US veteran returns dead soldier’s flag
Tatsuya Yasue and his sister, Sayoko Furuta, were left with nothing of their older brother after he was killed in the Pacific during the Second World War.
The Japanese authorities gave them a box containing rocks as a substitute for his body, which was not recovered.
But yesterday, after 73 years of grieving, the siblings finally had something belonging to their brother returned.
Marvin Strombo, 93, an American war veteran, had taken the flag from the body of Japanese soldier Sadao Yasue as a souvenir during the war. But he soon saw it was no ordinary flag. It was covered in good-luck messages, wishing Yasue a safe return from the war.
Mr Strombo vowed to return the flag one day to the family of the fallen soldier and in a moving ceremony at Higashishirakawa village in central Japan, he fulfilled his pledge.
Mr Yasue, 89, buried his face in the flag and smelt it. Then took the hands of the man who had brought this treasure home and kissed them.
Ms Furuta, 93, covered her face and wept silently as the flag was placed in her lap.
“I was so happy that I returned the flag,” Mr Strombo said. “I can see how much the flag meant to her. It meant everything in the world to her.”
The 180 signed messages from friends and neighbours from Yasue’s mountain village helped Mr Strombo find its rightful owner. Mr Yasue recognised the names “The flag will be our treasure,” he said.
He last saw his older brother the day before he left for the South Pacific in 1943. Months after the war ended, the family was told he had died somewhere in the Mariana Islands, presumably on July 16, 1944, the day Saipan fell. He was 25.
“That’s all we were told about my brother,” Mr Yasue said.
Mr Strombo was able to provide some answers. He said he had found Yasue’s body in a village in Saipan, that it had no severe wound and that he looked peaceful.