The 1930’s were a period of great research in small arms all over the world, resulting in the U. S. of the adoption of the M1 or Garand rifle; in Germany of the Walther development of the double-action pistol and of the Spandau or roller-bearing machine gun bolt locking by the rotating collar systems; in Italy of the Breda machine guns and Beretta pistols; in England of the Mk. IV or No. 4 rifle and the Bren gun; and in Japan of their gas-operated machine weapons and their 7.7mm rifles.
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Where [the Japanese] cut their own throats on small arms was when they allowed their national poverty to influence them. They would make good ammunition, and pack it in flimsy crates, which dissolved under rough transportation and bad weather. They made fair ammunition, but tried to avoid waterproofing it, so a lot of it went bad in the jungle, as happened often with grenades and mortar shells. The brass in their small-arms ammunition was poor, and in my opinion is the reason why they had a different case for machine guns than for rifles.
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As a Mauser military bolt-action, the Japanese Model 38 modification is one of the very best. The Nips improved a good many features of the original German bolt system, incorporating some ideas not found in any other arm. The bolt stop, for instance, does not contact and batter the rear of the left locking lug, as in other Mausers, including Springfields and Enfields. A second small lug is located directly behind the locking lug (11/16″ between rear surfaces) and this contacts the bolt stop.
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The ejector cut in the Arisaka’s left locking lug is angled so that it does not touch the rear surface therefore the full area of the lug remains unmarred, making for theoretically better locking and wear, since there are no grooves or burrs to carry grit or dirt into the locking recesses and cause undue wear.
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The Arisaka locking lugs are set back from the face of the bolt and rounded on their leading edges. As in the Mauser 98 bolt, this location is a claimed advantage in that the lugs being well back from the bolt face, they are less liable to break or crack diagonally from the face of bolt to rear of lugs.
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The design of bolt mechanism prevents rearward escape of gas, giving almost positive safety to the eyes and face.
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The bolt has the fastest and easiest takedown of any rifle yet encountered.
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Firing pin, striker and cocking piece are combined in one part, hollowed to receive the mainspring inside it. This principle is familiar in machine guns and other automatic weapons, but not seen in bolt rifles very often.
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Unless the rifle is rusted or otherwise out of good condition, it is possible to set and unset the safety by a simple rotating motion of the ball of the right thumb, and it can be operated in complete silence. I am inclined to give the Japs the blue ribbon on this feature, feeling it is the best safety of any military rifle in accessibility, reliability and ease of operation.
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When the Pacific jungle fighting proved that leather was poor stuff, they were ready with a really good substitute, rubberized canvas. Not only rifle and light machine gun slings were made of this material, but also belts, cartridge pouches, bayonet scabbard frogs and at the last, pistol holsters. Water, mold, mildew, bugs — nothing bothered the stuff.
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The famous Japanese no-smoke, no-flash sniper cartridge was their ordinary 6.5mm reduced charge, consisting of a pointed 137-grain cupro-nickel or gilding-metal jacketed bullet, pushed by a scant 30.0 grains of flake nitro-cellulose powder, which appears and acts very similar to that used in the German service cartridge.
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In the ordinary cartridge, either reduced or full load, the flash was practically eliminated by the long barrels which completely burned the powder of the charge. I know from experience that it was just about impossible to spot any smoke from a shot, even in pretty good light.
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The flake type of powder is a little less inclined to smoke than our own tubular-grain types, but most of the “smoke” from a modern rifle is really vapor caused from the meeting of the gases with colder air. In warm air, or especially in warm dry air, the smoke of any firearm is decreased appreciably.
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Now for the Model 94 (1934) pistol! Here the Japs got even for their good work on the preceding handguns; this is the only thing the Japs made that is as bad as the backslapping saps in this country said everything Japanese was. It does not have a single redeeming feature and is a good example of how a pistol should not be made.
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The little-known Japanese officer’s pistol, the 7mm Nambu, was a beautifully made junior-size true Nambu, with grip safety, the one off-set recoil spring, and the same locking system. The 7mm was originally intended to be an officer’s weapon, and the 8mm to be the enlisted men’s sidearm. This idea was too silly to last long even among the medieval-minded samurai worshippers, so did not get far.
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For practical field use in close-up infantry fighting such as went on in the jungles and mountains of the Pacific war where both sides could not park very long at any one spot because of mortar use, the Japanese machine gun was not so good. The gun itself weighed 61 pounds and the tripod 61 more — a total of 122 pounds which is about 90 too much, and is undoubtedly the reason the Japs liked to get our 1919A4 Brownings, weighing only 30 pounds and which one man could carry over his shoulder like a rifle.
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During the war the Japanese developed several nice items in the weapon line but did not get production on any of them to amount to anything. By the time they were able to build first-class equipment the B-29’s were over Japan and they could not even protect their factories. By the time they were able to build good enough antiaircraft guns and fighter planes to combat the bombers, there was not much left to protect or build them with. They never really learned how to use what they had anyway.
As Mr. Dunlap says, [the Model 38 is] a very nice design.
The 6.5×50 Japanese cartridge has a semi-rim with a weirdball diameter — just right to accept the 7.62×39 Russian cartridge. A number of Model 38s have been converted to 7.62×39.
There’s one other cartridge that will fit an unmodified Model 38 bolt recess — the .50 Beowulf. And I just happen to have a too-butchered-to-restore Model 38, a brand new .50 barrel, and a .50 Beowulf chambering reamer waiting for me to finish getting my new lathe set up.