Japanese flag from Labuan signed by 5 Airfield Construction Squadron : Leading Aircraftman Noel Campbell McAllister, RAAF

Small white cotton Japanese flag, with central red rising sun. The sun has several tears, and the entire flag has been encapsulated in heavy plastic.

The flag bears pseudo Japanese characters but these are nonsensical and do not translate. [Each component of a Japanese character must be formed with a single stroke of the brush to produce a given part of a character before lifting the writing instrument from the writing surface. Not only do the 'characters' on the flag not translate, but each is formed by multiple small strokes; another indication that they have been written by a non-Japanese.]

Hand written across one end of the flag in pink ink is the text 'Victory in Pacific / 5 A.C.S. RAAF / Labuan 1945 / Cut Lunch Joe'.
The flag has some fifty signatures of unit members, some of which are illegible.

Those that can be read include; Noel Dunster / K Morgan / K Lynagh / K Fyfe / K Evans / F Brooks / C R Hastings / G F Gardner / J Donohue / B Brauer / N Mastrs / S J Flanagan / J Clark / F A Fenby / Mark Ryan / J McAuliffe / W D Henderson / A G King / S J Houghton / Bill Fox / J Barney / Neil Tonkin / Noel Campbell McAllister.

Flag acquired by Leading Aircraftman Noel Campbell McAllister while in Borneo. McAllister was born in Cowra New South Wales on 28 February 1925. He enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in Sydney aged 19 in September 1944.

Serving as a leading aircraftman, McAllister embarked for active service in January 1945 with No. 5 Airfield Construction Squadron to Biak Island, Indonesia. Here his unit worked on improving facilities used by the United States Army and United States Army Air Forces. In mid-May 1945, McAllister's squadron travelled to Morotai. They remained on this island until June when they departed as part of the Australian-led Battle of North Borneo.The squadron landed at Labuan on 11 June and worked on repairing and maintaining the island's airfield until the end of the war on 15 August.

Post-war he returned to Sydney and married. He played professional rugby for Newtown for some years before returning to the town of his birth. McAllister took up farming at Cowra, and was killed in a dam construction accident in 1957.