[Drizzt]

Evening Times (Glasgow)


April 28, 2003

SECTION: Pg. 2

LENGTH: 445 words

HEADLINE: Samurai sword is handed over by war veteran;Scot's shock delivery to cops during weapons amnesty

BYLINE: By John Kerr

BODY:


A SAMURAI sword, a relic of a Japanese prisoner of war camp, has been surrendered to Strathclyde Police during a weapons amnesty.

The two-handed one-metre weapon has a razor sharp blade, but forensic examination showed it has never been used.

Detective Superintendent Stephen Ward said today: "In the wrong hands this sword would have been a lethal weapon. It could have inflicted horrific injuries." It was handed in by an
elderly retired Army captain, who had been an interpreter at the prisoner of war camp run by the British in Asia and who helped interrogate Japanese prisoners.

He was presented with the Samurai by Japanese soldiers at the end of the war. It had belonged to a Japanese major, although the elderly Scotsman had changed the colour of the tassel on the sword to represent a captain.

Detective Superintendent Ward added: "The man is now in his 80s and lives alone. He has no family and no descendants to leave the sword to.

"He was becoming increasingly afraid of his home being broken into and the sword stolen, ending up in the wrong hands.

"When he read of the amnesty he decided to surrender it and walked into a police station at the weekend and handed it over. We are glad he did.

"It had hung in its scabbard on a wall in his home for nearly 60 years. It is in excellent condition."

There are only two days left of the amnesty, which started four weeks ago.

One of the most dangerous firearms to have been surrendered was a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle. The Russian-made weapon was handed in last week. A decommissioned anti-tank gun was also handed in.

A total of 440 weapons have been handed in to Strathclyde Police as part of a month-long amnesty.

In the last seven days 127 weapons and 4443 rounds of ammunition have been surrendered.

Across Scotland the amnesty has seen 1800 potentially lethal weapons surrendered to police.

With two days to go, handguns, rifles and shotguns are still flooding in, adding to the haul of more than 400 other weapons, such as swords, bayonets, machetes and clubs.

Last week 564 firearms, 13,300 rounds of ammunition and 120 other items were surrendered to Scotland's eight police forces.

Detective Superintendent Ward added: "The amnesty does not finish until midnight on Wednesday and I am sure there will still be people with unwanted weapons that could cause real problems if they got into the hands of criminals.

"I would urge everyone to take this final opportunity to hand in their weapons. It is the last chance to hand in firearms while still free from prosecution."

:what: Did they wet their pants?

[4v50 Gary]

He should have sold it over the internet.

I have a Chippewa War club that the cops will never get. Molon labe!

[SDC]

"Detective Superintendent Stephen Ward said today: "In the wrong hands this sword would have been a lethal weapon. It could have inflicted horrific injuries."


You mean sort of like a butcher knife, or a pair of scissors, or a can of gasoline and a match, or an automobile, or a cricket bat, or a hockey stick, or a rock, or a tire iron, or a hammer, or some fertilizer and diesel fuel, or some pesticide, or some charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre, or some oven cleaning spray, or......

Idiot. Who follows this fool around reminding him to breathe?

[Dannyboy]

He should have sold it over the internet.
That's what I was thinking. I've heard those things can get millions in auctions.

[COHIBA]

some cheap thia copy will get melted down and some police major will liberate this thing to e-bay.
keep your eyes peeled.

[Standing Wolf]

A total of 440 weapons have been handed in to Strathclyde Police as part of a month-long amnesty.

Rarely does a day pass when I fail to feel grateful to our forefathers for having rebelled against the English and founded a republic.

[coonan357]

in actualllity it should go back to the japanese family it belongs to , alot of the old samauri and other swords are family items in the japanese way of living.

[George Hill]

coonan357 - AMEN!

[CaesarI]

Not during WWII... most of those swords were presented to any officer, and aren't as valuable as one that predate the 20th century. It's valuable, but it's very unlikely that it's from the real Samurai period, which would make it worth quite a bit more.

Japan's history is a sad one, once a proud warrior culture, and now without a decent weapon on the entire island.

-Morgan

[Don Gwinn]

Good Lord, I hope that was one of the military swords and not an antique--but there were Japanese officers who carried old family swords.

[COHIBA]

"PROUD WARRIOR CULTURE"!!!!!
the jap samuria was nothing but a predated jack booted thug. they worked for the lords who kept the people as servants to the thrown. the people were deprived the use of weapons while the samuria were allowed the priviledge of swords and the right to use them on the subjects for even making eye contact w/ them.
i really dont understand this whole "way of the samuria" idea that some Americans feel the need to have.
one one hand they spout off about the ATF and the liberals wanting to take all the guns and then in the next breath they call the samuria noble and proud.

[CaesarI]

Indeed some swords carried by Japanese officers were those of their father's, but the vast majority of swords which Japanese soldiers would have carried, officers or no in the second world war, were not the much more valuable antiques. It was a simple matter of logistics.

I see the Samurai as filling precisely the same role as Medieval knights who did not belong to Monastic orders. The had codes of honor, which they followed. They served Lords loyally, and trained to become better warriors. The Samurai existed solely to be a professional soldier, and in this way Japan developed a warrior culture, of which they were proud.

I in no way believe in Feudalism as a system, and do, in fact note the similarities between the treatment of serfs (state slaves), and many laws passed in the past 60 years. The tradition of state slaves, and the requirement that there be a class of people trained to be warriors is at least as old as Sparta.

While the Spartan regime was certainly unjust, it is not unwise to admire the training, and ways of professional warriors. Our country has professional warriors too, most do not dedicate their entire lives to the profession from a very early age, but we have them just the same.

If citizens become professional warriors on the side, and are able to learn effective ways of being warriors from past enforcers, then we will better be able to resist any such people.

There is of course a distinction between Western and Eastern warrior culture. In the West, a "Knight Errant" i.e. one who serves no lord, can be good or evil, and is often idealized in literature, as serving god alone, an idea espoused by no less a man than Thomas Jefferson. In the East, however, Samurai without lords were largely seen as bandits, this may be in large part due to the deification of their emperor. In the West one can serve a "higher power" directly, without serving his self-proclaimed representative on earth. This separation is not possible in the East.

Regardless of the ultimate purpose of the Samurai in Japan, they were warriors, they had honor, and can be respected on those grounds alone, even should their masters be criminals. Much as it is not impossible for soldiers who fought on opposite sides of a war to find themselves rather friendly, as Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper was with an unnamed SS Officer whose story he recounts in "To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth".

The purpose is to study and respect the "way of the warrior" if not the practices of such.

-Morgan

[Blackcloud6]

Detective Superintendent Ward is a commie!

[winwun]

Coonan, your comments on returning the item brought back memories of an incident that happened to me: At a flea market, I was horse trading and wound up with an unusual looking pocket watch (broken) and took it to a jewler who worked on the old stuff. He told me I had something unusual, white gold, porcelain face, diamonds marking the numbers, and the back was a false back and when opened with a release, had engraving on the inside back cover. It was in German, and had a date, "Palmsonntag, 1907" and some other writing and the name of a woman. I had it interpreted at the University, and it said "On this happy and auspicious day of your confirmation, Palm Sunday 1907, this is presented to you (woman's name)." I caried the watch for a while, but never felt good about owning something so very personal to someone else. I set about trying to return it to its owner, and it took about a year of writing back and forth, checking here and there, and finally, I found a woman who said the watch belonged to her father. The engraving was archaic, and said it was presented "by" instead of "to" the woman's name who was the grandmother of the man it was presented to. The lady I contacted said her father had died about 6 months ago, and of course that didn't help me feel any better about dragging my heels the way I had. She was disappointed that I couldn't give her any history of how the watch came to be here, but flea markets are dead ends, for sure. She offered me anything I wanted for the watch, but items like that aren't for sale. She was happy to get it back and I was happy to see it back where it should have been all along.

[Mark Tyson]

What do you think will become of the sword?

[FJC]

Winwun - my hat is off to you.