A Souvenir!

Two young WWII American pilots out of Hawaii show off a great souvenir of a Japanese Zero they shot down earlier!

Liking this picture.

Cool pic!

I talked to an older gentleman once at an aviation museum who had donated a Japanese pilot's scarf to the museum. He told me the story of how the pilot had made a forced landing and how they ended up facing off in hand-to-hand combat. It was not an easy story for the man to tell. It certainly put a much more real face on the war than what comes through in books and movies.

I could tell that he felt badly about what he had to do all those years ago, and that a big part of the reason he had donated the scarf to the museum was to honor the memory of his fallen foe. And he wanted to tell that story. He needed to tell that story.

That was a number of years ago. I assume he is no longer with us, although at the time he was healthy and hearty. After the combat story, he mentioned fishing, and so I asked him some questions about fishing, to try to lighten the mood, and he was off and running, talking and laughing and showing me photos  on his phone from his recent Alaskan salmon fishing trip... where the bush planes they used to ferry the fishermen in to remote lakes were WWII era PBY amphibious planes! It was great fun talking with someone who could tell first-hand combat stories from WWII, but who was still active and vital and interested in life in his late retirement years.

Sad thing was, back then, probably fifteen or more years ago, it kind of seemed like nobody around... and there were quite a few people in the museum... was particularly interested in hearing the stories of the WWII vets. Back then, there were still a lot of guys in their late-70s and early-80s around who could talk about that stuff, but nobody wanted to listen. Now, with the handful of remaining combat veterans being in their mid-90s, there seems to be an inordinate level of interest in hearing their stories and praising them as being heroes.

Cool pic... and it's actually showing up now!

So sad that so much oral history is being lost.Those guys had experiences that are unlikely to ever happen again and they aren't writers so when they are gone such things are gone forever.
I do know that Japanese pilots often wore Senninbari , or scarf of a thousand stitches. These were white scarves with a thousand stitches in red cotton. Each stitch had to be done by a different person and it was believed that the finished scarf would be something of a lucky talisman for the pilot, conveying the wishes of each person to him on his flights. Women would carry the scarf out in the streets and ask random passers by to make a single stitch to wish their sons/husbands luck.

Thanks to all for the comments on my pic.

LeStryge wrote:

... and it was believed that the finished scarf would be something of a lucky talisman for the pilot, conveying the wishes of each person to him on his flights.

That is exactly what the veteran explained to me about the scarf!

When I first learned about the scarves, I thought it was mainly the Kamikaze pilots that wore them, but later I was told that many other pilots did too.

Fascinating stories!

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing SCU_HQ!

Here's what sennibari looked like.
The thread is continuous, and each person did the next single stitch until there were 1000.

Here's a curiosity I found in a charity shop, somewhat appropriate to the above discussion.
No one seemed to know what it represented, but I believe it is a tiny simplified model of a Japanese woman collecting the Belt of a Thousand Stitches....(sennibari) for her son/husband to wear on a kamikaze mission .
The figure is tiny, standing about 12cmm high.

What an amazing find.... and a somber historical artifact, to those few who recognize its significance!

It is fortunate for posterity that you, who recognized what this is, rescued it from second-hand store oblivion!

It is such an odd thing to make a model of, isn't it!

And it doesn't "look" to be all that old, but it may have been kept in a dark box or some such.

Hi Barry and Dave,
First time I've seen this thread..so
1.excellent pic Barry..I really like they way you use real backgrounds
2.Top knowledge about the scarves...really fascinating stuff.
3.You are absolutely right how quickly an era fades from living memory..I was just talking about the War years with my Mum recently .and I find it's the "ordinary " stuff/details that makes it so fascinating..eg that little figurine..
Thanks for sharing

Top stuff Barry.  A great pic and really fascinating detail on the sennibari.
You've jogged my memory. I had heard of them before, many moons ago when I was in university studying the usage of charms and amulets in warfare through the ages.
A Japanese student mentioned them over coffee. I'd no idea about them at the time.  
Whilst they weren't technically germane to the culture or period I was researching, I certainly used them as a modern comparison.

You're spot about the transient nature of oral historic tradition too.
But for chroniclers like Homer, Herodotus, Froissart and so many many more who formally recorded some of these oral histories, even more of our rich Western history and heritage may have been lost.

Thanks Kev and Steve. So glad you enjoyed seeing the little figure and where it fits into history.
I find such stuff fascinating.
Kev, I would have signed up for that course in a flash!
Did they mention cauls?

I think it's very cool that you found a piece of history, and knew what it was.
Not many people (especially the young) seem to know what these pieces mean.

I admit I wasn't so much interested in history when I was younger. I guess it's
something we realize more as we get older.

TNshooter wrote:

I guess it's something we realize more as we get older.

You mean as we become history ?.....

LeStryge wrote:

Thanks Kev and Steve. So glad you enjoyed seeing the little figure and where it fits into history.
I find such stuff fascinating.
Kev, I would have signed up for that course in a flash!
Did they mention cauls?

Hey Barry, sounds like you should look for an extra-mural history course to feed that huge interest of yours.  

It was a long time ago. You'll probably know cauls were popular amongst mariners as the belief was babies born within them were charmed or special.
One of the beliefs included that these children were unable to drown. Sailors thus prized these human tissue objects as amulets for protection whilst on the high seas.

There are thousands of examples of charms and amulets used by many warrior cultures.

Roman legionaries often carried a gladius pendant strung around the neck. Some have holes in them, which may denote the wearer was wounded in action and lucky to survive. They're often thought to be a form of amulet for protection in battle, but equally may have been some form of decoration for valor.

OK.. I'll  shut up now !!!      

Dreadnought wrote:

Roman legionaries often carried a gladius pendant strung around the neck. Some have holes in them, which may denote the wearer was wounded in action and lucky to survive. They're often thought to be a form of amulet for protection in battle, but equally may have been some form of decoration for valor.

OK.. I'll  shut up now !!!      

Don't shut upon my account Kev!
I find such stuff extremely interesting. Human attempts to control destiny?
Many practitioners of current religions fail to realise that all prayers are in fact spells!
Confession: I have in my possession a small Roman good luck charm in the form of a pendant double penis.....which was much revered in Roman times. Representations are everywhere in Pompeii.
(How I came to have it is a long story for another time.)
The Roman soldiers wore gladius pendants, but the ancient Egyptians were given golden flies to wear as signs of valour.

Surely an odd choice, although flies are certainly persistent!

Must have missed this first time round …like it a lot …
Love the bit of plane fuselage…..goes in excellently with the back drop….
I’ve said it before , I would love to know how to put a backdrop in like this , would save me a lot of time building sets….

Rustygun wrote:

I’ve said it before , I would love to know how to put a backdrop in like this , would save me a lot of time building sets….

Dean, if I had to build a full set for every photo I wished to create it would take FAR too long....not to mention the storage problems.
This way I can tell a story quickly and cheaply.
I source background material from the net, ....looking for the right angle of the shot, and the suitable lighting.
Often I do have to do a little manipulation  like removing a figure or such, or stretching the image to fit, then it's just put it up on a LARGE computer screen, ....laptops are not big enough.
Pose your figures on a board in front and add suitable foreground material such as bushes, furniture, vehicles or some other props. It works best if you have something in the foreground that is also pictured in the background. The idea is to blur the line where the reality ends and the 2D picture starts.
Photograph at an angle to the screen to avoid the moiré effect showing up in your picture.
When done well it can look very convincing.
I wasn't entirely happy with the image of the blokes in front of the Jap. plane above. The only image I could find back then of a crashed Jap. aircraft was very small, and thus would not blow up to the required size satisfactorily without pixilating. It took a fair bit of manipulation to just make it look like it does, but it's still a poor background.

I do build full 1/6 scale sets from time to time, but invariably I have to demolish them at some later stage because.....well, storage and I've done more than enough photos using that set and it becomes a bit repetitive.
Ideas come to me very quickly and I want to carry them out immediately or I lose interest, ....although my recent "Moonshiner" took quite a while because I had to wait for various props to come from China (where else?   ) and get it all together with the little copper still that I borrowed.
I was quite pleased how that one turned out.