Saturday, December 19, 2009

FLAG USS GRENADIER SS-210 POW's made an American flag out of a bed sheet: The picture of the flag and Jerry's father is shown on my Tuesday, November 3, 2009 blog post. Mary, I saw your comment and thought I would give some information about the Flag. The POW waving the Flag in the photo is my father James D. "Slim" Landrum EM1c. He was a crew member on the Grenadier SS210. I have his diaries from his stay as a "guest" of the Japanese. He told me that he and several others made the Flag from a sheet and that he got the pole (fireman's pike" from the fire shed. He said he wanted the American Flag to be in front and large than the other Flags. At on time I had a photo of the flag on the roof of one of the buildings so the planes could see it. He said he gave the flag to one of the other POWs whose last name I think ended with "ski". I have the roster of all of the POWs at Camp Omori. My father gave most of his things away as he was being liberated. The only things I have are two small notebooks he kept notes in. I had dreamed of finding the submarine someday and started diving in 1965 in hopes of someday finding it. I enlisted in the Army in 1966 and volunteered for Vietnam three times with the hopes of visiting some of the POW camps he was in. The ones I remembered were the Light Street Convent in Penang, Singapore, Ofuna, Shinagawa, and Omori. Of course the Army would not send me and I spent my time in the States. There is a group of divers in Malaysia that are supposedly searching for the Grenadier. There are so many things I wish I had done like recording some of the conversations when the survivors would have reunions and when I visited some of them while traveling. Wouldn't it be nice if someone like Clint Eastwood or Tom Hanks would produce a movie like they did with "Flags of our Father's, or "Saving Private Ryan". It's great to know that someone else is trying to find out what happened to the Flag. Hope this sheds a little light on the Flag. Jerry Landrum Thanks Jerry, for your emotional story.

1 comment:

Lisa said...

My FAther Charles E Johnson was on the USS Grenadier 210 and his Brother-in-law Norman Arthur Albersten was in the picture with the flag you mentioned. It would be nice if the flag was found and presented to the government to be displayed in a museum for all to see the cunning and preserverance that the POW's had to make and keep apart of the FLAG OF FREEDOM from their captors.