GIFU–Chiyo Shinoda treasures the now-wilted flower that her husband Isamu sent her from far across the Pacific Ocean at the height of World War II.

It was enclosed in a letter he sent from Kiska Island, in the Aleutian Island chain off Alaska, in the summer of 1942. Isamu, then 37, was a captain of 68 crew aboard Japanese submarine chaser Number 27, stationed in Japan-occupied Kiska.

Eight days later, he was killed.

Sixty-seven years had passed when, in January, his 98-year-old war widow received another Kiska flower by mail at her Gifu home. An attached note read, “from the sons of Catherine Abele.”

The flowers have since become a symbol of friendship between the two families, whose fate was entwined by the deaths of the men in their families, fighting on opposite sides of the deadliest military conflict in history.

Mannert “Jim” Abele had captained the U.S. submarine that sank Isamu’s ship. His own ship disappeared 15 days later after a confrontation with a Japanese freighter.

Decades later, when his sons finally found his resting place, they collected their own flowers from Kiska in memory of the father who never came home.

In Isamu’s letter dated July 7, 1942, he wrote to Chiyo, “I am sending my heart with this flower.” In July, wild flowers were in bloom across the island. On July 15, Isamu’s ship was sunk by torpedoes fired by a U.S. submarine.

At the funeral held by the Imperial Japanese Navy, Shinoda was handed a plain wooden box with a picture of Isamu in it. She was just 31 but had already been left alone to raise three children. Clutching a letter from Isamu’s friend, she stood and wept as she recalled the way Isamu waved to her from the distance, looking back time and again as he left Hiroshima’s Kure port for the battlefield.

It was later discovered that the enemy ship that had downed Isamu and his crew was the U.S. submarine USS Grunion. The Grunion disappeared after July 31.

About the same time, 12-year-old Bruce Abele was playing basketball by himself in the backyard of his home in a Boston suburb. “If I can make five (shots) at a time, Jim is coming back,” he would say to himself.

Bruce and his two younger brothers waited in vain for the return of their 39-year-old father, the captain of the USS Grunion, whose fate remained unknown long after the war.

In 2002, the brothers found an Internet article by Yutaka Iwasaki, a maritime history enthusiast from Kobe, about a Japanese freighter that had reportedly sunk the Grunion.

The brothers contacted Iwasaki, who sent them a marine chart via e-mail. In August 2006, with the help of a side scan sonar, they were able to locate a possible target 10 kilometers off the tip of the island.

They returned the next August with a remote-control submersible, which completed a dive that enabled the U.S. Navy to confirm the vessel was the USS Grunion. Before they left Kiska, one of the younger brothers gathered some of the flowers that carpeted the island.

It was after World War II ended that Shinoda learned her husband’s ship was sunk by the USS Grunion. In August 2007, Kazuo, the eldest son of Chiyo, found an Asahi Shimbun article reporting the discovery of the USS Grunion.

He contacted Iwasaki, who helped him send Bruce Abele translations of Isamu’s memoir, published on the 50th anniversary of his death, as well as letters he had written.

Bruce, now 79, felt a strong connection to Kazuo. Both of their fathers had three children. Their fathers were seamen and their ages were close. Chiyo reminded him of his mother, who died more than 30 years ago. He sent a flower his younger brother had brought back from Kiska Island.

The flower, pressed and framed, reached Shinoda in mid-January.

Shinoda thought of the letter from Isamu’s friend that arrived soon after the war.

“In the northern sea where ice comes down,” he wrote, “(Both friends and foes) must be praying for peace and the rebuilding of the homeland, wishing happiness for their families–no longer concerned with foes or friends.

“And perhaps they are smiling, wondering how two countries could do such a stupid thing as wage war.”(IHT/Asahi: April 4,2009)