Quick update - more photos in the gallery

This won't be a long post, but I wanted to let everyone know that there are some additional photos in the Picasa Web gallery. Check out the Camp Maui, Documents and Mementos folders for the latest updates.

A letter from Mr. Nobutaka Hirai to his Friends from America

As I mentioned in the recent post regarding Mike West's gift, there was a copy of a letter from the son of a Japanese soldier. The text of that letter appears below. While it may be a long shot, I will try and contact Mr. Hirai and see if he would be willing or interested in helping with my efforts to return Grandpa's wartime mementos. Hopefully he still lives at the address on the letter!

A present from Mr. Mike West

This afternoon when I arrived home, I was welcomed with a wonderful present in the mail - a package from Mike West, one of the men who served with Grandpa Givan during the war. In the package was a letter, a couple issues of the Leatherneck magazine, the Fighting Fourth newsletter, a copy of a letter from the son of a Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima, and best of all, more photos. Of the half-dozen photos, only one was already a part of my collection, the rest will be scanned and hopefully available tomorrow or Wednesday.  One of the photos, while simply a photocopy of the original made me smile - Mike had written the names of the men on the back (George Minch Jr, Nazareth "Curly" Eannacone and himself), along with the location (Camp Maui, February 25, 1944, after the Marshall Island invasion) and at the bottom, the caption "Phil's camera work".

New for mobile users!

For all of you visiting the site on a smartphone, whether that be a Droid, iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Mobile, you can now enjoy a mobile version of the site. Using the browser on your phone, just go to http://awakeningthepast-wwii.blogspot.com and the software will take care of the rest.

Hopefully everything works right - I've tried to capture the "posts" portion of the site to make things a little easier.  The tool I'm using is free and offered by a company called Mobify (http://mobify.me/).  As I continue to work it, I may enhance the mobile design - right now, it's pretty simple.

Check things out and if you have any problems, definitely let me know.

Thanks again for your support,
Kyle

More Japanese treasures

Tucked away in small boxes among medals, Marine lapel pins, and other mementos from Grandpa Givan's time as a United States Marine, I found more treasures that I am working on scanning, photographing, and adding to the collection of war-time treasures featured on this site.

Grandpa Parker

While the content of the site to date has focused on Grandpa Givan, I do have some amazing photos, stories and mementos for Grandpa Parker as well.  The only problem - I don't personally have everything - most of it is tucked away in a safe place with Aunt Peg.  Another hope that I have for this site is to see if I can borrow things again and redo all of my original photos and scans.

For the time being, I have uploaded some of the photos from the 50th Army Reunion that Peg, Grant and I attended in August 2003.  It was a fun weekend and I had the opportunity to meet some of the guys that Grandpa served with.  The veterans and families were a great group of people and I'm glad that Peg invited me go along for the ride.  (And Grant, if you happen to read this, you are definitely lucky you survived the trip!)

Check out the Picasa photo gallery (link on the right) for photos from the 50th Army Reunion and enjoy!

Another resource from Dr. Kaji

Dr. Kaji and I continue to email back and forth and his latest correspondence recommended that I contact the Association of Iwo-Jima Japan, a site dedicated to returning items to the families of Japanese soldiers from World War II.  While the association must work through the Japanese Health Ministry - War Victims' Relief, they may provide a more "human-like communication".

The Ralstons

On Tuesday night I had the pleasure of speaking with Mrs. Betty Ralston, the wife of Wallace Ralston. I met the Ralstons on March 19, 2000 while I was working on my thesis, and it is a memory I still cherish ten years later.

It was by chance that I managed to even find them.  With nothing but the name "Wallace Ralston" written on the back of a few photos from Camp Maui to go on, I began scouring the Internet to see if anyone matching that name might have been Yahoo'ed (this might seem strange, but Google was just a start-up back then!), spidered, crawled, or indexed amongst the vastness of the world wide web.

World War II Memorial in Washington DC

In the summer of 2007, at the age of 30, I made my first trip to Washington DC.  At the time, I had been dating Kathleen for just over three months and we made the trip out to visit her mom and dad in northern Virginia.  For the entire day, she served as my tour guide, schlepping around in near 100 degree heat.  We visited all of the major sites and attractions - the Holocaust Museum, the Mall, Capitol, Smithsonian Museum, Vietnam Wall, Korean Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Botanical Gardens, the National Cathedral, and the World War II Memorial.

Traditional Japanese fan

A beautiful traditional Japanese fan was also among the items in the cardboard box simply labeled "Japan stuff".  On the front is the Japanese sun disc with the phrase "by all means, we will win" written on either side. A name, scribed in red ink, indicates that the fan belonged to someone with the family name of Kamishima. The lyrics of the songs are for a soldier on the battlefield, but little is known of this fan's origin.

Prayer flag prepared for Shinzo Furuya

Included in the box of mementos Grandpa kept tucked away in a closet were two Japanese prayer flags, which were the Japanese national flag known as the Hinomaru with prayers and greetings from family and friends.

Update: Search for the families

I received a response tonight from Dr. Yasuhiko Kaji, a retired physician from Toledo, Ohio. Dr. Kaji has spent more than 30 years collecting personal items from American veterans and their families and attempting to return those items to their owners. He reviewed the photos I had posted and provided a slightly different translation for the person for which I have the most information - Takeshi Maruyama. He indicated that the name likely reads "Takeyuki" instead of "Takeshi", but he did confirm that the letter was from Renko Maruyama, who is probably his sister.

Dr. Kaji offered to post the photos I have on his web site - http://www.hlswilliwaw.com/Nishiha/english.htm - and said I was on the right track by contacting the Office of Foreign Affairs - Planning Division of War Victims' Relief in Japan.

Based on the experiences of others who have taken this journey, it could take months, even years, for the agency to locate any family members, if they are able to find anyone at all. I'm on about day 5, so I've got a while to wait I think! In the mean time, I'm going to continue researching the items I have and I will be adding more to the site soon.

Letter from Renko to Takeshi (Takeyuki)

The letter below was from Renko and addressed to Takeshi (Takeyuki) Maruyama at a post office in Suga, 27, 5893 Western Division/District Troop. The stamps on the envelope are possibly generals from the time period. The address on the back of the letter is for Renko: Saitama-Ken, Saiwaite-machi (located north of Tokyo). Another translation for the address is: Satte Machi (Satte City), Saitama-ken.

Photos from the wallet of Takeshi (Takeyuki) Maruyama

Below are the photos from the wallet that Grandpa brought home from the Pacific.  These, along with the letter, prayer flags and a fan are the items I hope to return.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for Awakening the Past, my senior honors thesis completed as an undergraduate at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  This site, along with a Facebook group, a Picasa web gallery and the original thesis will serve as an ongoing research and discovery project focused on my grandfathers and their experiences before, during and after World War II.