SPEAKER_08: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel.com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, content you create, and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace.com slash invisible for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Bombas makes clothing designed for warm weather. From soft breezy layers that you can move in with ease to socks that wick sweat and cushion every step. Socks, underwear, and t-shirts are the number one, two, and three most requested items in homeless shelters. That's why for every comfy item you purchase, Bombas donates another comfy item to someone in need. Every item is seamless, tagless, and effortlessly soft. Bombas are the clothes that you'll want to get dressed and move in every day. I'm telling you, you are excited when you've done the laundry recently and the Bombas socks are at the top of the sock drawer because your feet are about to feel good all day long. Go to B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash 99 P-I and use code 99 P-I for 20% off your first purchase. That's Bombas. B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash 99 P-I code 99 P-I. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Let me be the first to wish you a happy flag day. I assume I'm the first. I'm probably the only person to wish you a happy flag day. For those of you beautiful nerds who weren't aware, flag day is June 14th, so consider this your advance notice. If you haven't hoisted your favorite flag on your howliard up to the truck or finial of your flagpole to admire its field and canton and watch the fly-in wave in the wind, well, you still have time. Anyone who's listened to 99% Invisible regularly or seen my TED Talk about flags knows that we here at 99 P-I, we have a thing for flags. Our stories have helped inspire people around the world to design and submit dozens of new flags to local and state governments. Flags can be beautiful things that give communities something symbolic to rally around. They can also be divisive and horrible, but since the beginning of this show, I've always liked using them as a way to talk about our lives as humans. And this year, we decided to get the flag day celebration started early and then keep the party going with two whole weeks of flag-related stories. Before we dive in, though, let's take a brief look at the history of the most popular flag in the country, which is, of course, the flag of the country. The flag United States of America is everywhere in this country, but the U.S. Stars and Stripes haven't always held such a lofty position in popular culture. For much of American history, flags were more utilitarian, used to signal federal or military locations. It wasn't until the Civil War that everyday flag usage really got off the ground. In 1861, when Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston, Union flags began showing up all over the North. In the wake of the war, flags were increasingly incorporated into products, too, going mainstream in an unprecedented way. All of this patriotism helped lead to the establishment of an official flag day in 1916. So in my TED Talk and in past episodes, we've talked a lot about the design principles of flags, like what makes a good and bad city, state, and country flag. But for flag day this year and over the next couple of episodes, we're going to talk about a few flags that are not tied directly to nation states and municipalities. They're both bigger in scope than country, but also more personal, too. So without further ado, up first is producer Joe Rosenberg. So, Joe, I hear you have a really good flag story for me.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I do. And it's a flag story, which is when I kind of came across really accidentally. I was not trying to do work for 99PI. But the work finds you.
SPEAKER_03: But the work finds me. It really does. But no, what this story is, is a few years ago, a couple of friends and I in the Bay Area ended up checking out this little museum, actually not that far from the 99PI offices, called the Alameda Naval Air Museum. And the Alameda Naval Air Museum is... how to put this? It's one of those museums that is just kind of just made with love, right? Yeah, it's literally my favorite kind of museum, like a little museum devoted to one thing that you can take in all at once. I honestly like, I love museums like this.
SPEAKER_08: Absolutely. And so it is a museum devoted to naval aviation history.
SPEAKER_03: And so it has display cases with metals and ship models and mannequins with uniforms. There's like a DVD playing in a loop in one room. And so when my friends and I visited, we were, I admit, not planning to stay long. But then, just as we were about to leave, we came across this flag.
SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't even on display yet, but on that day, it was kind of like in a frame on the floor leaning against another display. But the second we saw it, we were all just like riveted. And what it was, was a Japanese flag, but not your normal Japanese flag.
SPEAKER_08: Was it the Rising Sun flag with the rays coming out of it?
SPEAKER_03: No, that's the Japanese military flag, of course, which is a whole other story. No, this one was the regular Japanese national flag, also known as the Hinamaru.
SPEAKER_08: This is one of the red sun in the middle in the white field. It's kind of what you'd think of as the flag of Japan. Exactly. Except on this Hinamaru, the white part of the flag was just covered in writing.
SPEAKER_03: And so I did what any person would do, which is I took a picture. And here, let me show you that. Wow. Okay, so all these phrases written in what looks like kanji, like kind of radiating out from the sun. It's really lovely.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. And for the listeners who can't see it, this is not like a produced flag.
SPEAKER_03: Right. It's handwritten. Yeah, exactly. Handwritten calligraphy consisting of many different messages in all different hands written directly on the fabric.
SPEAKER_03: It seems as if maybe there's 50 or so people, maybe more, and they all have something written on it.
SPEAKER_08: And do you know what it says? Well, yeah, because it just so happens that one of the friends I was with, she was Japanese.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, that's really fortuitous. Did she know what this was? I mean, could she tell you more about this flag?
SPEAKER_08: No, she didn't know what it was, but she started reading the flag aloud for us.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, cool. So what did it say?
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so along one side in the biggest characters was the name of a Japanese soldier from World War Two to whom the flag presumably belonged.
SPEAKER_03: And who it appeared must have been going off to war because the messages around the sun were from people the flagbearer seemed to know who were giving him like this big send off. And I'm not going to lie, some of them wrote rather strong statements. So the most explicit was, we have to kill British and Americans. But then there were also lines that were just sad knowing what this soldier and others were about to go through. So, you know, there was, we hope you will protect our country. We have the strength to win. I hope we win this year. And one person also wrote, like, I'm going to. But honestly, the most common phrase was just good luck. Probably that was like a quarter to a third of the messages were just good luck or good luck this year.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it turns out that what we were looking at was something called in Japanese, a yosagaki hinamaru, which means collection of writing around the sun, but in English is known as a good luck flag. And it was part of a tradition very popular in Japan in the late 30s and early 40s of having people write personal messages on flags to servicemen about to go off overseas. And then they would actually carry this flag folded up on their person into battle. Wow. Good luck flag. I've never heard of.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, neither died.
SPEAKER_08: And so do we know exactly how this tradition of the good luck flag emerged?
SPEAKER_03: That is an excellent question. No.
SPEAKER_02: Boy, Joe, I have spent years and years trying to find that out.
SPEAKER_03: So this is Rex Zeke. He is a founder of an organization called Oban Society, which is involved with good luck flags. More on that in a second. And he says most scholars chart the rise of these flags to the 1930s when a lot of Japanese men were getting shipped off to fight in China. But exactly how the tradition started, no one knows.
SPEAKER_02: As far as I can tell, at some point, somebody got out a brush and some ink and they looked at their national flag and saw all that tempting white field all around that red area. And this became a fashion or a tradition or it became instantly a thing. And everybody started doing it. But one thing Rex really stressed, and I think this is very important to point out, is that most of these flags weren't nearly as militant as the one I saw in the museum.
SPEAKER_03: A lot of them do have messages about victory and country and being brave, but most of them were filled in with either just people's signatures and well wishes or else these very intimate messages from loved ones and friends and neighbors. Because you have to understand, you really could write almost anything.
SPEAKER_11: So there's no rules and regulation or, you know, there's no guideline. And anybody might think this is the last time to see this man. You may not ever see him again. So it is very personal. Keiko Zeke is Rex's partner and the co-founder of Oban Society.
SPEAKER_03: And she says people might sometimes put poetry on the flag, others put inside jokes. Priests from the local temple might write a favorite mantra.
SPEAKER_02: I remember one entry where it was saying something like, I'll look after the farm until you get home or I'll look after the animals until you get home. So the soldier doesn't worry about at home while he's away.
SPEAKER_11: Wow, that's amazing. I love that it can be anything.
SPEAKER_08: Absolutely. And by the way, when Rex said everybody started doing it, he meant that more or less literally.
SPEAKER_03: We estimate that between like 1935 and 1945, the people of Japan created somewhere between nine and 12 million of these flags.
SPEAKER_02: Whoa.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And one of the reasons there's so many of them is not only did virtually every soldier get a flag, he often got multiple flags from multiple institutions on multiple occasions.
SPEAKER_02: And so he might go to war and leave home with one from his parents, one from the bank where he worked and one from his baseball team.
SPEAKER_08: OK, so if there's millions of these flags, you know, what happened to all of them? Like, where are they now?
SPEAKER_03: Well, most of them are gone, at least in Japan. And that's because many of those soldiers never came home. So a lot of the flags were just lost forever. And many of the flags that did make it back to Japan might have been actually deliberately gotten rid of because after the war, during the American occupation, certain Japanese symbols were temporarily banned. And that included the Hinamaru.
SPEAKER_02: And so those soldiers who survived, who had these and went home, whether those flags would have been buried or burned or destroyed or kept, we really can't get a gauge on that.
SPEAKER_03: But Keiko says that the result is that it was such a final ending to this tradition that most people in Japan today, if you show them one of these flags, they don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, they had no idea about Yosega, Hinamaru and anything. But it turns out there is at least one country where you can still find a lot of good luck flags. And that's the United States.
SPEAKER_03: Huh. Well, tell me what that is.
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's kind of for an unsavory reason. But basically, in World War Two, a ton of American soldiers were shipped off to the Pacific and fought in battles against a ton of Japanese soldiers. And when the Americans took personal items off of dead Japanese soldiers on the battlefield, you have to understand the Americans all grew up reading books and watching movies where capturing an enemy flag was like a big deal. But unbeknownst to them, there was this tradition in Japan. And so everybody on the battlefield had a flag somewhere underneath them.
SPEAKER_08: That's really fascinating, grimly fascinating.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And so all these US servicemen just take all these flags back to the States. But crucially, in the US, these good luck flags are not destroyed.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, because they would just keep them and then they'd be, you know, end up in your grandparents attic or basement and it's cranton or whatever.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. But this is where Rex and Keiko's Obon Society comes in. Because what they do is they work with families in the US who have come into possession of one of these good luck flags, and often as a form of post war healing and reconciliation. They help them return the flag to the family of the original flag bearer in Japan.
SPEAKER_08: Oh, so if you're like the grandson of a World War Two veteran like me, and find one of these flags in your grandfather's attic, the Obon Society will actually find the grandchildren of the Japanese veteran that they belong to and then they will like matchmake and send them that flag.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. And after starting out on their own more than a decade ago, Rex and Keiko say that today they have a team of about 14 people that specialize in sending back these flags. And it took us I think four years to do the first one. And now we're doing two each week on the average.
SPEAKER_02: Wow, two a week. I mean, so then how many have they successfully returned at this point?
SPEAKER_03: Well, at this point, they gave me a rough estimate of about 400 total returns. Wow. And they say their success rate is again, roughly speaking, maybe around 50%. Their fastest find was a few days, their longest was seven years. And then there are obviously ones that might take even longer, but they just don't know yet. So you had mentioned that the biggest thing written on the flag was the name of the flag's owner. Is that enough to find the descendants?
SPEAKER_08: And return the flag? No, not even close. There are a lot of names that are the equivalent of like John Smith.
SPEAKER_03: And so the only way to figure out which John Smith it belongs to is to figure out where it came from. But something that is rarely seen on these flags is any geographical mention as to where it was created, which drives us nuts.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it's so personal. Everybody know each other. So if they write, they don't write the hometown's name.
SPEAKER_11: And then that's what we spend so many hours trying to figure out is where did this come from?
SPEAKER_08: This is a fascinating mystery. So what are the techniques for figuring where they come from? Well, they actually asked me not to divulge too much of their process because they don't want people who aren't experts when they find these flags to try to do this themselves.
SPEAKER_03: I guess that makes sense. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: And another thing I should add is that Rex and Keiko will never urge anyone to hand over a flag. You have to come to them.
SPEAKER_03: And if instead you choose to keep it, they'll respect your decision no matter what it is. You know, I think that this flag return process sounds really heartfelt and great.
SPEAKER_08: But it's also, you know, these flags are part of military campaigns that are extremely violent and not the best chapter in Japan's history. Are they ever used politically to, you know, harken back in a bad way to this period of time where Japan's imperial strength was at its height? So I asked Rex and Keiko about that. And, you know, they really stressed that when it comes to these good luck flags, they've never found that.
SPEAKER_03: What they found is that the people they've worked with and returned these flags to in Japan really connect with them on a personal level, because these are festooned basically with these messages and the names of these family members. So much more than anything else, what it becomes is a memento from one single person's life. And this is what Keiko really stressed. Like that was her big point. When you read everything they have written, it is amazing. So many stories you can learn and you can feel it from this spiritual object, because this is only one of the kind in the world.
SPEAKER_08: So do they end up connecting you with someone who either found or received a flag? They did.
SPEAKER_05: My name is Koishi Noriko, Noriko Koishi.
SPEAKER_03: So I got a hold of Noriko Koishi via translator just outside the town of Kobe in Kyogo Prefecture. Noriko is in her mid 80s, which means she really grew up during the war. And back then, it was just her and her mother and her father, Noriatsu Yamaguchi. And Noriatsu was an executive at a local ceramics factory. But Noriko says that her memories of him are very faint.
SPEAKER_05: So her dad was a busy salaryman who worked very long hours. So by the time she wakes up, he will be already gone to work and then come back after she fell asleep.
SPEAKER_12: Obviously, because of the war, there is not much of a memory aside from that.
SPEAKER_03: So instead, what she actually remembers most vividly about her father is him leaving for the war. Because when she was about nine years old, Noriatsu was drafted to go fight in the Philippines. And that was in 1944. And Noriko says he did not want to go.
SPEAKER_05: Because of course, by 1944, the whole country of Japan sort of knew that there won't be a victory. But obviously, nobody is going to say that out loud.
SPEAKER_12: But the general thinking was that getting drafted at this point was basically a death sentence.
SPEAKER_03: So Noriko actually remembers that her mother began kind of frantically suggesting that they all maybe run away to the countryside so that her father could dodge the draft. So her grandfather was in the face saying the consequences of you doing that will result to they won't be able to get any food from the government. Noriko won't be able to go to school.
SPEAKER_12: It will be a disgrace to the family. And she remembers that scene where her grandfather hit her mother. That is an incredibly intense thing to remember.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And also just remembering the way they were kind of locked into this reality, which was that he had to go. And so her other vivid memory from that time is this kind of distilled image of the last moment she saw him. So she sent him off at the train station and her dad was sort of on the deck of the train.
SPEAKER_12: And he was wearing this white glove and waving at her until the train made that curve and she couldn't see him anymore. And to this day, she still remembers that white glove in the distance waving at her.
SPEAKER_03: And then he just never came home. And when Noriko was already 12 or 13, so well after the war ended, her mother finally received a letter in the mail from the government just saying, we can confirm he died in the war. And that's it. And they never received any remains.
SPEAKER_08: And so since you're telling his story during this other story of good luck flags, presumably he was given a good luck flag. Did they know anything about that? The family?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So Noriko says that there had in fact been a sending off ceremony for her father, which she had attended, in which she put her handprint actually on a good luck flag that he took with him. Wow. But when I asked her if that ceremony meant anything to her at the time, or if she yearned to see the flag afterwards as the years went by, she was like, no.
SPEAKER_05: Obviously, they drew so many flags when her uncles also went to war. So this was, you know, the ninth, tenth flag. So it became sort of a monotonous routine.
SPEAKER_12: So the answer is no, she did not even think for a second about these flags. Wow. I mean, I guess it makes sense when we talked about them being made over and over again for various people, like you do it and, you know, life moves on, even if you face tragedy.
SPEAKER_08: Exactly.
SPEAKER_08: So what I would like to hear at this point is that Noriko's good luck flag was found and we have her little handprint on it. Well, kind of. A flag was found. And who first found it and how is itself a bit of a mystery?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I actually didn't know anything. I really didn't know anything about his war experience.
SPEAKER_13: So this is Dionne Blazing. I got a hold of her where she lives in Florida. And the person she is talking about here is her late uncle, Neal Huard.
SPEAKER_13: Otherwise known as Uncle Bud.
SPEAKER_08: Uncle Bud. OK.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And Dionne, as a child growing up, spent vacations with her uncle and aunt in Michigan. And the two of them, they didn't have children, so they doted all over us. And they had a house that was on a lake and he always had a boat ready for us. I mean, he just wanted to play.
SPEAKER_13: But she also knew that he had served in the war in the Pacific. And although she saw a lot of photos of him in uniform, what actually went on in the war was kind of like a no-go area.
SPEAKER_03: So we have pictures of him in his uniform, he has pictures of him before he left, we have pictures of him as they were training to leave, you know, yada da.
SPEAKER_13: So I knew from pictures something about it, but they never talked about it. This was not a discussion that you had at the house.
SPEAKER_03: The only thing Dionne ever really learned, and even this was much later, was that Uncle Bud had actually been found very badly wounded and in a coma on a battlefield before returning to the States. And that battlefield had been in the Philippines. So fast forward to the year 2016 when Uncle Bud, at the age of 95, passes away. And Dionne and the other family members are clearing out his things, including this crate of just like old stuff that no one else wants.
SPEAKER_13: So I opened it up, and I pulled out this box. And when she got back home and opened the box, there was this white bag with this silk material in it.
SPEAKER_13: And I was like, what the heck is this? And out comes the flag.
SPEAKER_03: And although she didn't know it at the time, what it was was a good luck flag. And here, let me show it to you.
SPEAKER_08: Wow, it's like pristine. It's like not faded at all.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly. It's like time travel.
SPEAKER_08: So as you set this up, I'm expecting this to be Noriko's father's flag, but there's no handprint on it.
SPEAKER_03: Well, aha, here is where there is a tiny little twist in the story. Because Dionne, after doing some googling, figured out what kind of flag it was. She found Oban Society, and she decided that she wanted to find the flag's original family. And so she sent it to Rex and Keiko, and they started analyzing. And so looking back at the flag, do you see the characters along the right hand edge, the second to the right? Yes. So that is the name of a ceramics factory in the town of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.
SPEAKER_08: So this is from his factory where he worked. This is like a flag from his coworker sending him off. Yeah, he had a second flag, and this was it. So after telling Dionne, you know, hey, it could take years, Rex and Keiko called her like two months later.
SPEAKER_13: And said, we found the family. And I was like, you're kidding. And they said, no, we're not. And it was at this point that Dionne says she did start to have some trepidation about this whole process.
SPEAKER_03: Because having already handed over the flag to Oban Society, there were no take backs. She couldn't ask for it back. And so now that they'd found the family, Dionne says this thing she had set in motion suddenly got much more real, and she was getting kind of nervous. And part of the reason was, is I really wasn't sure what the rest of my family would think about this.
SPEAKER_13: I was making this executive decision. Is that because you didn't tell anyone else in your family? Or did you check with them? What was the conversation?
SPEAKER_03: No, I didn't check with them. I didn't check with them.
SPEAKER_03: Why not?
SPEAKER_13: Because I was afraid they'd say no.
SPEAKER_03: This is another thing Rex and Keiko run into sometimes. People feel that the flag is more a memento of their loved one now than of this person back in Japan. And they want to keep it. But Dionne said that wasn't so much her concern as it was that she thought her family might get upset about the idea of sending this flag back to the country that had caused Uncle Bud just so much pain and suffering. But my thing is, I don't believe that individual soldiers should be held accountable for what their governments did, or what they did on behalf of their governments.
SPEAKER_13: So I just decided I wasn't going to have that discussion. That's what it was. I just figured I would do it, because I thought it needed to go back to that family. You know, and if I got in trouble for it, I got in trouble for it.
SPEAKER_03: And so off the flag went after 75 years to Noriko Koishi. And although Oban Society did contact her ahead of time to let her know that this was happening, once again, just like her father's death notice, it just came in the mail.
SPEAKER_12: The post person brought it to her in an envelope, so nobody actually protected it to her. And her mother passed away 20 years ago. She's an only child, so she had no choice but to open it by herself. She worried if her dad's blood would be on it, or is it ripped, or is it soiled? So there was happy and worried at the same time.
SPEAKER_03: And so when she did open it, and it was just in this perfect condition, she said she was just so, so thankful. So Noriko wrote Dion a thank you letter. And the letter honestly just describes in this incredible way what she and Noriko did next and her thoughts and feelings far better than I could. And so I'll just let Dion read the letter, which I've abridged and edited a bit, but here it is.
SPEAKER_13: Dear Mrs. Dion M. Blazing, I have unexpectedly received the flag of my father by virtue of your thoughtful offer in support of Oban Society. I felt this proved his strong desire to come home because his flag returned home just before his birthday on October 26. However, my mother and his brothers, as well as his parents, all passed away. Now I'm the only person who keeps my father's memory. I think it was very lucky your uncle found my father's flag in the middle of war and brought it to Michigan. I truly appreciate he preserved it very carefully, even though it must have been carried through the battlefield. I look at my father having returned home and wonder if he finds me acceptable to be his daughter. On the night his flag returned, almost as if my father rubbed his cheek against my cheek after a long time, I held the flag in the chest and fell into a shallow sleep trying to control my emotion. Such reunion with my father would never have happened without your uncle's thoughtfulness and your arrangement. I announce the return of the flag to my late mother at the family grave. With your generous help, my father finally can rest in peace after 75 years long journey. Under COVID pandemic, please take care of yourself. With sincere gratitude, Noriko Koishi.
SPEAKER_08: Wow, that's remarkable. That letter, I mean, it just shows what a fantastic person Noriko is, that she has the generosity of spirit to, like, thank her uncle for preserving it and getting it back to her somehow, even though, you know, they fought on opposite sides of this war. Even they fought. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_08: That's just that's a great thing. And I think she got back so much more in that letter than she would ever had keeping that flag.
SPEAKER_03: You know, Dion said more or less the same thing. And not only was Noriko incredibly gracious, it turns out, so was Dion's own family, because when she finally did tell them what she had done, she says they weren't angry at all. Not with Dion and not with Noriko's father. They were just happy to see his flag return home.
SPEAKER_08: Coming up, finding the perfect flag for a whole continent after this. USA for UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, responds to emergencies and provides long term solutions for refugees in places like Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and many more.
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SPEAKER_09: But this place is extremely cold and remote, and it doesn't really lend itself to full-time imperialist occupation. So instead, people rotate in and out, and they stay there for a while, and then they return to their home countries. That makes sense, that they would return to their home countries, because it is truly inhospitable. So given that there are visitors that come from all over, I would imagine that if you walked around different bases and research facilities, that you would see different countries' flags all over the place.
SPEAKER_08: Absolutely. There are tons of flags for all these different nations. And in some cases, there are even territory-specific designs created to make political claims to specific areas seem more official.
SPEAKER_09: So explain that to me more. So flags that are designed by specific countries that are trying to gain or maintain a foothold, like they make a kind of variation of their flag that's Antarctica-like?
SPEAKER_08: Exactly. They take their flag, and then they turn it into a hybrid, and they add some elements to make it really clear, like, this is our flag, but this is also our flag specifically for Antarctica, or for this section of it.
SPEAKER_09: I see. Yeah, and to confuse things even more, some of these historically-claimed areas overlap or have been contested. So the result is you've got this profusion of flags reflecting the continent's history and all these layers of political complexity and dispute.
SPEAKER_08: I mean, that all sounds really messy, that there would be these official national flags and also these weird regional flags tied to different countries, but I know that I've seen an actual flag of Antarctica at some point that's basically the shape of the continent, and it's sort of like an icy white shape of the continent, and it's like in this field of dark, watery blue. Like, I know that I've seen that flag. Yes, you definitely have. There are actually two designs along those lines, and neither of them is official, but they both have been used in a variety of contexts.
SPEAKER_09: So the older one is really just the emblem of the Antarctic Treaty, which is an international agreement signed by a dozen nations back in the 50s. And it's a lot like the United Nations flag, with, you know, land shown in white against this field of blue. Oh, I see the resemblance. Okay, so the UN flag is kind of a globe from, you see it from the North Pole axis, and you see like the whole globe and the latitude and longitude lines, and then it has those branches. I don't know what those things are.
SPEAKER_09: Those, like, Caesar's crown branches wrapping around it. And the Antarctic flag that is modeled after this one is basically the continent of Antarctica, and you see the latitude and longitude lines, and it looks pretty cool, but you can totally see that it was based off of the UN flag and the treaty.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, because the UN was really integral to, you know, establishing this treaty, which, which in turn established Antarctica as this peaceful and shared place for exploration and discovery rather than, you know, a territory to be conquered and divided up.
SPEAKER_09: And so, initially, the treaty included countries that already had research stations, and then over time, other UN members were invited to join too. What about those countries that wanted bits and pieces all to themselves? I mean, we did a whole story about a Russian research station that had a bust of linen on it.
SPEAKER_08: So like, you know, what did the treaty address that? Well, so no, it didn't. It kind of skirted the issue. And what it did was it was it put a stop to new claims and said, okay, there are going to be no new territorial claims, but it didn't really resolve the existing ones.
SPEAKER_09: And in the midst of all this, this emblem that was made in association with the treaty became a kind of de facto flag for it to start with, not technically official, but kind of a baseline design to work with in the absence of something more official. Right. I mean, I'm still sort of confused as to what would make an official flag of Antarctica to begin with. But you'd mentioned there was a second flag that was like this one. So which one is that one?
SPEAKER_08: Right. So this is kind of an evolution of the first one where in the 1990s, this vexillologist named Graham Bartram simplified the emblem. He essentially removed those lines and curves that represented latitude and longitude and created this more streamlined version, which is really just an outline of the continent in white, surrounded by blue.
SPEAKER_09: So this is the one I've seen more like this one I'm familiar with. And it looks like a really lovely flag. It's like it's the shape of the continent. It, you know, it's it represents a thing. I kind of like map flags. I tend to like them a little more abstract than this one. But I do like ones that that have some sort of geographical basis in them.
SPEAKER_08: Right. You know, so why isn't this one the official flag? Well, so that you kind of already hinted at this, but it's it's kind of more specific than a lot of map flags. And that specificity is part of the problem, because this geographic outline is complex. And it's also not totally accurate, because Antarctica's shape continues to shift as its icy edges melt.
SPEAKER_09: And so as a flag, it's not really future proof because of this literally changing landscape. And, you know, this isn't just a nitpicky critique, because climate change poses really serious threats to the continent.
SPEAKER_08: Right. So like, it's a bigger problem than a flag design, right? It's like, it's pointing out a real practical issue that, you know, you cannot rely on an aerial photograph of this piece of geography for your permanent symbolism if it's going to constantly change, especially with Antarctica, because especially because the icy edges make it so that it really does constantly change. I mean, Ernest Shackleton learned this the hard way. So is there any other designs that are not relying on the outward geography of the of the continent? Yeah, so there's this one flag that's fairly recent, and somewhat official. And in my opinion, the best looking flag so far. And it's really different from these other two. It was made by the founder of a non political group called True South. And here it is.
SPEAKER_08: Oh, this is beautiful. It's really simple and elegant. There's a bar of blue on the top and a bar of white at the bottom. And then there's kind of like a diamond shape. And it's sort of like a pyramid, but you can see it from both dimensions, like kind of like a, you know, the thing that is above your head when you play The Sims, you know, that that sort of green sort of crystal thing. But so the top of the diamond is white. And that contrast the bar of blue on the top, and then the bottom of the diamond is blue, and it contrasts the bar of white at the bottom. I mean, it's really, really lovely. I like it a lot. I do too. And it's, you know, it gets so far with just these two colors and the simple geometry. But what I like most about it is that it was actually made in Antarctica.
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, so this, it's called the True South flag. And it was created by this guy named Evan Townsend, who at the time was living and working at McMurdo, which is the largest station on the continent. And while he was there, you can imagine, like, not a lot to do. You know, he sat down thought up and sketched out this design. And then he started literally gathering up scraps of canvas intense and actually made his own physical prototype of it.
SPEAKER_08: Oh, I love it. It really is. You have some time on your hands. That's what you do. Long nights, very long nights. But so aside from, you know, following like good vexillological principles around simplicity and clarity, does the diamond have deeper meaning or symbolism? It does. And honestly, I would be doing it an injustice if I if I tried to paraphrase this. So I'm just gonna give you this excerpt from Townsend to read about the design.
SPEAKER_08: Okay, so here's a quote. That's great. Really compelling. Evocative symbolism is clearly thought out. The core of it is really powerful, too. I mean, this is not a nation or collection of territories. I mean, this is a peaceful and distinctive place that we share and protect and, you know, work on together. Exactly. I love all of that. And I also love his attention to detail. He includes these really subtle elements to like, he went out of his way to make sure that the blue he was using on the flag was different from any other blue found on any other national flag in the world.
SPEAKER_08: Huh? So like, no one could have greater claim to the flag. That's so good. Okay, that's so good. So I guess the true test of a flag like this is like, are people using it? Like, do you see it around stations? Yes, you do. It was actually really quickly adopted by various Antarctic nonprofits and expedition teams. So it's already been flown in camps and research stations and by fans around the world who've never even been to Antarctica. And it remains to be seen whether this will become fully official, but it's gaining traction. And it's also non commercial. It's a free to use creation. So anybody can adopt it or fly it or even change it if they want to.
SPEAKER_09: I mean, that's the thing I love about flax. The whole point is that we all own them and nobody owns them. I mean, that's the greatest thing about them. So if it all goes well, what would it take to make it official? Like, I'm just confused as to what would make things in Antarctica. Really? Like, I feel like it's a lawless land.
SPEAKER_09: You know, it is a very strange place. But according to Townsend, either the Antarctic Treaty System, or the UN could theoretically just decide to adopt it, which might actually happen if it gets enough of this kind of grassroots support that it's been building, right?
SPEAKER_08: And what about the old claims to territories made by different countries? Like, won't some nations take some issue with the use of a single flag for a whole continent? Well, maybe, but Townsend maintains that this design is not meant to be divisive or to settle any of these kind of legacy political disputes.
SPEAKER_09: It's supposed to be something that people who want to protect the continent can rally behind, regardless of different vested interests that they might have or that their countries might have. So while it's made for Antarctica, he hopes that people will just continue to fly it around the world and see it as this unifying icon, something that, you know, helps everybody become more interested and invested in the conservation of this really unique place. Well, this is such a good story. And the result is a really good flag, which is my favorite part of the whole story.
SPEAKER_08: Of course, of course. Well, thanks for bringing this to us. And you know, happy flag day. Yeah, happy flag day to you too, Roman.
SPEAKER_08: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Kirk Colstead and Joe Rosenberg, music by our director of sound, Sean Riel, mixed by Carolina Rodriguez. Delaney Hall is the executive producer, the rest of the team is Vivian Lay, Chris Berube, Christopher Johnson, Basha Madon, Katie Mingle, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sophia Klatsker, and me, Roman Mars. Special thanks today to our translator, Megumi Yamamoto, as well as Larry Parak at the Alameda Naval Air Museum and Christopher Harding at the University of Edinburgh, who we spoke with for Joe's story, but whose voice we didn't get to include. His book, A History of Modern Japan in Search of a Nation, provides great context for further understanding the history of the Hinamaru and good luck flags. You'll find a link to that as well as the Alameda Naval Air Museum and of course, the Obon Society on our website 99pi.org. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99pi.org or on Instagram and Reddit too. You can find other shows I love from Stitcher on our website, 99pi.org, including Science Rules with Bill Nye. They just featured our episode about Vanta Black, so thank you to that team. If you want to listen to any other 99pi episodes that you might have missed, look no further than 99pi.org. We have one correction for this episode. It turns out we pronounce the Japanese word Obon incorrectly. The entire episode is pronounced Obon, not Obon. Thank you to our listeners for catching that and pointing it out to us.
SPEAKER_07: This has been a Stitcher Radio production broadcast around the globe by the Sirius XM Satellite Network.
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