Japanese Militaria at Castle-Thunder.com

[Francis C. Allan]

I was looking at a couple of Jinsen Type 99 rifles as some background for a Banzai article. I found the plain English letter K in the stock under where the upper wrist tang fits in serial number 364. This rifle has nearly all parts stamped with the Kokura se stamp, including the stock (the stock also has the normal JIN stamp).

The second stamp of interest is the Hiragana character "to" stamped on the receiver bridge in the same approximate place where the Kanji "toku" or 4mm circles are stamped on many later rifles. The "to" is stamped on serial number 62475. It appears that this may have been a substitute for the normal Kanji TOKU stamp for some reason.

Has anyone else encountered these stamps? If so, on what serial number rifle, so that I can try to establish a range in which they were used.

Frank




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Francis C. Allan
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Palm Coast, FL 32137

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