Japanese Arisaka Type 38 Battle Damaged Rifle – NOT FOR SALE

(Can’t Sell This One – law will not allow)

A Moment of History Frozen in Time……. purportedly struck by an American .30 calibre round whilst defending Iwo Jima.

Can you imaging the sheer violence and destruction that occurred around this weapon when it was sprayed with bulletts!  I can’t.  It is impossible to surmise accurately where this weapon was when it was hit.  Was it the hands of an unfortunate infantryman or leaning up against the side of a wall of sandbags? Who knows. At first glance one is immediately conscious that if in the firing position, the user might be short of a hand or at least most of his fingers!  The main strike passed through the forend, just at the throat part of the barrel and has peeled the barrel open. That would take immense force on an object not firmly secured – for it them to be hit again is mind boggling!  Fingers or hand parts would be laying in the sand in the immediate vicinity!

On closer inspection I beleive the rifle has actually been struck twice.  Once further up the barrel on the exposed upper surface, where a graze is evident and then as mentioned above. The strikes are approximately 12″ apart.  Both impacts are cased by (once again – I would say) by identical projectiles.  Both would be very difficult to simulate or fake. I also believe that the hand guard above the barrel has been added at a later date for the benefit of the museum visitor. The rifle was purchased in the US out of a local museum sale.  It carries a description and a brass museum tag which is marked “IWO JIMA / 7”

Re’ the hand guard; the timber is slightly different in grain ( far younger) and it has been chemically stained to match.  Then the wound has been added purely on the handguard to make sense of the hit.  The damage to the rest of the stock is however quite different.  The timber they used to stock these weapons consists of a very loose long grained wood.  It is easily damaged on the surface of the rifles and they frequently turn up looking as if they have been used to hammer in the proverbial nails or fence posts.  When working the timber the grain tares easily and does not finish well on the end-grain.  I would fully expect the explosive damage caused by this strike to end up looking like this.  The shock waves that passed through the stock are evident all the way down to and around the semi-pistol grip and have also travelled the other way to the mid-band. Someone has twisted a piece of crude wire around it to hold it together.

Looking closely at the damage cased by the two strikes to the metal shows the extreme forces present when the bullet strikes.  the lesser wound at the front end of the barrel is similar to a gouge made in soft timber by a carvers curved chisel. However, that shallow gouge does show a smooth edge and a jagged edge, suggesting a direction of travel for the bullet.

The main “wound” is very interesting.  It has all kinds of aspects and different directions of destruction.  There is tearing, explosive outward force, folding, smoothing. The whole area is bathed in copper wash from the jacket of the bullet head that must have disintegrated on impact.  Very interestingly, the striations of the passing bullet are visible in the steel of the barrel.  It has actually managed to get all the way through the barrel and open it up like a tin can.  You can clearly see the thickness of the barrel.  There is material missing, completely unaccountable for.  This was a millisecond in history perfectly preserved and we can see it 74 years later!  Verdigris has also developed as a result of the copper contamination.

I wonder if the rifle was forensically examined if there would be traces of blood or even the dark sands of Iwo Jima.

Anyway its an interesting thing and a reminder to all of us who are interested in this type of thing – it was a time to be at war.  A terrifying experience.  However misguided, scared they were. Was he famously cruel by western standards to his enemy?  Who ever he was, he was still somebodies son. Some mother lost her most cherished achievement and love.  A brother or a father faced death and was dealt a hand.  Did he survive?  Was he wounded or was he left, mutilated, dead, or just to an observer, apparently sleeping in the all consuming black sand.  We have his rifle.  He was given this to deal the same treatment out to the invading Americans with the might of their military machine behind them. Their over whelming force of numbers and advanced technology. Nearly every moving piece of hardware being mounted with a dealy .30 calibre browning. Worse than that, fighter bombers with multiple machine guns mounted on each wing.  Stand up to that with a 6.5 mm bolt action rifle and try to stop it.  Did he get a kill shot off at a distance before he was hit?  Did he get multiple shots off at anonymous figures pouring up the beach at a distance, who knows but, he was there and as they say – he got his.  A sobering thought.

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