I was speaking with a friend of mine and she had mentioned that her grandfather served in world war 2 in the pacific and that her family had a few items that he had collected during his time there. Here is an image of the display they have in their house.

imgur.com/gallery/VhQCgJv/new

Some of the items I can identify. The flag is a good luck flag given to most soldiers at the time. I believe it is backward as the text on it seems to be running in the wrong direction. One of the bills is a 50 Centavo piece issued by Japan as currency in the Philippines. Unfortunately this is the only image I have so I cant get a closer look at what the rest of the items are.

What I am most interested in however is the story that went along with these items. My friends family claims that their grandfather picked these items up in Nagasaki after the dropping of the second atomic bomb. One week after the bomb dropped. To me this sounded off. As I understand it was a few weeks after the bombs fell that Japan surrendered and much later before American troops entered Japan. They where however insistent and so I started doing some research.

What I found was that as Nagasaki was a large port there where Allied POWs being held there and that some of them had been killed by the bomb. My theory is that he was a prisoner of war at the time and that is how he was in Nagasaki after the dropping of the bomb.

This is where I would like some help from the history community. Where can I find more information not only about the pows held in Nagasaki but also a time table or activities log of when Allied troops entered Japan and what they did there. For instance where there large garrisons in the country and could items like these have been acquired then.

One final note is that the grandfather whom had collected these items had passed away some time before. He had developed cancer and I believe this is where the families insistence of him being in Nagasaki comes from. In other words radiation caused his caner.

Thank you