War souvenir symbol of healing among nations

By YUZURU J. TAKESHITA0

As we approach the end of this year of the summit, aimed at reducing tension among nations, I have a beautiful story to share with my friends and neighbors. It is a story of healing among peoples across nations once at war with each other. It is a story that stirs the deepest of human sentiments and rekindles one’s faith in the goodness of fellow men and women, a story not yet finished but nearing a beautiful conclusion.

Early in November, I received a call from a Professor Tom Sawyer, just recently retired from the University of Michigan, asking for help in locating the next of kin of a Japanese soldier whose flag he has had for 43 years. He had obtained it from a British soldier while serving as an ambulance driver with the American Field Services, attached to the British 14th Army in Burma during World War II.

Sawyer sought me out after reading in The Ann Arbor News (Nov. 4) about how I was able recently to locate the relatives of six victims of a Japanese-made balloon bomb explosion that occurred in 1945 in the mountains near Bly, Ore. He had wanted to return the flag to its rightful owner for some time but did not know how to go about it until he read this account.

The flag, a rising sun, that he brought to me to examine is soiled and black from exposure to the elements in the jungles of Burma. I was able, however, to read the name of the soldier to whom the flag was dedicated, along with the signatures of eight well-wishers as they sent him off to war.

Immediately, I sent the name and a picture of Professor Sawyer holding the flag to several sources in Japan for possible assistance in locating someone related to the soldier.

On Pearl Harbor Day (ironically), I received word from Japan that the officials of the Ministry of Health and Welfare confirmed the name of the soldier, Asajiro Igarashi, in their files of the war dead and located his widow living in Matsudo City, just east of Tokyo. I was further informed that Igarashi is listed as having died in battle on Sept. 21,1944.

Photo:

Sawyer and Japanese flag

Sawyer was delighted that we could locate someone to whom he can return the flag. He was visibly moved when he learned that he was given the flag only a few days after Igarashi’s death and his memoir that it was on Sept. 22, 1944 that he set out with his jeep ambulance towards a town called Sittuang on the Chindwin River where the Japanese forces had crossed in massive retreat, leaving behind their fallen comrades along the way. It was during this drive near Sittuang that he came across the British soldier who gave him the flag, apparently taken from the body of, now we know, Asajiro Igarashi.

It is heartwarming that Sawyer, who, according to his memoir, witnessed helplessly the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and later served as a volunteer ambulance driver in one of the bloodiest campaigns of that war, feels this deep compassion to want to return what was for him a sentimental souvenir to its rightful owner, the family of Igarashi, once his adversary in the cruel circumstance of a war between nations.

In the balloon bomb episode, several women of Japan who were mobilized as high school girls in 1944 to build the balloons to which bombs were attached and sent across the Pacific, having learned that one of their creations had killed five children and a minister’s pregnant wife on a Sunday school picnic in May 1945, folded one thousand paper cranes and wrote messages of condolence and apology for their part in causing, albeit indirectly, these deaths, the only casualty due to war action on the continent of the United States.

In response to that gesture, Sawyer has come forth to return the flag of a fallen Japanese soldier to his family. As one who by a series of coincidences came to play an intermediary’s role in the delivery of the thousand paper cranes that symbolize peace and healing to the relatives of the balloon bomb victims, I am elated beyond words to be able to serve, once again, as an intermediary this time to return the Japanese flag to Mrs. Igarashi, who has already been informed of Sawyer’s warm humanity.

To her, it represents a homecoming at last of her husband whose spirit has been wandering in distant places in the form of the flag which he was carrying at the time of his death in the Jungles of Burma 43 years ago.

I am at present searching for the most suitable way to make the delivery and at the same time to honor and celebrate Professor Sawyer’s beautiful spirit.

Yuzuru J. Takeshita is a professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan. Takeshita was born in California and, along with thousands of Japanese ancestry (citizens and noncitizens alike), was interned during World War II in a Northern California concentration camp.