first half of the 20th century, especially China and the Koreas, see Yasukuni as a symbol of Japanese militarism. However, for the Mutsuda family, it's a place to remember the loss of a father and husband.
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