Am I reading this right?

[tomp]

Hoping to get the community's take on this unusual tag. Recently online, up for bid -- 124th land duty company based in the Philippines. Should one read the central column as "vehicle #4"? Kanji looks to be for counter for vehicles. I have not seen such a designation before. Thanks for any help.



Tom

[Nick Komiya]

As explained in my dog tag thread, the 2nd column was also used to indicate the replacement unit where he was trained before being assigned to the unit recorded in the first column. In this case, the middle column consists of 臺, the old Kanji for 台 followed by 4, which meant Taiwan 4th unit (台湾第４部隊)、code for 台湾歩兵第２連隊 or 台湾歩兵第２連隊補充隊. As shown here, the 124th Land Duty Company was organized in Oct. 1941 out of the Taiwan 4th unit. These people would have been Gunzoku, engaged in logistics support, etc.

[tomp]

Thanks, Nick! Did not see that coming.

Tom