The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Failed Attempt to Return Japanese Photos-- Part 2": Rising Sun Flags and Hachimaki

Bob Brown discovered a war artifacts repatriation program that the Japanese government has instituted to return items such as the photos to Japanese families.  He went to the Japanese Consulate General in Chicago who said tat he would make copies and let brown keep the originals, but Bob said to keep them.  If no one claimed them, perhaps they could be put into a museum or something like that.

He sought more information on the program and from the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., learned that they didn't know when the artifact return program had started or how successful it had been.  They only had numbers from 2003 tp 2-13 when there were nearly 2600 inquiries like Brown's, and of those just over 1,000 artifacts had been identified and returned to their families.

The most common souvenirs are Japanese Rising Sun flags which were carried into battle by most soldiers.  Other popular ones were the stylized ceremonial headbands known as "hachimaki" that many wore.

Conciliation.  --GreGen

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