Three years ago, my dad passed away and I got his WWII Japanese officer sword. It was missing parts, so I’ve spent the last 3 years fixing it up, and have just had it polished. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell the story, as much as I have.

It was made in Spring 1941, by the Mantetsu factory in Manchuria, and carrries the "Koa Issin" slogan. Don’t know anything about it’s path in the war, but by the look of the blade it did some duty in the field. My dad lied about his age (16 at the time) and joined the Marines in 1950. They kicked him out when Korea started, but he rejoined in 1956 and served 7 years and seperated as a Staff Sgt. Somewhere along that time, he picked up the Mantetsu. I wish I had asked him how he got it, but as a kid, it never occured to me. He did say that the missing parts were stolen buy guys "looking for jewels."

When I got it in 2014, it was missing sarute, rank tassel, tsuba/seppa, semegane, ishizuke, and mekugi. I found a nice tsuba/seppa set from a Japanese seller online, and ordered the mekugi online. Then I found someone selling a tsuka that had the same cloth sarute, which I swapped out to Dad’s tsuka. When looking for rank tassels, most Field grade tassels were in the $500 range where the Comapany grade tassels were around $150, so I decided Dad’s mantetsu could be a Captain’s sword! I later found a semegane. Had to file the inside of it to get it up the saya far enough! And the last piece, the ishizuke, came from another Mantetsu saya from The Ozzy Samurai on one of the forums.

After a 2 year wait, my turn came up for the polish. I highly recommend David Hofhine. He did a fabulous job! I really debated about the polish. The blade was stained and scratched and showed that it had a bit of history. So I almost kept it that way. But in the end, it was Dad’s and I wanted it to look top-notch, so I went ahead with it, and I’m glad I did. It’s quite beautiful.

Click to enlarge the picture