More than 50 years after being discarded in the chaos of a Pacific island combat zone, an Imperial Japanese Navy trombone has been returned to Japan -- in a condition nearly as good as when it left the factory.
Apparently manufactured in 1935, the trombone was given to Sheldon Levy by a U.S. World War II veteran in 1990 when he was playing trombone in a band attached to the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet Band, based in Virginia.
Sheldon Levy and Lt. Yoshio Higuchi, music division chief of The Japan Navy Band, admire a trompone that has been returned after a half-century.