Kamikaze Flag,Photo album

[Walkwolf]

Indeed, stories can be embellished over time and the truth can become distorted.
Even if the stories are true or parts of the incident actually happened, what we
have is a flag and a few other items. Not a 'jackpot' by any means, and the
only real value to them are as souvenirs to the Vets family.

I also wouldn't take the word of one random, albeit nice Japanese lady
as gospel either - is she an expert or student of WWII history ?
I still don't see any evidence of a Kamikaze Pilot.

Take the items for what they are, and leave it at that..........

[GIZMO8Z]

Lets just say the story is true, wow good for you, have a pat on the back, now move on. I personally grew tired of this thread and story long ago and its obvious the same can be said for others, if it was for sale me and many others still wouldnt buy it. maybe the six o' clock news will cover it now. LOL

I agree. I'm just concerned because he wanted to sell this grouping on gunboards for some ridiculous amount...

[pat r]

The Doctors seal....

Well it seems I cause quite a stir on here....Lets get a few more things straight..... I know it is y'all......not yawl.... the auto spell did yawl.. and being from Texas I thought it was funny so I left it to see if Y'ALL would give me crap about that as well.......you did....LOL....... when I first posted on this site it was on wrong board and y'all said I had to put a price on it in order to post....so I did....6 figures.... I wasn't serious, even though it would be nice..... AS far as the flag...y'all think it is about the flag it is not....you have given me plausible info that a Marine could have brought the flag aboard as a souvenir and my Dad kept it.... I can except that... As a child my Dad wouldn't let me play with the flag... so as a child when he said he got "it " off a Kamikaze pilot that crashed his ship.... I ASSUMED IT WAS THE FLAG AND ALBUM.... So with the flag out of the picture... I must concentrate on the album.... Y'all say it is an engineers book not a Kamikaze book..... maybe it would be better if it showed him in a plane or with his flight gear on..... but it is not of that.... Why.... who knows.... which one of you is qualified to say WHAT a man about to fly a plane to his death would carry on him... I am not disputing that it looks like it is not a Kamikaze item but can you answer what was in this guy's head at the time.... Everyone says it is a post war book made to look like it belonged to a soldier... that is a good theory, but I can't help but look a little deeper....
One thing I am stuck on is the pharmacy ad that I thought was a prescription for his medicine...Yoko also told me in Florida that the stamp and seal on the album paper that is behind the flyer is his doctors personal seal.... Why would a forger put this in this book????? I was told by the Consulate guys that he took it so he would know his medicine in the next life... this sounds believable.... it even has his doctors stamp of approval.... there are postal stamps & coins glued in album..... WHY???? These item would not normally go into a persons photo album... Why put a card from Mitsubishi in the album???? Do you have business cards in your albums at home??? stamps?????? coins????? Yoko said the mailed letter to the guy was from a girl and it was mailed to the lower most part of Japan where the Kamikaze bases were....... Why was his last letter on military postcard not stamped by censor and allowed to be mailed.... To me this book has items that seem to confirm that it may be a book to carry to your death... Do you know the odds of a forger to try and make a album look like a "death" album from a Kamikaze ,sell it to an American,,, then that very book just happened to end up on the only ship that a Kamikaze hit and didn't blow up... and in the hands of my Dad that just happened to be in the very spot that he crashed.... WOW THAT SOUNDS BELIEVABLE....Some of you say that they didn't wear parachutes when I posted what Mr. Fitzgerald said at the reunion about having a piece of one.....Here is a you tube link of him I posted for you guys amusement... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oV4i...ature=youtu.be As you watch him talking.... Does he sound senile,,, confused,,, he even said the body was still on deck the next day...so is he a liar like my Dad??? or did sailors 100% for sure remove items from his body.... even the guys diary was removed off him and is in perfect condition, same as my book.... If I were dying I would carry the album and diary together...and since the diary's survival NO ONE ON HERE CAN DISPUTE....COULDN'T IT BE..... JUST MAYBE....."I'll take baby steps with you guys" MAYBE....... BE POSSABLE A PHOTO ALBUM COULD SERVIVE AS WELL???????????????? Some of you continually bash the "old geezers" that were there and saw what happened....you say they are senile and confused in their old age.... There are 18 survivors still alive from then...4 were at the reunion....One was old and not all there but the others were sharp as a tack.... I plan on going to the next gathering and hope to finish talking to others that were there.... Meanwhile I will wait on Yoko's translation of the letters... maybe they hold the key..... She said she will find the family if possible....maybe they know of his fate and can either confirm or not the album being of a Kamikaze...THEY SHOULD KNOW.... anyway you say I am stubborn and refuse to believe what you tell me.... I believe what you PROVE TO ME.... there have been way to many things you have said could not have happened....THAT HAVE BEEN PROVEN BY MY PERSISTANCE IN REFUSING TO BELIEVE MY DAD WAS CONFUSED OR MAKING UP WAR STORIES.....I just spent $1500 on trip to Florida to help prove my Dad's story to you guys..... I proved a diary survived and sailors took stuff off the body.....was it worth it?? HELL YES..... I will continue to research every item in the book until I have exhausted every clue or prove it's real.... STAY TUNED........

[António Fragoeiro]

The Doctors seal....

Well it seems I cause quite a stir on here....Lets get a few more things straight..... I know it is y'all......not yawl.... the auto spell did yawl.. and being from Texas I thought it was funny so I left it to see if Y'ALL would give me crap about that as well.......you did....LOL....... when I first posted on this site it was on wrong board and y'all said I had to put a price on it in order to post....so I did....6 figures.... I wasn't serious, even though it would be nice..... AS far as the flag...y'all think it is about the flag it is not....you have given me plausible info that a Marine could have brought the flag aboard as a souvenir and my Dad kept it.... I can except that... As a child my Dad wouldn't let me play with the flag... so as a child when he said he got "it " off a Kamikaze pilot that crashed his ship.... I ASSUMED IT WAS THE FLAG AND ALBUM.... So with the flag out of the picture... I must concentrate on the album.... Y'all say it is an engineers book not a Kamikaze book..... maybe it would be better if it showed him in a plane or with his flight gear on..... but it is not of that.... Why.... who knows.... which one of you is qualified to say WHAT a man about to fly a plane to his death would carry on him... I am not disputing that it looks like it is not a Kamikaze item but can you answer what was in this guy's head at the time.... Everyone says it is a post war book made to look like it belonged to a soldier... that is a good theory, but I can't help but look a little deeper....
One thing I am stuck on is the pharmacy ad that I thought was a prescription for his medicine...Yoko also told me in Florida that the stamp and seal on the album paper that is behind the flyer is his doctors personal seal.... Why would a forger put this in this book????? I was told by the Consulate guys that he took it so he would know his medicine in the next life... this sounds believable.... it even has his doctors stamp of approval.... there are postal stamps & coins glued in album..... WHY???? These item would not normally go into a persons photo album... Why put a card from Mitsubishi in the album???? Do you have business cards in your albums at home??? stamps?????? coins????? Yoko said the mailed letter to the guy was from a girl and it was mailed to the lower most part of Japan where the Kamikaze bases were....... Why was his last letter on military postcard not stamped by censor and allowed to be mailed.... To me this book has items that seem to confirm that it may be a book to carry to your death... Do you know the odds of a forger to try and make a album look like a "death" album from a Kamikaze ,sell it to an American,,, then that very book just happened to end up on the only ship that a Kamikaze hit and didn't blow up... and in the hands of my Dad that just happened to be in the very spot that he crashed.... WOW THAT SOUNDS BELIEVABLE....Some of you say that they didn't wear parachutes when I posted what Mr. Fitzgerald said at the reunion about having a piece of one.....Here is a you tube link of him I posted for you guys amusement... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oV4i...ature=youtu.be As you watch him talking.... Does he sound senile,,, confused,,, he even said the body was still on deck the next day...so is he a liar like my Dad??? or did sailors 100% for sure remove items from his body.... even the guys diary was removed off him and is in perfect condition, same as my book.... If I were dying I would carry the album and diary together...and since the diary's survival NO ONE ON HERE CAN DISPUTE....COULDN'T IT BE..... JUST MAYBE....."I'll take baby steps with you guys" MAYBE....... BE POSSABLE A PHOTO ALBUM COULD SERVIVE AS WELL???????????????? Some of you continually bash the "old geezers" that were there and saw what happened....you say they are senile and confused in their old age.... There are 18 survivors still alive from then...4 were at the reunion....One was old and not all there but the others were sharp as a tack.... I plan on going to the next gathering and hope to finish talking to others that were there.... Meanwhile I will wait on Yoko's translation of the letters... maybe they hold the key..... She said she will find the family if possible....maybe they know of his fate and can either confirm or not the album being of a Kamikaze...THEY SHOULD KNOW.... anyway you say I am stubborn and refuse to believe what you tell me.... I believe what you PROVE TO ME.... there have been way to many things you have said could not have happened....THAT HAVE BEEN PROVEN BY MY PERSISTANCE IN REFUSING TO BELIEVE MY DAD WAS CONFUSED OR MAKING UP WAR STORIES.....I just spent $1500 on trip to Florida to help prove my Dad's story to you guys..... I proved a diary survived and sailors took stuff off the body.....was it worth it?? HELL YES..... I will continue to research every item in the book until I have exhausted every clue or prove it's real.... STAY TUNED........

Dont take this wrong
But its just too hard and painful to read all of this.
You could have tryed to short and resume the text a bit.
Cheers
Nuno

[GIZMO8Z]

Nuno, he copy pasted most of this thread from what he already ranted on gunboards. You'll notice that nobody here criticized him for saying: "y'all" yet he defends himself for it here.

[maximus71]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[zwerge]

It don`t matter how many times yawl beat a dead horse it`s still dead......

[Wagriff]

Personally, even if the whole asininely absurd story is 100% true, I Really could care less and wouldn't want this album treasure if it were given to me Free...

[big ned]

Whatever is said will not be believed by this gentleman who is utterly convinced that what he has is exactly what his daddy told him it is, and nothing further suggested here will make him think otherwise unless it's what he wants to hear. Therefore why waste further time and effort trying to make him see the truth of what he actually has. I personally cannot see this thread going anywhere further and think the best thing to do would be to close it.

[pat r]

Why is everyone so quick to bash me on here and other sites of collectors?? In the beginning on here and on gunboards EVERYONE SAID WHAT I HAVE COULD NOT EXIST.... So far I have pieced this together and have slowly proven a lot of you EXPERTS wrong..... for this you criticize me and call me names.....(on gunboards)....I am simply posting what I find during my research..... If you don't like what I post then please don't read it..... I do believe there are people that truly want to help... guntojim from gunboards is one of them..... below is info I was able to get due to his help....

Of the three aircraft that struck the flight deck( out of the six that attacked that day) the ships log states that #4 and #6 both were armed with bombs and the impact of #5 was followed by a large explosion-sounds to me that it also carried a bomb. All aircraft were part of Air Group 601 which sortied from Katori specifically as a special attack group consisting of twenty suicide attack aircraft with twelve escorting fighters. Several of the escorting fighters tried to crash-dive also. Ltjg Sakuraba, the leader of group #5 which was comprised of four torpedo bombers, was reported to have crashed into a "Saratoga class carrier". From what I recall, special attack pilots initially were given the option of wearing a parachute or not but after needless losses due to mechanical failures after take-off, parachutes became mandatory. (Again, thats what I kinda recall.) Jim

Katori Air Base Monument
Asahi City, Chiba Prefecture
Katori Naval Air Base was established in February 1944 with two crisscrossing runways in the shape of an X. On February 19, 1945, the same day as the start of the Iwo Jima invasion, the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps 2nd Mitate [1] Unit was formed from the 601st Air Group at Katori Air Base with 12 Suisei two-seat carrier dive bombers (nicknamed "Judy" by Allies), 8 Tenzan (Jill) three-seat carrier attack bombers, and 12 escorting Zero (Zeke) fighters. The 2nd Mitate Unit led by Lieutenant Hiroshi Murakawa took off the next morning toward Iwo Jima but returned to base due to poor weather.
In the early morning of February 21, 1945, the 2nd Mitate Unit took off again from Katori Air Base. After the aircraft refueled at Hachijojima Island, about 300 km south of Katori, the Japanese aircraft headed toward the American fleet near Iwo Jima. The suicide attacks sunk the escort carrier Bismark Sea (CVE-95), heavily damaged the carrier Saratoga (CV-3) and cargo ship Keokuk (AKN-4), and slightly damaged the escort carrier Lunga Point (CVE-94) and amphibious ships LST-477 and LST-809. The 2nd Mitate Unit lost 43 men in attacks that day (20 men in 10 Suisei bombers, 18 men in 6 Tenzan bombers, and 5 Zero pilots). Some aircraft never reached the Iwo Jima area. One Tenzan bomber returned to Hachijojima due to mechanical problems, and another did not sortie from Hachijojima due to damaged landing gear. Two Suisei bombers got hit by American Grumman Hellcat fighters in the skies near Hachijojima, but they both made it back to the island airfield. On March 1, 1945, one of these Suisei bombers sortied alone from Hachijojima toward Iwo Jima to make a suicide attack.
Special Operations Unit in Kantō
With the overwhelming desire to delay the enemy advance, and contemplating that surely Iwo Jima would be the next point of landing, the 601 Air Group located in the Kantō region formed on February 16 a new Special Attack Group Vice Admiral orders Kimpei Teraoka. This unit was baptized on February 19 as Mitate and organized into five groups with the following:
No. 1. – 4 fighters, 4 bombers
No. 2. – 4 fighters, 4 bombers
No. 3. – 4 fighters, 4 bombers
No. 4. – 4 torpedo bombers
No. 5. – 4 torpedo bombers
This Panel left its base on February 21, and after refueling on Hachijōjima headed enemy ships in the area of Iwo Jima and around Chichijima. The reports were obtained that day realized that an aircraft carrier and four transports had been sunk and another aircraft carrier and four boats were damaged.


• 1st Mitate Special Attack Group, Special Strafing Unit (第一御楯特別攻撃隊 特別銃撃隊, Dai 1 Mitate Tokubetsu Kōgekitai, Tokubetsu Jūgeki-tai?)
o Original unit; 252nd NAG (317th FS), 752nd NAG (12th RS)
o 26 November 1944
 12× A6M5c (strafe), 2× C6N1 (guidance); B-29's base the Isely Field and Kobler Field in Saipan.
• Mitate Unit No. 2 (神風特別攻撃隊 第二御楯隊, Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kōgekitai, Dai 2 Mitate-tai?)
o Original unit; 601st NAG (310th FS, 1st AS, 254th AS)
o 21 February 1945
 12× D4Y3, 8× B5N2 (attack), 12× A6M5c (escort); U.S. ship off Iwo Jima.
o 1 March 1945
 1× D4Y3 (attack); U.S. ship off Iwo Jima.


Thanks Jim.......