WWII Arisaka rifle

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Brockak47

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Hi all, I happened to come into ownership of an Arisaka rifle, looks like it's been used in a war. bolt and everything operate fine. Does anyone know anything to look for on these, or a site that tells you about them. Also is there a way to get information on the proof marks? I am not sure if it has import marks. I can upload pictures in a little bit.

Thanks
again looking for all info,
oh whats a MUM? Brit for mom? lol =p

got some pictures, I think this one has kill marks notched in it too. This is a vet bring back I believe. My girlfriends step mom's grandpa brought it back ( or so I was told )
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Yes, pictures, as there are more than one version of Arisaka. Clear pictures of the receiver, top and sides will help.



NCsmitty
 
Arisaka Rifles

Value is sometimes not dependent of the condition, but on the rifle itself.

I have a vet bring-back with ground mum that was a battlefield pick-up trophy. The rifle has severe damage to one side of the stock and has "kill marks" cut into one side of the stock. Kinda spooky in a way, but definitely a piece of history.

The 7.7mm Japanese cartridge is an excellent round and well capable of taking any game animal on the North American continent.

Don
 
About 4 or 5 common versions. Type 38, 38 Carbine, 44 Carbine, ParaTrooper, and couple of Type 99's - not to mention the "school" rifles. Easy rifles to work on. Tuning can be a bit arcane. Chambers are a bit over-sized for "jungle crud" so they are not MOA rifles, but I bet they can be (?) or close to it. I've got a few in the shop right now.

There are books on Arisakas' ranging from $100, down to about $12 or so. PRVI Partizan loads decent ammo in both 6.5mm and 7.7mm. It's available from MrNambu in white box for about $20/box.

A lot of the Arisaka barrels had industrial hard chrome bores to ward off corrosive ammo. In fact most do, up until the last series, late in the war and those rifles made in China. So, if you get aggressive with overnight soaking (plugged muzzle) with KG12 and then getting the brush up and down from the breech, they usually clean up pretty well :)

Use a 20 ga shotgun brush in a cordless drill with a short rod section to clean the chambers. They are usually dark and can be rough. If all goes well, you'll be shooting soon.

Battle sights are zeroed for 300m. They use a 6 o'clock hold - so any place inside 300m, you need to think belt buckle for center mass.

Have fun :)

Oh, and be careful sanding the stock. The varnish they used was made from a cousin of the poison oak plant. The dust can raise the devil with your lungs :(
 
Likely a war trophy as the "Mum" is intact (and nice looking) so that ads a bit a value ($50~$150 on top of base value).

If I'm not mistaken it's a Type 38 Nagoya Arsenal, so it'll be 6.5mm. By the way, that's the more accurate of the two cartridges, but you'll have to hand load to get it. Go out there and look at original 6.5mm rounds and you'll see that they were shooting very long bullets with high ballistic coefficients. If you load long, you can get the bullet near the rifling and it will tighten up nicely :)

Not a school rifle (good) and it could have been made anytime from 1905 to 1941 or so. You'll need better ID info than I can retrieve off the top of my head. Bluing looks good and it will definitely have a chrome bore :)
 
That round pelleted thing on top of the receiver just behind the barrel is the ' Chrysanthemum ' or mum. They were ground off of many Japaneses weapons. Having it add greatly to those who collect them. Yours is the smoothest one I have seen (pic or in hand). The late war production weapons got rather crude yet were used to fire Brit 303 ammo in the 7.7MM. It is a very strong action.

Nice find.

Enjoy,

OSOK
 
First thing you should NOT have done was to take it apart if the screws were staked in place.

But oh well...clean it up and reassemble and go shooting...it's a T38 in 6.5 so the bore will not be chromed.

Loaded 6.5 jap can be bought for about a 1$ a pop. Nice rifle!
 
i owned an Arisaka for a little while, was nifty gun, good shooter. If i remember correctly you have to look out for what type of bolt it has in it. There were two different versions and it had somthing to do with the knurling on the rear most part of the bolt. Anyone know what im talking about?
 
The rifle pictured is a 38 Year Type, made at Nagoya arsenal and, if not worked on, is 6.5 mm. The cartridge is called the 6.5 Japanese or the 6.5 x 50 Arisaka.

The "mum" (short for chrysanthemum) was the symbol of the Japanese royal house and was marked on Japanese rifles to show that the weapons belonged to the Emperor and the troops were his servants (same as the use of a crown on British weapons). At war's end, the U.S. ordered that the millions of rifles and other arms in Japanese depots be turned over to U.S. troops or destroyed. But, in a concession to allow "saving face", the Americans let Japanese workers grind off the Emperor's crest ("mum") before the Americans took the guns. Individual Americans were allowed to bring home those weapons as souvenirs, and hundreds of thousands did; that is the source of almost all the Japanese weapons in this country. Those weapons not taken by Americans were destroyed or left to rust away on a thousand islands. No one picked them up, and there was no significant commercial importation as there was with European surplus weapons.

So a ground "mum" means that the rifle was taken from a depot (mostly in Japan), while an intact "mum" (as on the OP's rifle) means that the rifle was actually captured in combat. There are far fewer of the latter for the simple reason that no soldier or marine could carry two rifles around from island to island, so combat captures were usually trashed or sold to sailors and airmen who could find a place for the guns until they could be brought back.

(The term "kill notch" sounds neat, but those marks are most likely just the normal dings of hard use. Reliable sources say the Japanese did not "notch" their rifles, and most armies ban chopping up issue weapons.)

Jim
 
"The late war production weapons got rather crude yet were used to fire Brit 303 ammo in the 7.7MM." It is not possible to fire .303 British in a Japanese 7.7 rifle. The Japanese round is rimless, the .303 is rimmed.

Jim
 
where should I look on it to see if it is 'all matching' regarding serial number? could be that the Marine nothced it in, to me in person it looks like 12 in tally marks neat though, sadly the guy who brought this back is dead or I would have loved to ask him about it. Does anyone have 1 or 2 rounds of 6.5 jap laying around? I'll paypal you some money so I can shoot this thing hehe. I don't reload so...=(
 
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From what I can see it`s a good looking rifle, type 38 huh. Check these out !
 
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I thought that I read they only converted the type 99 to 3006 and not the other type rifles and that those went to Korea during the early days of the conflict there.

My Type 99 was the last bit in the puzzle for a main battle rifle from every major player in WWII. Now I am looking for some of the more expensive stuff. Johnson and G43...the others I will never be able to afford.
 
oldpapps said:
It is a very strong action.
Click to expand...

Yes they have a really strong action in one of the gun books I have it was either PO Ackley or Roy Weatherby that use to favor the Ariska action and couldnt blow one up no matter how hard they tried with there super duper magnums or whatever powerful cartridges they thought up and were testing at the time.
 
You can buy ammo here: http://www.grafs.com/retail/catalog/category/categoryId/164? I like Graf & Son as the shipping is usually very reasonable.

You can also get ammo here: http://www.mrnambu.com/Brass.htm :)

The comment about hand-loading was in reference of trying to squeeze maximum accuracy out of the rifle. You'd need to load long to get that last few % of accuracy. If you are just plinking and having fun, any of the commercial loads will be fine :)

Note; You do not need the stripper clip to load. They work fine hand loaded to fill the magazine.
 

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