The Collection of Autographs on My Father's Flag　（by Sanraru-tei）

　
At the end of last year, I happened to open my mother's old wardrobe. My mother is 99 years old and this wardrobe has been left alone for years in her room without being touched.
Inside, I found a national flag (the Rising-Sun) with many signatures on it. It was the one presented to my father (1899-1987) when he was drafted.

At that time, to those who received Akagami (a sheet of call-up paper, so called Red Paper), a national flag with hand writings whishing fortune in the war and safe return from battlefields was presented by their relatives, acquaintances and friends. Any soldier used to put on it when he was sent to the front.
I did not know at all there was such a flag in my house, so I was very much surprised when I found it.

The date; 25, March 1945, was written on it.
My father was an office worker of a shipping company at that time. He was already 42 years old, so when his call-up paper was sent to him, he was surprised and mumbled, "I think our country is so critical that they need to send a red paper even to me". Mother told me the fact later.
I was in a 6th grade at an elementary school and believed firmly that Japan can not lose the war by no means.

The sentence written on the flag looked like a Chinese poem by a famous scholar; Yoshida Shouin.
46 names signed on the flag were the president and coworkers of those days. When I asked about them, my mother still remembered some of them.

My late father (reserve 2nd lieutenant) was drafted putting this flag on, and left for his new assignment as the vice-director of a prisoner's camp for US soldiers, located in Hirosaki (at the north area of Japan).
After the war, my father's superior in the camp was found guilty at the military court (B, C class) held by the winners of war. He was sent to prison. However, my father escaped prosecution and could returned home early.

My mother told me that my father had worried about for a long time the different situation between his superior and him. The thought of his superior sent to jail had been weighing hard on him for long years, as my mother told me later.

My father's flag, never being shown to children, kept sleeping deep in a drawer of my mother's wardrobe until I found it.

Sanraku-tei wrote this memorandum on a day after 60 years after the war.