In the final days of World War II, an American soldier named Joseph "Benny" Kasser found an abandoned Japanese sword on a beach in Okinawa. Attached was a tag with the owner's name (Colonel Tomesuke Umeki) and a short note in English including the phrase, "I am very glad to have the honour to ask your favour to send my sword to my home." As Kevin Chroust writes in Outside, Kasser brought the sword back with him to his home in Franklin Park, Illinois, and hung it on his basement rafters. He would bring it out every now and then to show people, as Chroust well knows—he is Kasser's grandson. Chroust explains he had always been fascinated with the weapon and its origins, and in 2021 he broached the idea with this grandfather of attempting to return it. His 99-year-old grandfather immediately agreed.
The first-person piece details the internet sleuthing that ensued, assisted by a Japanese reporter. They located Umeki's family in Takaharu, Miyazaki prefecture, and learned that the soldier himself had died in 1974 at the age of 74. The piece culminates with Chroust traveling to Japan to meet Umeki's son and returning the centuries-old family heirloom in a solemn ceremony at the family shrine—while his grandfather watched via video from Illinois. "Here was a 99-year-old man returning to a 97-year-old man his father's sword after 77 years," writes Chroust. "Then it was placed atop the display by Takemitsu's son, Toshihiro, the blade finally home, two generations later without missing one." (Read the full story.)