JAPANESE PRAYER FLAG.

JAPANESE PRAYER FLAG.
Japan: 1942-43.
A Japanese linen prayer flag, 460 x 690 mm. The borders profusely decorated with inscriptions and prayers, leather corners at the hoist, with strings. The red sun ball sewn in, linen lightly stained.
Provenance: Kenneth Northnagel, a farmer from Shelbina, MO, and a WWII Veteran from the Philippines campaign; War Museum, MA.

An early Pacific war prayer flag, captured during the Philippines campaign by Kenneth Northnagel and brought back to the US. The prayer flag was a traditional gift for Japanese Servicemen who set off to war, the inscriptions and messages written out by his friends and relatives protected him in battle. A Japanese soldier would have had a small flag folded into the top of his helmet, and the larger Japanese flag folded over his heart inside his uniform. At the beginning of the war they were linen or silk, but by 1944 when materials started to run out, they were made of rayon.