WW2 Battlefield Sword?

[Yabbie75]

 

 I was wondering if anyone could give me some info on this sword.

What I know is it came home from New Guinea with my grandfather after he was wounded in battle at Gona 

around end of 1942 - start of 1943. Not sure if he got it from the battle field or later after recovering in Port Moresby.

The force they encountered were IJA 55th Division & IJA 17th Army,South Seas Force. It sat on top his wardrobe until it was passed onto me 20 years ago. The handle appears to have been replaced at some point as hole in tang has been redrilled. No defining markings under the handle. 

 

[vajo]

Type98 with older blade in bad condition.

[Yabbie75]

Yeah right. What does type 98 mean? When you say older blade do you have an idea of age? I’m not planning on selling so what do people tend to do with them? Restore or leave in go condition?

 

 

 

[Geraint]

Dear Matthew.

 

Welcome to NMB.  Chris has given you a very condensed answer so let me unpack it a bit for you.  Most swords carried during WWII are known as Shingunto, type 98 refers to a specific variant of these mounts.  They are not mass produced in the conventional sense but they are all made to a specification.  However it is often the case that older blades were remounted to carry to war, it used to be assumed that these were family blades given to the son to carry, in fact many of them were used to save on manufacturing and resources.  Much less romantic and of course, impossible to say which applies to your sword.  

 

It is impossible to give you much information about the blade from photograps but if I had to guess I would suggest that it might be a Koto blade, which means from before 1600

 

Yours also has an older tsuba, the guard.  A decent shot of this posted in the Tosogu section might attract some information. (Tosogu means fittings and a lot of collectors specialise in this.)

Another intteresting feature is the hanger on the scabbard which is somewhat unusual and may suggest that the original scabbard was used under the leather combat cover.

 

Any cleaning that you do should only ammount to wiping the blade with a light oil and perhaps some leather cream on the combat cover, anything else will harm the sword.  If you do decide to do a full restoration then brace yourself, it's an expensive process.  You may wish to preserve as is.  It's an important link to your Grandfather and what he did.

 

For a lot more information you might like to have a look here, http://ohmura-study.net/900.html  Grab a coffee, there's a lot to go through!

 

Feel free to ask further questions.

 

All the best.

 

[Bruce Pennington]

Most info covered already.

Type 94/98 - Army Officer swords

Type 95 - Army NCO sword

Type 97 - Navy Officer sword

 

Great website with tons of excellent pictures, descriptions, and history:

http://ohmura-study.net/900.html

 

Great article describing the military's need for swords and their efforts to get family swords donated and/or to buy them for the war effort:

Effort to acquire Family Swords by Military.

 

NNB forum for discussing fittings like your tsuba (Handguard)

Tosogu

[Yabbie75]

Thanks A lot guys looks like I’ve got some to do.