The History of Captured items and policies

I was prompted lately by a question about how the Japanese dealt with captured weapons. And while answering that the Japanese military didn't really specifically had a written rule on the usage of captured weapons, the question did reminded me of their policies on bring back weapons and equipment.

We've all seen the funny captured weapons that the Japanese use, but this post is not going to address those. Sorry to those that expected an in-depth writing on captured weapon. No P14s, thompsons, or even the ZB-26 here.

On to the main topic.

We all know the big import of weapons and equipment the Americans did after the war (And to be completely honest here, thank god they did.). So most of us probably wouldn't be too familiar with other countries rule on captured equipment here.

I focus on equipment here because weapons aren't really the only thing soldiers bring back. War trophies include a LOT of variations.

While the Americans seemingly had a lax rule on captured items (Tightened up during subsequent conflicts I believe, feel free to add in additional info as I am not too familiar with them.) The Japanese military did have extremely strict rules on captured equipment, not just weaponry.

Below is the document (ref. C01000558000/JACAR) that the military police command issued out regarding bring-backs and war souvenirs from soldiers in August, 1943.

"In accordance to Army secret order 2010 on June 11th, 1941, the following rules must be apply to in regards to captured equipment.

1. Captured weapon, uniform, equipment and gear that are over the individual allowance must be reported to the battalion commander in accordance to Army confidential order 1425 and delivered to the Army supply depot or armory, which ever is appropriate. However, and exception may be allowed if an authorization is given by a Brigadier Gen. or above.

2. Captured items without relevant military purpose must follow the above rule as well. (For example, electric fan, radio receivers, and refrigerators.)

3. Captured commodity, food, or any items under ration must be reported to the Army Minister with it's amount, type, original method of obtaining, and the individual carrier in the detailed investigation report.

4. Any items that does not fall into the former criteria are to be treated in the case of either number 1 or number 3, depending on situation.

5. If the situation is deemed appropriate, a separate investigation report must be submitted to the Army Minister."

A strict rule in comparison to US at least, while also leaving a large enough interpretation room for individual military police member to determine. In reality they do attempt to crack down on these rules pretty hard. While higher ranked officer could claim unit use for some items, most lower enlisted had no such excuse.

The process for the search is simple, when an IJA unit is recalled back home they need to go through a decontamination process, while the decontamination process is going on, the military police goes through the transportation boat and searches for contraband. Since Japan was fighting wars overseas there really was no other way to get back into mainland Japan as a soldier besides boats.

A detailed write was followed after that about how lately soldiers returning from the southern front has a tendency to bring back items that are not allowed per army policy, and that these contraband will lead to a rise in criminal behavior in the mainland, and that the previous order has it clear on when an exception may be made with an emphasis to crack down on these behaviors.

Now the interesting part, they followed the policy with an example on what items are NOT allowed and how to deal with it by providing a real world example.

View post on imgur.com

Note: The translated table was too large to be fitted onto the blog so I had to use imgur to rehost it. Feel free to click the link for a more clear read.

In any case, some interesting things. First the obvious one, people, or rather units, tried to bring back vehicles to various successes, mostly failures and resulted in confiscations.

Second, the MP/Kenpei Tai kept a lot of contraband, and I wonder if they actually just used them or not.

There must also be all kinds of weird stuff that they came across in a daily basis, but bringing back a vehicle must be a really funny thing to see, especially as the transport boats loaded these vehicles back.

I wonder what the boat commanders said to themselves when they saw units loading all these vehicles up, knowing that other units have tried and failed.

Anyways, that's it for this long overdue post. I'm not dead folks, just ran out of ideas and Q/A before.

Feel free to ask me questions as well, if they resulted in anything interesting I will always post them here with the results.

Or in this case, a not so relevant result.