First-hand account of making Guntos out of automobile leaf springs

[Nick Komiya]

Fashioning Guntos out of automobile leafsprings

Here's a first-hand account of an ex-crewman of the navy cruiser, Kumano, which was sunk on 25th November 1944.

Survivors like him were sent to Manila to defend the area as NLF, but they were supplied with no weapons at all except grenades. So he and his comrades decided they needed to make some kind of weapon by themselves to fight with. They decided to make use of leaf springs from a local automobile factory and spent days on the grinder, fashioning Guntos out of them, which was impressively sharp and robust.

Here's the man's interview and the Gunto making story is within the first 4 minutes.

This is part of the first hand account archives from my master index.

The Japanese transcript of that part is as follows.

　それで、何人かと話合って軍刀作� �あったんですけど。立派なのができ� ��してね。で、あの、随分それでやし の木切ったりなんかしたことありま� �たけど。それが唯一の頼りだったで� ��けど。ほんと、何もないですから。 もうすることありませんしね、武器� �ないです。なんも武器がないから。� ��てよ、とにかく何か切れるものをこ しらえてやろうというわけですね。� �から、自動車工場ありましてね、そ� ��にあの、自動車の、今ほどの自動車 はありませんけど、昔の自動車はこ� �、スプリングがこうついてるんです� ��。こう。こうなって。そのスプリン グが切れましてね、日本刀を作った� �ですよ。それがよう切れるんです、� ��た。折れもしませんしね、スプリン グですから。それを、まあ毎日毎日� �ラインドかけて、何日もかけて１本� ��ったんじゃないかと思いますけどね 。それ、それが武器だったんですよ� �

[Bruce Pennington]

Wow. What a great find Nick! I wonder what they used for fittings. Things like this, and the story of the guy in a POW camp making swords, really give pause to me when we look at swords that are usually called fakes.

[Nick Komiya]

When the Americans reached Manila in early February 1945, he had to lead a NLF group of 15 men in a night attack, but all they had as weapons was his leaf spring sword, one light machine gun and two rifles. They had grenades, but otherwise they had to mount the attack with only 3 men out of the 15 with firearms. I very much doubt that his makeshift sword had any scabbard or anything resembling a koshirae under such desperate conditions.

They did make blades out of car springs, but they would have still been far from wannabe Guntos and should not give excuse to the majority of fakes, parading as fieldmade swords.

[Bruce Pennington]

I was thinking that, even as I posted. Sad about all the fakes. Still I've become more cautious about yelling "fake" right away. Some are very obvious, others can be tough to call.