Token of War

Souveniring this battered Japanese Imperial Navy flag nearly cost a Taranaki man dearly during World War Two. It was one of several items collected by Bob Dunlop, a young Hāwera stock agent who served with the 36th Battalion of the New Zealand Third Division during the attack on Mono Island, in the Solomon Islands on 27 October 1943.

In the book New Zealand in the Pacific War: Personal Accounts of World War II, by Bruce Petty, Bob remembers that after a Japanese position was overrun he went souvenir hunting in a large tent to find anything he could sell to the cashed up Americans. Together with this flag he found a rifle, a bottle of sake and a Japanese water bottle. As he came out through the tent with his finds “…a Japanese ran out beside me. He fired a shot into the air, all our fellows dropped to the ground and the Jap ran straight through them and into the jungle. I would like to think he is alive today. I was grateful to him, really. He must have had a bead on me [in the tent], and he could have shot me so easily, but if he had he would have alerted all the rest of the men- the rest of our company- and he wouldn't have got away.”