Japanese Militaria in the Philippines??

[TP Alexander]

Why is it that I have gone to the Philippines twice in the last three years and have never seen one piece of militaria from the war?
The Japanese occupied the Philippine Islands for about three years until the United States and Allied Forces pushed them out. Any ideas or theories? I do know that when Filipinos find things buried in caverns from bombings or such, they turn them in. But I am thinking that that relates to machine guns, mortars and such. I was on the island of Luzon near the Lingayen Gulf and also down in Batangas. Never saw so much as a button or canteen. Did the humidity and heavy rainfall destroy all of the canvas equipment and did the same thing rust out and effectively destroy helmets and samurai swords??
Thanx,
Tim

[Der Texaner]

When the Japanese were driven back and out of the Phillipines (lots of needless blood lost for Dugout Doug MacArthur's ego) they took everything into the jungle with them. I've seen a few rusted out helmets supposedly from the Phillipines' jungles, but that's about it. Sometimes I see swords for sale "found in Phillipines jungle". No way no how! The jungle pretty much consumed everything.

Joel

[Tim B.]

In addition to the jungle reclaiming these items, keep in mind that the Filipinos are pretty good at recycling things as well. I suspect metal got melted down and reused for basic necessity type items like pots, pans, tools, etc. Any uniform items probably got worn in the fields and fishing boats. Nobody wanted the stuff for historical or collector value.

As they are a pretty poor country and most do what they have to in order to survive, I would suspect you will be hard pressed to find anything at this point. I used to look through coin shops in Manila back in the late 70's to find the early US Mint Philippine coinage or medals and even then, things were not easily found.

Tim

[Papa Nambu]

I have a cap that was found in a cave in the Philippines, and a piece of aircraft wreckage (skin from a Betty bomber), but both of these were recovered by visitors to the Philippines, not by Filipinos themselves. Like Tim said, anything the locals found, they would either use or disregard if it wasn't useful to them. Filipinos even used grenades to set up booby traps to kill wild pigs.

[bratwurstdimsum]

It depends where you go, it's like finding militaria in the big cities vs country towns. My domestic helper from the phillipines says she lives near Baguio in the mountainous north and she says she has a Japanese helmet in her house that her parents are using as an onion basket! She says souvenirs from the war like this are plentiful.

[NLF]

I had a friend in Bataan and she said there was a lot of stuff around there.

[Bob Chatt]

I used to travel heavily in the Philippines in the late 1980's - early 1990's. Found lots of WWII stuff during those trips. One trip saw four samurai swords but the condition was really rough on all of them.
One time near Camp Cromby, in Manila, I watched a gardener cut down weeds with a really beat up sword.
Also, found a few small bits of Japanese stuff on Corregidor....

[GnStropp]

I have been to Corregidor and its satellite forts Drum & Frank, along with Bataan.
The locals will take anything for scrap, they have absolutely no sense of preservation, conservation, pride or history. This is most apparent on Drum, where the constant scrapping has caused one of the main 16 inch barrels to fall back into the turret.
The inside is fascinating, but trashed, and now very dangerous. They have cut out steel support beams, and even chip away at concrete to get to rebar.
I can only imagine things were even worse in the immediate aftermath of the war, and no doubt many fine relics were smelted away.
Corregidor is also a victim, not quite as bad as Drum, since Drum is abandoned and the Rock at least has a staff to discourage rampant looting.
Bad enough though ,,, I have been in many tunnels, fortifications and battery storage areas that are devoid of any steel. Many of these by the large caliber batteries had rails mounted in the ceilings, and hoists transported the shells to a train, which then took them to the gun on the surface.
These rails are all gone, though you can still see the outlines of where they were ,,, And rarely, a small run of intact railing.

[Nachrichten]

Try this Website.

http://corregidor.org/ct&n_index.html

Lots of interesting stories. Finding the parachute was 'up there'.

N

[GnStropp]

Thats a good one.
Here is another outstanding Corregidor resource, including some guys that do some heavy duty exploring.

http://corregidor.proboards.com/index.cgi

[Nachrichten]

Thats a good one.
Here is another outstanding Corregidor resource, including some guys that do some heavy duty exploring.

http://corregidor.proboards.com/index.cgi

Like this perhaps?

http://corregidor.org/chs_reports/2001/2001_report.htm

I'm one of them.

N

[GnStropp]

Keep up the good work N, Corregidor is for sure in my top 5 battle sites.