Free Republic

Toshihiro Mutsuda was only 5 years old when he last saw his father, who was drafted by Japan's Imperial Army in 1943 and killed in action. For him, his father was a bespectacled man in an old family photo standing by a signed good-luck flag that he carried to war. On Saturday, when the flag was returned to him from a U.S. war museum where it had been on display for 29 years, Mutsuda, now 83, said: “It's a miracle." The flag, known as “Yosegaki Hinomaru,” or Good Luck Flag, carries the soldier's name, Shigeyoshi Mutsuda, and the signatures of...

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...