‘Two modern families,’ a 70-year-old mystery and a soldier laid to rest

Deseret.com ^ | 2/17/2023 | Collin Leonard

[Saije]

The year is 1968. The sea breeze tousled the sod of an Okinawa golf course. Dick Johnson stood on the fairway, 9-iron in hand, eyeing the green. The outing was a break from his high intensity work in the back of a B-52 bomber, manning the electronic defense systems while his crew flew missions to Vietnam...

Johnson gazed at the concrete mounds bordering the golf course, originally built to fortify the island from the Allied invasion decades earlier. He imagined his father, Richard W. Johnson, landing on these same beaches in 1945, taking part in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific campaign...

This moment on Okinawa flooded back to Johnson’s memory when his son brought him an old Japanese flag found tucked away in the family keepsakes of their Lehi home. The flag had handwritten characters circling the bright red sun in the middle...

For over 70 years, the Myochin family’s fate looked like the losing side of this coin flip. Their eldest son, Norito, volunteered to join the Japanese Imperial Navy...He was 22 when he was killed in action. Not a trace of him came home...

Then the Myochin family was notified of a flag, or yosegaki hinomaru.

It was the flag held by the Johnsons in Lehi, Utah...The Johnson family had mailed their flag to the Obon Society, which specialized in the collection and return of these unique artifacts, in hopes the family could be identified. Translators identified the names on the flag, tracing it back to Norito.

After seven decades, the Myochins learned that Norito died on the island of Peleliu, that this object was carefully taken and preserved by Richard Johnson for years and passed on to his children...”

[SunkenCiv]

[SauronOfMordor]

There were plans for a ground invasion of the Japanese homeland that would have resulted in a HUGE number of American casualties.

Most likely, Japanese civilians would have been issued grenades and pistols and told to take an American soldier with them, like the later Vietcong and Palestine trick of using children as assassins.

Given American attitudes at the time, that would have resulted in the extermination of the entire Japanese population.

[SauronOfMordor]

You forgot to include your ping list