The Evolution of the Japanese Army Steel Helmet (1918-1945) Revised and Expanded Version

[ghp95134]

...Among other things, I was a Toyota-trained quality control expert as well as Kaizen-instructor,...

Arrgghhhhh! TQM .... Demming .... Tiger Teams. ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH

For those who are blissfully ignorant: Kaizen

"Ribbons of Shame" [from movie "Gung Ho"]
YouTube
YouTube

(^___^)

The US Army went through this system back in the early 1990s ... along with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator so we could learn our personalities, and the personalities of our superiors/subordinates. (NO, I will *not* tell you my MBTI type.) In the early 1980s we went through the Battalion Training Management System ... so we officers could learn how to be managers instead of leaders!

ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

[Nick Komiya]

Yes, Demming had a huge following in Japan, but not much traction in his homeland, the USA. However, the IJA documents show that they already had been practicing these things long before Demming did his seminar in Hakone.

Another of his colleagues that the Americans made into a comedy starring Steve Martin, titled "Cheaper by the Dozen" was Frank Gilbreth. The scenes of a surgeon calling out for a scappell in ER would have never happened without Frank, who introduced the caddy system to surgery.

[Jareth]

I refer to the painted stripe as a " touch up stripe". I have observed imperfections to the painted finish that bore tell tale stacking damage. So it was more efficient to paint a wide stripe around the helmet rather than dab paint on rivet heads. Here's a nice example of Japanese efficiency from Geoff Wards collection. Regarding small size navy helmets it's my highly uneducated opinion based on observations only that they obviously we're made but discontinued late war in favor of a one size fits all system. I base this scrounger info on the fact that we've never seen a small size yellow stencil anchor helmet.

[Nick Komiya]

Yea, I'll watch my back in dark corridors, thanks.

Yes, it's sloppy, but it is efficient. The key in production motion analysis is to only allow one dip of the brush in paint and hit all rivets with overkill in one fluid motion, so you do not have redundancy in motion of a dab here and a dab there. Paint was cheaper than wages. Frank Gilbert's bricklaying analysis should help you understand these things one day.

The trouble I had in the Canadian factory was to make them understand that an example like the photo above in no way suggests lack of quality control. The yardstick of quality control is consistency of the product. In this case, it is whether all rivets get consistently covered in one fluid stroke with one paint dip all the time, if so, it is successful quality control. Thus a Lexus and Corolla can have the same quality rating so long as defect ratios are within target, which allows wages to be the same.

In other words, if you produce shitty products, getting them shitty to the same degree every single time is quality. Normally, the audience blanks out here, but the IJA production guys knew all that all too well.

[Jareth]

Well lit ones too. Yeah, umm sure ok whatever you say. One day I'll figure it out.

[Nick Komiya]

So to continue with the old wives tale of navy helmet sizes, most of the increasingly shorter and thus substandard personnel would have gotten assigned to third rate units like the NLF. That would have made the majority of NLF smaller men, but it was precisely those men that had the most need for helmets. Under those circumstances it would have been large sizes that became less needed.

The only excuse remaining not to cancel large sizes would have been that small heads can take large sizes by adding a lot of cushioning, but large heads are difficult to stuff into small helmets.

[Type4]

At the end of the war the undernourishment and the younger age of the conscripts will certainly have led to the spread of uniforms of small size, the kesenfuku both in wool and in the tropical variant are really almost all very small and in general all the uniforms from the end of 1944 in then

[Jareth]

I never mentioned cancelling LARGE size shells. I felt it was the opposite! That small size shells were discontinued or phased out of production.Your personal theory sounds plausible with the exception of your constant demeaning of your fellow brave countrymen. You chastise us when we offer personal theories that aren't backed up with facts. You still haven't addressed the lack of late war yellow stencil insignia small size helmets.

[Nick Komiya]

Neither did I say large shells were dropped. What I said was that your conclusion meant that the NLF were denied small sized helmets when they needed them most, as the navy policy would have assigned the shortest guys to the NFL and saved taller men for higher rated units.

We both know that small sized helmets seem to show an exaggeratedly small survival rate in today's collections, but I have told you many times that that does not reflect the factual issue ratio during the war. Judging wartime conditions based on survival rate in current collections is simply bad history, as you bring in more of post war corruption of history rather than that of war time. There are always inexplicable cases of WW2 items that every man used to own that hardly exists today in collections, but that has to do with post war history and mixing that up with war time fact is simply badly confused judgement.

Regards demeaning my countrymen, I have only given you widely acknowledged facts about the organizational pecking order within the wartime navy. They were always last in line when they handed out fresh recruits. You should have complained to the Imperial Navy for demeaning them, but they'll just tell you "we meant to demean them, but how could you tell?"

In the old days when archive material could not be accessed, collectors playing historian did serve a role, but it is no longer time for collectors incapable of proper research to play historian, as that does more harm than good. Collectors have their own arena where facts only available to them can have decisive meaning and demand, like variations, difference between fake and good, etc and these combined with factual history is the ideal combination. Know your strength and stick to it. There are no allround experts yet, but we can help such experts emerge in future by not muddling up their way.

[Type4]

Decades ago I saw a great photo in some WW2 or earlier period Japanese magizene (Ashai?). Group of army soldiers in snow covered terrain wearing their helmet covers inside out! You could see interior cover ink stamps on a few of the covers.

I have see that magazine with that pictures i can confirm it, soldier use helmet cover with liner outside