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My grandfather passed and we found a box of WWII items, one of which is pretty amazing (1 Viewer)

The flag is stunning.  That really could be a museum piece.  It would also be a hell of a story if you could return some of those items to family members in Japan.

 
Worm said:
I don't think he kept in touch with anyone from the Marine Corps post-war.
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my FIL still talks to a couple of guys he served with.  it's great to hear them bust his balls.  they call him willy after his last name, allegedly.  

 
If you know his Marine Corp Unit, there might be a Veterans group out there that still has some old timers in it...perhaps they could help as well.

If you have his military records, and specifically his DD-214, that would tell you about his whole military career.

 
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Thunderlips said:
Be kind of cool to try to figure out who it belongs to and then try to find his descendents to give it back to. 
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A friend of mine who's grandmother died found a purple heart in her attic belonging to her grandmother's first husband.  She had a name and birth/death years, and using Ancestry and the googlemachine I was able to find a living relative with a Facebook page to connect her to.  It was pretty cool to know that it was going to end up back in the hands of a descendant. 

 
For free translation of short passages (like on the backs of the photos), you can make an account at boards.straightdope.com and post a query in their General Questions section.

The large characters at the top of the flag -- the second character is shi "four".

I find it interesting that the back of Photo 4 has only kanji (Chinese characters adapted to Japanese), but no native Japanese characters (hiragana or katakana). I wonder if that's meaningful.

 
My brother and sister in-law live in Tokyo.  I will send it to them and see what they say.

 
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This is awesome, I text my buddy a link to the reddit page that is fluent in Japanese to see if he'd take a look at it and translate some.

 
Worm said:
My grandfather served in WWII for the US Marine Corps. He told us a few things about his time in WWII while he was alive, but preferred not to talk much about it. He had mentioned over the years that he he was stationed on or passed through Saipan and Tinian in the Mariana Islands...
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My Dad fought at Saipan and Tinian in a Marine division (amphib). Your grandfather and my dad may have been there at the same time.

My Dad (almost) never talked about it.

- eta - - For those who don't know: Saipan and Tinian lasted almost 2.5 months and almost 50,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in an area roughly the size of Manhattan (guessing that's right, these are two small islands right next to each other). Total captured was around 1200 to give you an idea how fiercely those ... people fought. - Some really bad things happened there.

Good luck and God Bless.

 
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Just curious, why did you wait so long to post this? That imgur says it was created October 2015.

 
Worm said:
My grandfather served in WWII for the US Marine Corps. He told us a few things about his time in WWII while he was alive, but preferred not to talk much about it. He had mentioned over the years that he he was stationed on or passed through Saipan and Tinian in the Mariana Islands, and that he was on a ship that transported one of the bombs. He also told us that he was medically discharged because he threw a grenade in the heat of battle incorrectly and threw out his elbow (ha!). We also knew that he had received the Bronze Star, which is shown in the attached image album. Grumpa, as me and my sister (lovingly) called him growing up, passed in late 2015.

In the process of sorting through his things after he died we found a box of items from WWII that neither my mother or myself knew about. It contained ribbons from his service, photos with writing on the back, and a flag.

The flag is a Japanese flag which my grandfather presumably (total guess on my part) recovered off of a fallen Japanese soldier. The flag contains a large amount of Japanese writing, an amazing depiction of a tiger, and hand prints, which I can only guess belonged to the Japanese soldier's family.

I was at a loss when we found these. I can only wonder who the women (and man) in the pictures are and why my grandfather saved them all these years. And the flag just blows my mind. I would love to know what it says.

I post this here because I thought the flag in particular was an amazing glimpse into both sides of the war. And I'm curious as to some of the other items.
Can anyone identify the top two ribbons? I've done a little research and seem to have found what the bottom set of three ribbons are, but not the top two.
What do the pictures say/who are they? Memento pictures from Japanese soldiers?

What is the flag's background? Translation (-I think I'll post to a translation sub as well)? Am I right that it was a memento taken to war?

Link to album: http://imgur.com/a/EBmef

I just posted this over to reddit in order to see if I could get any success with a translation - head over and give me an upvote to get a little help if you are a redditor.

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/5qj1rc/my_grandfather_passed_and_we_found_a_box_of_wwii/
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Was he with the 4th, or the 2nd?

 
Spin said:
Just curious, why did you wait so long to post this? That imgur says it was created October 2015.
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Good question! I had back surgery that December, separated from my wife in March, and another back surgery in April. They just got lost in the shuffle of life for a while.

 
Doug B said:
I find it interesting that the back of Photo 4 has only kanji (Chinese characters adapted to Japanese), but no native Japanese characters (hiragana or katakana). I wonder if that's meaningful.
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I noticed the Chinese characters as well. I'm curious if the writing was somehow intermingled at that time.
Other than the backs of photos 1 & 6, it appears to be mostly Chinese. Even the flag.

 
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EYLive said:
I noticed the Chinese characters as well. I'm curious if the writing was somehow intermingled at that time.
Other than the backs of photos 1 & 6, it appears to be mostly Chinese. Even the flag.
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Interesting

 
In SID's link there is discussion that the characters in that flag had similar Chinese looking characteristics, and it sounds like written Japanese may have evolved from that time period.  

 
Hey worm. That's super cool. When my grandfather passed away I got all his stuff. There's a thread on here someplace. 

Your grandfather was a Marine. They were the first to hit those island and are some of the hardest, baddest men who ever walked the earth. You should be very proud. 

Good luck on your search and sorry to hear about the other curveballs life has thrown your way the past year or so. 

 
Do any military guys (or non, i guess) have feelings similar to this reddit comment?

"The thought of my family doing something like that with something that I brought back from deployment seems so callous and makes me feel profoundly disappointed. Like they would care more about the family of the enemy than they do about the struggle we went through. I feel a little sick just thinking about it. Obviously, I'm not your grandfather, and I don't know what he was like, I'm just telling you how that would make me feel. "

 
So i work for a Japanese company based in Orange County. I am going there feb 6th.  I will have someone in the office translate what it says if it has not already been done.  We have one older dude, mid 50's, who may know about the flag.  I will ask him.

 
Worm said:
Do any military guys (or non, i guess) have feelings similar to this reddit comment?

"The thought of my family doing something like that with something that I brought back from deployment seems so callous and makes me feel profoundly disappointed. Like they would care more about the family of the enemy than they do about the struggle we went through. I feel a little sick just thinking about it. Obviously, I'm not your grandfather, and I don't know what he was like, I'm just telling you how that would make me feel. "
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Seems like they jumped to this conclusion based on nothing. I would dismiss the comment.

 
Worm said:
Do any military guys (or non, i guess) have feelings similar to this reddit comment?

"The thought of my family doing something like that with something that I brought back from deployment seems so callous and makes me feel profoundly disappointed. Like they would care more about the family of the enemy than they do about the struggle we went through. I feel a little sick just thinking about it. Obviously, I'm not your grandfather, and I don't know what he was like, I'm just telling you how that would make me feel. "
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  I kind understand a little bit of what he saying. When you said you were going to return it to the ancestors it didn't sit right with me but that doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do.  There's not a PC way to tell you this but knowing my grandfather and the many many he served with they just wouldn't be keen about returning these items to their enemy. 

If your grandfather wanted the items that he took off his enemy he would have done it himself. 

I'm only giving you my opinion on how I know my grandfather would feel because you asked.  I was supremely close to my grandfather. He was like a father to me. I loved that man. He also wasn't the most "enlightened". How he felt might not be the "correct" way to feel but that's how he would have felt. 

 
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Wasn't asked but my Dad was with the 4th at Saipan & Tinian and no way from here to eternity would he return them. I know not asked, feel obligated to say it though.

 
I strongly recommend you listen to the audiobook by  E.B. Sledge called "the old breed". It's about the sergeants experiences as he saw them first hand with his stint in the Marines in the Pacific. It's basically saving Private Ryans first 15 minutes throughout the entire book.

Go read or listen to that book and then decide if you want to return those items.

if you like the Audible stuff, which I really,  really recommend, I suggest the one narrated by George Wilson.

 
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Worm said:
Do any military guys (or non, i guess) have feelings similar to this reddit comment?

"The thought of my family doing something like that with something that I brought back from deployment seems so callous and makes me feel profoundly disappointed. Like they would care more about the family of the enemy than they do about the struggle we went through. I feel a little sick just thinking about it. Obviously, I'm not your grandfather, and I don't know what he was like, I'm just telling you how that would make me feel. "
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 Stupid response. Imho. 

 
STEADYMOBBIN 22 said:
I strongly recommend you listen to the audiobook by  E.B. Sledge called "the old breed". It's about the sergeants experiences as he saw them first hand with his stint in the Marines in the Pacific. It's basically saving Private Ryans first 15 minutes throughout the entire book.

Go read or listen to that book and then decide if you want to return those items.

if you like the Audible stuff, which I really,  really recommend, I suggest the one narrated by George Wilson.
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Thanks @Steadymobbin i just downloaded the audio book.  I love ww2 history and no little about the pacific theater.  Looking forward to listening to this :)

 
Worm said:
Do any military guys (or non, i guess) have feelings similar to this reddit comment?

"The thought of my family doing something like that with something that I brought back from deployment seems so callous and makes me feel profoundly disappointed. Like they would care more about the family of the enemy than they do about the struggle we went through. I feel a little sick just thinking about it. Obviously, I'm not your grandfather, and I don't know what he was like, I'm just telling you how that would make me feel. "
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Nah.

 
Very cool story.  I can understand the Reddit comment to some degree, but that isn't how I feel about it.  My grandpa served in WW2 as a B-24 pilot in Europe and got shot down.  He didn't really like to talk about it very much either.  Can't imagine the balls it would take to do what these guys did.

 
EYLive said:
Doug B said:
I find it interesting that the back of Photo 4 has only kanji (Chinese characters adapted to Japanese), but no native Japanese characters (hiragana or katakana). I wonder if that's meaningful.
Click to expand...
I noticed the Chinese characters as well. I'm curious if the writing was somehow intermingled at that time.
Other than the backs of photos 1 & 6, it appears to be mostly Chinese. Even the flag.
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Kanji is still used today alongside the two native kana character sets. But kanji was more common in the Japanese writing of the era.

It's not at all unusual to see the mixed character sets like on all the other photos - that's typical Japanese writing. It's just that Photo 4 that's missing the kana altogether.

 
My 94 yo uncle, the oldest & last surviving of his siblings, was a landing boat driver.  He was in the coast guard, and when he got to the Midway the Navy made them head in first.  He said he was always the first boat in, and the first one out to pick up more troops.  It wasn't like D day though, the real hero's were the infantry.  You have to flip a switch to be able to do that.  The same switch that would rationalize taking a skull, pics, souvenirs, etc.

 
Very cool story!

You lovingly called your Grandfather, Grumpa. I met a man 14 years ago. He was a WWII vet and was a belly gunner in a B17. His plane was shot down at the Battle of the Bulge. He was a POW till the war was over. Apparently he was very difficult to get along with. He didn't share much but that man and your grandfather went through more than I could ever imagine! He internalized his feelings and never had a very good relationship with his kids and grandkids and they didn't understand him, it was pretty sad when he died. 

It seems like (from your brief overview) you had a decent relationship with him. Enjoy learning more about your Grumpa, no doubt a hero! 

 
As for the reddit comment.   Worms grandpop "stole" them.  You took that stuff from the enemy it's still not yours.  That flag could be a death letter ....

I'm not saying worms grandpop was wrong just stating the other side of the coin

 
belljr said:
As for the reddit comment.   Worms grandpop "stole" them.  You took that stuff from the enemy it's still not yours.  That flag could be a death letter ....

I'm not saying worms grandpop was wrong just stating the other side of the coin
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You say stole, I say earned.

 
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