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Posted

Kiyoshi san,

very interesting. Thanks for posting. Nice to see Ohmura san at last :)

 

I wonder if it is the same sword? Maybe the Oisha san had the fittings changed from buke-zukuri to Type 38 gunto later in the war?

I see the Oisha san's sword has a army koshirae and a brown tassel...I wonder if it was noticed by Ohmura san?

My Japanese teacher's father was an Oisha san also...he was part of the Army administration at Rabaul on New Britain (PNG). He was killed 1942.

She said his tassel was blue/brown...but she was only a child then....

Her father was in a war zone with the army...this Oisha san was with a civilian ? administration on the homeland...maybe that is why it has a brown tassel?

I wonder what is the true story of tassels.

Regards,

Posted

As mentioned already, sword in photo with officer doesn't look like same sword at all. I also don't understand how reading of tang can point towards owner. Maybe it's just me. My favorite saying is "buy the item not the story".

Posted
Whether or not the swords are the same is beside the point.

 

The point is that two families can tell their war-History stories. The sword is but a prop.

 

KM

I strongly disagree unless it's a fiction story the sword is the key piece that brings the families together

  • 1 month later...
Posted

hi all,

 

I was very interested when I came across this thread recently about the documentary which Mr Ohmura-san is involved with. I have been working on this documentary ('A Doctor's Sword') for the past few years and he has been extremely helpful and generous with his time. His enthusiasm for the project has made a huge difference to the production and we are hugely grateful.

 

Over the past few years we have gathered more and more information about the sword which is now in Castletownbere, on the south west coast of Ireland. It was given to Dr Aidan MacCarthy by 2nd Lieutenant Isao Kusuno at camp 26 in Keisen, Kyushu province in August 1945. There are more background details to be found on the documentary facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Doctor ... 9187300063

 

I was very interested to read the comments on the the fact that the handles on both swords didnt match up. This is true and we were advised at the time that civilian sword handles were replaced with military mounts once a person entered the army/navy/air force. This stands to reason as military organisations prefer uniformity in terms of clothing, weapons etc.

 

We were convinced at the time (March 2012) that the Japanese officer in the vimeo clip (Dr Danno) was the most likely person to have given Dr MacCarthy the sword. There were two reasons for this, the fact that both doctors had worked together in Camp 14b (Nagasaki) and Camp 26 (Keisen) for over a year, and the fact that Dr Danno's daughter (she's also in the vimeo clip) told us that her father returned from the war saying that he had "given his sword to an Allied POW doctor". We couldnt state this as a fact but intended to narrate this by saying that to best of our knowledge, following extensive research etc that this was our contention. At that point we couldn't state anything as fact.

 

All of this changed however on July 11th of this year when Nicola MacCarthy (Dr MacCarthy's daughter) called me to say that she had found a photograph of the officer who gave her father the sword (we had been looking for this for 3 years since we started filming interview with the family!). Dr MacCarthy's widow Kathleen (now deceased) had told us about the existence of the photograph which was at that time missing. On the back of the photo there was an inscription which we got translated and was overjoyed to find out that it was in fact the photo we had been looking for and the inscription confirms that the sword was given as a gift. The photo and the inscription are on the facebook page linked above.

 

A few weeks ago we brought Nicola MacCarthy to visit the site of the POW camp on the ground of the Mitsubishi factory in Nagasaki for the 68th anniversary of the bomb and to search for the Kusuno family. We had an incredible, unforgettable experience and all of this will feature in the documentary.

 

If any of you would like more information please let me know and for now... arigato!

 

All the best,

 

Bob

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