The makeshift American flag, made 69 years ago from bedsheets, was a symbol of defiance, perseverance and patriotism to the American prisoners of war who were beaten, tortured and starved by their Japanese captors at the Omori POW Camp during World War II.
Richmond native James “Denny” Landrum, an electrician’s mate first class who had just turned 20 when captured, was among them.
He and his fellow submariners of the USS Grenadier were taken prisoner after their ship was attacked and eventually scuttled on April 22, 1943, off Penang, Malaysia.
Landrum eventually made it home. But the flag he helped to secretly create and later waved in an iconic photograph taken as he and his fellow POWs were liberated on Aug. 29, 1945, vanished over time.
“He wanted to find it, but they lost track of it,” Landrum’s eldest son, Jerry, said of his father and fellow POWs after they returned from the war. “Later on when they were having reunions, they kept talking about trying to find the flag.”
But when Landrum died in 1980 at age 56, the survivors’ hope of finding the flag faded.
The task fell to their descendants, and Jerry Landrum and his siblings took on the daunting challenge. After decades of searching, Landrum uncovered the flag’s chain of possession after it was initially given to the POW who provided the bedsheets and stitched them together.
Landrum traced the flag’s path through several people and finally to the Washington Navy Yard in the District of Columbia where a Navy museum curator — after being contacted by Landrum — found it inside a box in an off-site artifacts warehouse in Virginia.
Wow! What an amazing story. The flag itself is amazingly precise, it appears. Imagine the pride those guys had in their flag to work this hard to wave it at liberation.
Does patriotism and national pride get greater and more demonstrative during times of peril? Are we ourselves more patriotic when our lives, country and families are threatened by outside forces? What would make those guys go to that much trouble?
Great post, Moon. Thanks.
Wasn’t that a really neat story?!!!! I just had to bring it to the blog. I am so glad you enjoyed it.
This is a great story, Moon. Thanks for putting it on your blog.
One of the things that was not mentioned was the huge risk that these sailors were taking in making the flag. A great book, “Unbroken: A World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption”, discusses the cruelty and inhumane conditions of the Japanese POW camps. Based on that, it seems clear that the sailors who made this flag risked torture and perhaps death if it had been discovered by the Japanese before liberation.
Excellent point, Kelly. Thanks for bringing it up. I have Unbroken on my Kindle but just haven’t read it yet.
Do you highly recommend? I understand it isn’t a chix book.
I highly recommend the book if you are prepared emotionally to handle it. I am fairly well versed in history, but the cruelty and inhumanity described in the book were still very difficult and disturbing.
Have read the book Kelly mentioned plus I had a cousin who was in the Bataan death march–spent the whole war in Japanese prison camps and went blind as the result of Vitamin A deficiency. In addition, I had the honor of working with a Chief Hospital Corpsman who also was a prisoner for the whole war. He said that many times, Filipino guerrillas offered to get him out of the camp to take care of them but the Japanese were doing 10:1 reprisal killings for every prisoner who escaped. He declined the Filipino’s offer; he felt his life was not worth 10 of those of his fellow prisoners. We rode back and forth to work together for two plus years but he did not talk about it much. Neither did my cousin. Too many terrible memories. I also knew a Marine Gunnery Sergeant who was a prisoner for most of the war. He managed to keep a small, tiny print diary on scraps of paper. Spent a good deal of his time in Japan and some years after the war married a Japanese woman. Love works miracles I guess.