Flag taken by Marine at Saipan draws attention
By Brandon Macz - The Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune via AP
Posted : Sunday Oct 25, 2009 17:17:58 EDT

LEWISTON, Idaho — It was during the Battle of Saipan in 1944 that Laverne Coulthard came to possess the flag. His squad had orders to cross Japanese lines to establish an observation unit on Mount Tapotchau.

“We had a lot of firepower and we had a squad of 14 men,” recalled the 86-year-old former Marine of his experience during World War II. “We had our firefight. Suddenly there was no more firing. They had all either died or run off.”

Except for a lone sniper who began another exchange of bullets, saving one bullet for himself, Coulthard said. He followed a member of his squad to the boulder where the sniper was stationed.

“When I came around [the boulder], he was just standing up and he had this flag in his hand,” he said. “He says, ‘This is yours ‘cause I already got one.”

The Japanese soldier kept the flag tucked inside his helmet, which he lay on the ground before committing suicide, which was not uncommon during the war, Coulthard said.

“Through the years I’ve thought about him,” he said of the soldier. “I was saddened when I looked down and saw him dead when he could have surrendered to us. It was an honor to die for the emperor [of Japan].”

Coulthard’s nephew, Steve Berntson, a Vietnam War veteran and former Marine, was looking through his uncle’s war chest five years ago when Coulthard expressed an interest in returning the flag.

“He didn’t have any idea how you would go about doing that,” said Berntson, who turned to a friend from Vietnam and his wife, who had lived in Japan. She had a Japanese friend who worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Both of them looked it over and deciphered many of the names that had signed. It wasn’t dedicated to one person.”

Without knowing the name of the dead soldier and having no luck through other contacts in Japan, Berntson had one last option.

“There’s a ... Web site in Japan where people in the United States have offered up pictures that they may have brought back home,” he said. “That is where it sat for a couple of years.”

Until it was found by Yasuyuki Ambe, from Nippon Hoso Kyokai, a public television station in Japan. The NHK program director from Kagoshima was researching for a project documenting the history of Japanese flags from World War II taken to the U.S.

Coulthard said he never imagined he would have a Japanese film crew in his home.

“I was really surprised,” he said about his first reaction to the proposed interview. “I never thought taking that flag out of the trunk would start what happened here. There’s a big difference between World War II and present-day Japanese. The mentality of the world has changed a lot.”

Last week’s interview with Coulthard was conducted by production manager Kaoru Emura, who also acted as Ambe’s interpreter.

“What [Ambe] wants to express in the program to the Japanese themselves is they are losing interest in the war stories,” she said. “They don’t even know that there are many flags in the United States. The Japanese veterans don’t talk about the war at all. In [the] Japanese Constitution, war is prohibited.”

Education about World War II is very limited in Japan, Emura said. But in a country that does not talk about war, how are documentaries about it made?

“Whether it’s right or it’s wrong,” Emura said, “is very controversial. The basic attitude of the program is, there is the facts, how do you feel?”

The last interview for the film crew before editing the documentary, Emura said it was a “rare experience” for Ambe to be able to meet with an American veteran like Coulthard.

“What he felt strongly about the interviewing with Mr. Coulthard,” Emura said, “was for the people in the wartime battlefields, the war never ends. There is a part of their lives they never talk about or with their families. That’s the tragedy of it.”

The 30-minute documentary will air in Japan Dec. 8, which is the date Pearl Harbor was attacked — adjusting for the time difference in Japan. While the date is significant, Emura said, few Japanese are expected to make the correlation.

“The people who know what’s the meaning of Dec. 8 is less than 20 percent, not a lot of people, especially among the younger generation,” she said.

Ambe will take Coulthard’s flag back to Japan with the hope resources will produce a signatory or family member to claim the flag.

Coulthard said he has no plans to meet with the dead soldier’s loved ones should any be found.

“I didn’t really want to tell them how he died,” he said. “If the question came up and they were found, I would just tell them he died in action. Fortunately, I’m not going to have to do that.”

Ellie