On October 20th, 1944, as World War 2 raged on, the 24th Infantry Division, along with other units of the U.S. Army, made an amphibious landing on the beaches of Leyte Island in the Philippines. This began the eight month campaign of battles to liberate the Philippines from 3 ½ years of brutal Japanese occupation. Included in this fight were the young men of I Company of the 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment. When the 8 months of grueling, exhausting jungle fighting finally ended in June of 1945 these young men began training and preparing for what everyone knew was coming next, the invasion of mainland Japan. The fighting on mainland Japan was expected to cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. casualties. Thankfully, the Japanese surrendered and World War 2 ended just two months before the planned invasion of Japan, scheduled for November 1st, 1945. Many of the exhausted but relieved young men of I Company were sent home from the Philippines while others went to Japan, not in combat, but as a peaceful occupying force. Along the way, beginning in the Philippines and continuing on to Japan, a captured Japanese flag; a souvenir, a trophy of war, was signed by 189 U.S. Army infantrymen of I Company. The specific history of the flag; where it came from, who it belonged to, and where it was kept in the U.S. for many years is not known, but in 1999 a new chapter and a new remarkable story of this flag began in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Below is that story that remembers and celebrates the brave young men of I Company, brothers-in-arms, that served together in that long-ago, far-away war and now also, many decades later, the families that these men came home and raised.
BRADFORD, PENNSYLVANIA, 1999 TO PRESENT
Bradford, Pennsylvania is located amid the hills of western Pennsylvania on the NY state border. In 1999 my husband was delivering auto parts to a garage in Limestone NY. While he was there a lady came in with a box of rags for the garage owner who started to rip up the rags. As he neared the bottom of the box he pulled out this folded 3 ½ foot by 5 ½ foot Japanese flag. He carefully unfolded the flag, looked at it, then he asked if anyone wanted it or he was going to burn it. My husband brought it home and the story begins…..
At that time in 1999 a friend of ours, a Vietnam Vet, had an Army/Navy store here in town and we loaned him the flag to hang in his store. In August of 2014 we received a call that the Army/Navy store was closing and he wanted to know if we wanted the flag back. We said yes! Once the flag was back home and spread out on a table I was in awe looking at it again and I knew immediately what I needed to do.
With the help of our daughter Melissa, we started writing down all the names and addresses that were on the flag and then I took close up pictures of each name. The more pictures I took the more connected I felt and the more I knew that these men/families needed to be found. There is a total of 189 names on the flag. Some with complete address, some just names. Our strategy at first in trying to contact families was an alphabetical order search, then it turned to odd names, then it was just luck of the draw. Some days a name just popped out at us and we thought that this was the day I will find this family. Some days we found as many as three or four families, some days we found none.
With the help of a few military sites, internet searches, on line phone records, ancestry.com and newspapers.com and other sources, we have been lucky in locating almost all the families. At the time of this writing there are 11 men still alive and the search will continue until we have exhausted all efforts in finding all 189 families.
Once we connect with a family we ask for copies of the discharge records or other paperwork to confirm that the man was part of the Army 34th infantry, 24th division. This tells us that the man fought in the Philippine Islands and/or Japan. Most of the men were from I company, some also K and C company. We have also been fortunate to find some military articles on line as proof of them being attached to the flag. We are sure the flag originated in the Philippines then traveled to Japan. The proof of that is that some men were only in the Philippines and some were in both the Philippines and Japan and some only in Japan. (Copies of discharge papers and family record prove that.)
How the flag made its way to the United States then to this area on the PA/NY state boarder is a mystery. In speaking to the families, none of them ever remember hearing many stories from their loved one about WW2 let alone about signing this flag. In speaking to the men that are alive they all say they signed numerous flags during that time. Many families have smaller signed flags by both Japanese and US service men. When the Japanese man went into battle they carried a small flag in their breast pocket that was usually had well wishes written from their families and upon death or capture the American servicemen took the flags as spoils of war. For additional information on this flag, please visit the Facebook page entitled: The Names on the Flag
Debbie Reynolds Anthony
The Names on the Flag 