Japanese Post Cards, Period or Not?
Hello Everyone,
I hope this post finds safe and healthy. I hope I can get some advice from some of the more knowledgeable members. After reading the great thread about comfort bags, I am putting together a small comfort bag display. I would like to add a package of post cards. These are for sale, but the way the listing reads, it describes them as commemorative. My question is would these be period appropriate for a comfort bag? I look forward to all your responses. Thanks for the help.
Vic
No, very inappropriate for putting into comfort bags, as the whole purpose of a comfort bag was to deliver the warm feel of home life to the frontlines to comfort the homesick soldiers and reassure them that the civilian life they were protecting was flourishing. Grim battle scene postcards were for home front use, not for sending to the front.
Those cards were issued by a shrine in commemoration of the year 2600 (1940), so they are period items, just not for comfort bags.
Nick, Thanks for your response. I didn't think of it that way, but they makes perfect sense. The bags were intended to make them forget about the war if only for a little while. Ill try to find something more appropriate.
Just to get you on the right wave length, the bags are called Imon-Bukuro (Comfort offering bags). The US armed forces, too, have what in Japanese is called Imon-Dan (Dan meaning group), which is referring to the USO (United Service Organizations). So just like the US soldiers cheering Marylin singing "Bye bye, Baby" and Bob Hope's jokes, Japanese soldiers enjoyed actress portrait cards and comic strips from home. Anyway, that was the spirit of what belonged in the comfort bags.
Great, thank you nick for the push in the right direction. I’d like to find items in unopened condition so it would look just as it would when the soldier received it. So far, I have the bag itself, which unfortunately is not as ornately printed as some that I’ve seen in the thread, but it was so inexpensive I couldn’t pass on it, a folding fan still sealed with its paper band and a nice set of woven sandals. I feel like it needs some consumable type items included.
Long way to go till you make a soldier smile. This is what a Bonanza it meant to a soldier.
More
I know, it’s a humble beginning. The photos you’ve posted are terrific. They’ve given me some very good insight on what to add. I greatly appreciate your help with this.
This film will show further what was appreciated 生きた慰問袋 昭和17年 - YouTube
Much like this... Look inside the Princess Mary Gift Fund 1914 Box | Imperial War Museums
Similar Threads
Posting Permissions
.
Bookmarks