Portland, OR – Former U. S. Marine Marvin Strombo took the flag from fallen Japanese soldier Yasue Sadao while fighting on Saipan in 1944.
PORTLAND, OR — For 73 years, World War II veteran Marvin Strombo kept locked in a glass gun cabinet the silk Japanese flag he took from a fallen Japanese soldier while fighting on the island of Saipan in 1944. Like many soldiers at the time, Strombo took the flag as a war souvenir. This week, however, Strombo traveled more than 10,000 miles — from Portland to Japan — to return the flag to the soldier’s family, with help from the Obon Society, an Astoria-based nonprofit.
The Obon Society helps return to Japanese families the flags taken from fallen soldiers. Strombo’s flag, the society learned, belonged to Yasue Sadao, a Japanese soldier from a small mountain village 200 miles west of Tokyo. Strombo told Associated Press reporter Gillian Flaccus that he pulled the flag from Sadao’s jacket after finding the man on the outskirts of the Saipan town of Garapan. Sadao, Strombo said, had apparently been killed by mortar fire and was lying on his left side with a corner of the white flag poking from his jacket.
