Takeyuki Maruyama has an aunt

Today started out like a typical Saturday...rolled out of bed, stumbled around the house for a little while and then commenced the running of errands. After a good workout at the gym, I headed home and hoped to find a package on the doorstep from Google with some good techno-toys, but instead, I found another letter from Japan in the mailbox.  The letter was different than the previous three - it was much thicker. I could hardly wait to get inside out of the rain and open it up, anxious to read the results of the agency's investigation.

The contents of the envelope did not disappoint.

Another family found

Summer is upon us and the hustle and bustle of traveling, yard work and a number of other projects have unfortunately delayed the most recent news and development with my search for families in Japan. Almost a month ago, on May 11, I received another letter from Japan, letting me know they had located the surviving family members of Lance Corporal Toyosaku Karatsu, seen in the photo after the break. 

In need of some help

As everyone following this blog knows, one of the driving forces behind my research is the desire to return the photos, flags, and personal memories home to the families of the Japanese soldiers who carried them into battle during the war. So far, I have been able to return two items - the prayer flag and a photo. There are still about 13 individual items left and I think I need some help.

A second letter, a second son

Just twenty four days after the first letter arrived from Japan, notifying me that the son of Shinzo Furuya had been located, a second letter was waiting for me in the mailbox today after work.

Another son has been located.

Letter from Beatrice to Mike West

Today's post is just a quick update to the one from the weekend - scans of the original letter from Beatrice Givan to Mike West are now available after the break.

Thank you again Mike for saving this letter for so many years, this was truly a wonderful present.

A present from California

Earlier in the week I received a wonderful email from my good friend Mike West who lives with his wife out in Camarillo, California. As I have written in previous posts, Mike (as seen below in all of his hula glory!) was a good friend of Grandpa's from the war.

Final delivery

The flag has made it to Japan!

I just hope and pray that it is in one piece...I was distracted during the packaging of the flag and did not wrap it in anything or protect it inside the envelope, so I hope the mail system did not damage it. But, it made it to Japan at 3:01PM today, Japan time.

The flag is heading home

Saturday was a bittersweet day. It was the day that the silk Japanese prayer flag, belonging to Shinzo Furuya, began the 6500 mile journey from Muncie, Indiana to Tokyo, Japan and then on to Yamanashi Prefecture.

Updates, home and abroad

Over the past week, there have been a few minor updates in my research efforts. I have found another amazing resource and ran into a delay in returning the prayer flag to Mr. Furuya's son.

Success! A son has been found...

A little over four months ago, I started a search for families that I had never met, with faces I had never seen and from places I have never visited. The only information I had to go on were characters that I could not decipher or read, scrawled in pencil and ink on the backs of faded wallet-sized photographs, a tattered silk flag, and a delicate paper fan. With the help of Fumiko Kishi Chiuini, a very patient and generous instructor of Japanese at the Indiana Academy for Sciences, Mathematics, and Humanities, we reviewed all of the mementos my grandfather had collected during the war and she did her best at translating a language that was even a little foreign to her.

"Hunting gal bags 52nd deer"

Months after finding an article from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune featuring a woman dressed in orange camo, sitting atop a deer lawn ornament, I had the pleasure of talking to Mrs. Celette Couette, the widow of Russell "Frenchie" Couette.

The power of search

On Monday, February 21, I heard the familiar "pop" notification sound on my phone, indicating I had a new email message from one of the half dozen accounts I maintain (and yes, they all serve a distinct and useful purpose!). Assuming that it was just another Groupon, some deal from Amazon or Lowe's, or a Facebook status update, I opened my inbox and was surprised to see a message from the Picasa Web Gallery that hosts the photos from Grandpa Givan's treasure chest of World War II mementos.

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.