Japanese Occupation & WW2
ART & ARTIFACTS

JAPANESE POLICE SABRE HILT
submitted by Jim Moses
 
DESCRIPTION: the hilt, in pieces, of a Japanese police sabre
SIZE: longest piece about four inches
MATERIAL: brass, with rusted steel blade fragments
LOCATION ACQUIRED: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, Micronesia
DATE: 1971
Items Collected by: JIM MOSES (PCV TINIAN, NMI 1971–1973; PCV SAIPAN, NMI 1973–1974)
 
Information, pictures, and story submitted by Jim Moses, May 2021
A Japanese man, whose name I believe was Dr. Hayakawa, visited Tinian one day. He was part of a United Nations medical team investigating Marshall Islanders affected by the open-air atomic bomb tests done there after World War II. He had a hand-drawn map that had been given to him by a woman whose husband had died in a cave on Tinian during the war. She had asked him to attempt to retrieve her husband's bones for repatriation to Japan. The map had been drawn from memory by a friend of the dead man who had shared the cave with him, and who was captured after the man died. When he was released in Japan, he tracked down the widow and drew a map detailing where the cave could be found. The doctor came to Tinian School and asked if anyone knew where the cave might be. Several students said they thought they knew the location, so we organized a small expedition to find the soldier's remains. The doctor had a description of injuries the man had sustained so he was confident that if we found skeletal material he could determine if the bones were from the correct person. During our expedition we located one cave with five skeletons in it. The remains of the sabre were found by me, mixed in with the ribs of one skeleton. There were also bottles, coins, and a few other artifacts in the cave. I later learned that the sabre was a police sabre. A short time later we found another cave, in the position indicated on the map, and found a skeleton in that one, too. It had the same injuries the doctor was looking for, so we boxed it up and he sent it back to the widow in Japan. Since the sabre was not found in the same cave, and had no apparent relationship to the soldier we were looking for, I kept it. The blade was almost completely rusted away, but the hilt was in relatively good condition.
TEA POTS & TOPS
submitted by Kit Porter Van Meter
​Tea pots & tops found in Japanese Hospital ruin on Rota (1967)
  • ​After Typhoon Gilda on Rota in 1967, all the trees, vines, and overall growth was gone.  We explored around the old Japanese Hospital that had been almost impossible to see before the typhoon.  Here are some of the items I think we found there.