The Observer
09.01.22 19radiating from the national symbol
of a red circle, representing the sun.
It was typical of yosegaki hinomaru,
which were given to young men set-
ting off to war by their communities.
There are numerous accounts of
Allied soldiers taking such fl ags from
the bodies of dead Japanese troops as
souvenirs. According to one memoir,
“the men gloated over, compared, and
often swapped their prizes. It was a
brutal, ghastly ritual the likes of which
have occurred since ancient times on
battlefi elds where antagonists have
possessed a profound mutual hatred”.In recent years, hundreds of
yosegaki hinomaru have been returned
to families, often in highly emotional
circumstances, through the work of
the Obon Society , a charity dedicated
to peace and reconciliation.
Pritchard wanted to track down the
fl ag’s owner, but “I didn’t know where
to start”. He spent hours examining
war records at the national archives
to plot the movements of Devine’s
regiment and eventually, in a “huge
breakthrough” helped by a Japanese
academic, identifi ed the name and
the home town of the soldier.
The young fi lm-maker wrote let-
ters to people of the same name in
the town, local offi cials and a nearby
shrine. Finally, after months of pains-
taking research, contact was made
with the soldier’s family. But the mys-
tery of how Devine acquired the fl ag
was still to be unravelled, and a few
further twists were yet to come. In the
end, both families – Devine’s and the
Japanese soldier’s – had learned more
about their loved ones.Burma and was twice mentioned in
despatches. In 1954, he co-founded
the English Stage Company, a radical
theatre company that began staging
new plays at the Royal Court.
Its fi rst big success came the fol-
lowing year with John Osborne’s Look
Back in Anger. Devine later wrote that
his objective was to persuade “writ-
ers of serious pretensions back into
the theatre”. He died in his prime fol-
lowing a heart attack in 1966, aged 55.
In 2017, when family members
unfolded the newly discovered fl ag,
they found hand-written messagesLEFT
Allied troops in
Burma display
a captured
Japanese ‘good
luck’ battle fl ag.
AlamyThe yosegaki
hinomaru fl ag
discovered by
George Devine’s
family and, inset,
Devine in 1966.
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