Rising Sun not welcome

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 10

Rising Sun not welcome

NZPA-Reuter Honolulu The Rising Sun flag will not return to Pearl Harbour if American yachting officials get their way. Japanese entrants at an international yachting regatta in Hawaii said United States race officials had asked them not to fly their naval ensign, the same battle flag flown by Japanese forces that attacked nearby Pearl Harbour in 1941.

"The race officials told us to take it down before they would measure the boat,” a helmsman, Yasuhide Adachi, said.

The Japanese launched a sneak attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, killing about 2000 people and plunging the United States into World

War 11. A crew member from the yacht Matenrow of the Nippon Ocean Racing Club said: “I think (the request was) not fair.” New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom were flying their own naval ensigns, and Ken Morrison, race director of the Hawaii International Ocean Racing Series, told Reuters there was “no official policy on the flying of battle flags as long as they complied with race rules”.

The request may have been a precautionary move — eight years ago, a member of the Waikiki Yacht Club shot and wounded a Japanese American yachtsman who had flown the Rising Sun flag across the finish line in a race from Pearl Harbour.