I don’t remember when or how exactly I first learned that when US military forces took control of Shuri castle (Sui gusuku) – the former royal palace of the Ryukyu Kingdom – on May 29, 1945, marking a significant stage towards total victory in the Battle of Okinawa, the first flag American servicemembers raised over the former palace was not that of the United States, the Stars and Stripes, but rather the flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars.
Right: Photo published in the Charleston Evening Post (Charleston, South Carolina), June 12, 1945.
I am not a historian of the layered and complex social politics of the American South, or of the Confederacy, or of the legacies and meanings of that flag. I imagine there is a lot more to be said, that others might be able to say.
But to me, I find this just a really intriguing piece of historical trivia. It helps us to realize, first of all, that World War II and the American Civil War were not, actually, that far apart in time. In fact, Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. (1886-1945), the commanding officer who reportedly ordered that the Confederate flag be taken down and replaced with the Union flag, and who several weeks later (on June 18, 1945) would become the highest-ranking American officer killed by enemy fire in the entirety of World War II,1 was himself not the grandson, let alone great-grandson, but simply directly the son of a Confederate general, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr. (1823-1914). It also signals something about how strong Southern pride, or identification with the Confederate flag (if not with the Confederacy itself), was, still, in 1945, though of course we know that use of that flag remains widely common throughout much of the country still today, in 2023. Though, again, I would leave it to others to discuss precisely what it means when different people use it – what percentage of people mean what by it, or to put it the other way around, the nuances or complexity of the question of how to interpret what an individual might or might not have meant, or intended, by flying that flag on any particular occasion.
In any case, ever since hearing this story, I’ve been wanting to learn a bit more. Or at least, to find a photo of the flag flying over the castle. I have yet to find that photo, with the exception of Photoshopped versions (e.g. left). But, I recently finally took the bother to look into trying to find some old newspaper articles about it, and was successful in finding quite a few.
A May 31, 1945 article from the Charleston News and Courier under the headline “Confederate Flag on Shuri,” indicates that it was the Marines who led the way in penetrating the castle, and who raised the Confederate flag as they had done at Peleliu, and I presume elsewhere though it’s not mentioned in this article. The article shows some knowledge of the history of the site, stating that “there was only a shell of defense left at Shuri castle, 16th century home of Ryukyu kings, once visited by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, [United States Navy], who opened Japan to Western trade in 1854.” In fact, the main central palace structures destroyed in the Battle at that time dated to the 1710s, and the palace (gusuku), in some form, is believed to date at least as far back as the 14th or 15th century, not the 16th.
I had assumed, or I suppose imagined, that the Confederate flag flew over Shuri for only a few minutes before an angry Gen. Buckner, or someone else, called for it to be taken down. A 1957 newspaper article indicates, however, that it was up for 25 hours, and a 1999 article says it was not Buckner, but Marine Maj. Gen. Pedro del Valle, who ordered it replaced with the Stars and Stripes.
Interestingly, an article from May 29, 1946 indicates that Dusenbury “denies having [planted the Confederate flag] at Shuri,” even while so many other articles give his name. Nevertheless, his widow, in a 1999 interview, “said her husband raised the flag in an effort to boost the spirits of his men,” and “both she and [combat photographer John T.] Smith[, who took the photo,] wondered if Dusenbury was denied the Medal of Honor because of the flag.”
A newspaper article from July 25, 1945, indicates that Dusenbury received the flag from a member of his local Florence, SC, chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization that the Texas State Historical Association describes as “promoting the “Lost Cause” interpretation of southern history, which positions Old South slavery as a benevolent institution, Confederate soldiers as heroic defenders of states’ rights, and Reconstruction as a period of northern aggression.”
According to combat photographer John T. Smith, interviewed in 1999, “‘the phone rang off the hook’ in Marine headquarters on Okinawa from Army officers who were upset at seeing the Confederate flag.” But, in typical petty boyish inter-service rivalry fashion, Smith attributes this, perhaps, not to serious political or racial concerns but to the idea that “they may have been upset because the Marines had beaten the Army to the old castle.”
Wounded multiple times later in the war (sometime after Shuri), it seems that Dusenbury, only 24 years old when the war ended in 1945, used braces or a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Elected to the South Carolina state House of Representatives twice, he seems to have been quite the racist conservative Democrat, saying in a 1957 interview that he opposed both immediate or gradual integration (i.e. desegregation), and that in his view “the salvation of the South and the nation rests in resisting those who would destroy the foundation upon which the country was built and has grown.” I can’t help but to think of how closely so much of Republican rhetoric today, nearly 70 years later, echoes exactly this same stubborn, regressive, racist dogwhistling ideology. I suppose maybe there may be some readers here from South Carolina – or, who are more expert than I in the history of shifts in American political rhetoric – and, I guess I should take a moment to apologize if I am misunderstanding or misrepresenting him, but I doubt I am.
Dusenbury died in 1976.
Of course, if one were to research the topic properly, that would involve consulting a wider range of sources than just this one local Charleston, S.C., newspaper. Googling, one does indeed find numerous other blog posts, forum postings, etc. So, this is not entirely unknown. I didn’t think it was. But, in any case, this is just a blog post, and I’m not going to devote the time or energy to investigate farther. I was rather interested to read what I did in these news articles, and I think that’s good enough for me, for now.
1. Sarantakes, Nicholas, ed. (2004). Seven Stars, The Okinawa Battle Diaries of Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. and Joseph Stilwell. Texas A & M University Press, College Station. p129.
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