Mrs. R. G. Conder and Flag from Guadalcanal

Creator

Preview

Identifier

20031531

Description

Mrs. R. G. Conder and Japanese Flag from Guadalcanal.A woman standing in front of a wall with a large wooden pendulum clock above her and to the left of the photo. The right is obscured by very dark paneling. She is standing next to a bentwood office chair holding a tattered Japanese flag with Asian writing on it. She is wearing a paisley dress with a broach at the neckline. Her nails are polished and she is wearing a ring on her left hand.Clipping:"Wife Gets Jap[anese] Flag From Guadalcanal, but Will Have to Wait for "Story Behind"When Ralph G. Conder, boatswain's mate second class in the Seabees, comes home from Guadalcanal, he's going to have a story to tell. His wife, Mrs. R. G. Conder, 1220 Kings Highway, has the object on which the story hinges, but she'll have to wait for Conder to supply the details.'I'm sending you a very valuable souvenir,' Conder wrote recently. 'There's a long story behind it, and I'll tell you about it when I get back.'When her overseas package arrived, Mrs. Conder unwrapped a battered British tobacco tin, and pulled out of it a large Japanese flag. Spotted with stains that may be blood and spattered with uniform holes that may have been made by bullets or shrapnel, the Rising Sun standard is heavily inscribed with Oriental [Asian] characters.But the story is not in the writings on the flag. Dr. C. A. Burch, missionary to China for 34 years and now adjunct professor of history at TCU [Texas Christian University], made a partial translation of the writings, which he found to be mostly in Chinese, rather than Japanese. 'It is the custom in Japan to write the most important words in Chinese characters,' he explained.The large symbols across the top of the flag Dr. Burch translates as a military motto, 'Long Live the Military Transportation,' or "The Military Convoy Forever." The upper right hand character mans 'to present,' and the next three, reading down, give the name of the flag's owner, followed by two honorific titles. Radiating out from the red sun in the middle are autographs of military friends of the owner, sometimes accompanied by the regiment of the signer.Dr. Burch, who will teach Chinese and a course on the Far East at TCU this Winter, says he say many similar service flags in the possession of Japanese officers while he was directing a refugee shelter for women and children in Japanese-held Hofie in the Yangeze Valley [China] for 10 months in 1938. He came into direct contact with thousands of Jap[anise] soldiers and was interviewed by several generals.Mrs. Conder is a secretary to the legal firm of Samuels, Brown, Herman & Brown. Her husband has been overseas since last January."Stamped: Star-Telegram Eve. Oct. 20, 1943.For more information about the Japanese traditions behind this kind of flat, see the Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-marine-took-a-flag-from-a-dead-japanese-soldiers-body-seventy-three-years-later-its-back-with-the-soldiers-family/2017/08/15/e8dbb448-810b-11e7-9e7a-20fa8d7a0db6_story.html

Archival Date

1943-10-19

Collection Name

Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection

Collection Number

AR406-6-296

Original Format

Negatives, Black & White

File Format

JPG

Rights

Rights held by The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections. Any use of content downloaded or printed from this page is limited to non-commercial personal or educational use, including fair use as directed by U.S. copyright laws. For more information or for reproduction requests, please contact UTA Special Collections by emailing spcoref@uta.edu.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Subjects

Japanese wartime souvenir; Clocks & watches; Dresses; War Souvenirs