Mark Confort

Be happy that the museum has not responded/not interested. Many museums are poor conservators of historical items and many times they get damaged, degraded, "lost", traded off or sold outright. I was at the Pearl Harbor museum in 2002 and unless they have expanded, it was not very large so adding exhibits may not be possible unless they rotate something out. One of the most impressive items was part of a Japanese air dropped torpedo and a uniform and photo scrap book of the Arizona of a sailor that was entombed in the ship in the bombing. The torpedo was stuck in the mud just off Battleship Row and there is a whirlpool that can be seen on the well known photo of the battleships during the attack. Apparently the torpedo nose dived in the water, due to the plane carrying it getting hit by A/A fire, and it stuck in the mud with the propellers spinning full bore, creating a white looking whirlpool on the surface visible in the photos. From what I can remember of the exhibits, most everything was from sailors, ships and planes that were in the harbor at the time of the attack.

I once worked with a man whose father had been in the service in WW2 and during the occupation of Japan he was assigned to Nagoya, possibly Nagoya Arsenal. He stated his dad's job was the destruction of heaps of Japanese weapons, firearms and swords among them. It was just a crappy job for his dad, for people like us it would be like diving into a pile of gold. Back in the '70's I personally got to talk to a former soldier who did the same thing in Germany after the war, he hauled truckloads of captured weapons to locations where they were destroyed.

Thank you BBSAN, that is great to have confirmation of the manufacturer. Is it known yet whether the Kobe Ikkou marking (or any of the manufacturer markings) is for the mountings, the blade or the complete sword?

Here is an unidentified manufacturer stamping on my Type 95. There is conjecture it may be the same manufacturer as the stamp that looks similar but with a "K" in the center, thought to be a company named Kobe in Tokyo I believe. It's too bad it is unidentified, maybe someday that will change.