Hello, I've had this "WW2 bringback" sword from my step grandfather who served in the Pacific theater as a Marine. He passed a long time ago, so my dad and I maintained it as best as we knew how, but recently on a whim I took a closer look at it while wiping it down and realized we had never taken the handle off the tang before. So that was very cool to discover the mei. I have a cursory knowledge of Japanese language, but the complexity of some of these kanji are eluding me. And in my search for common sword related kanji, or date related kanji I found this forum thankfully! So if anyone recognizes any of these, I would greatly appreciate some help translating this. I haven't seen my dad this excited in a while- so it would mean a lot to both of us to be able to understand where and when this sword came from. And my feelings won't be hurt if it *is* a copy, like we suspected. It's still sentimental to us regardless.
Thanks for your time everyone!
Nick