A war Diary

[schum]

Hi guys.

I have recently by a japanese war diary. It was so cool so I had to buy it.
Now I am trying to translate it using google but it is so complicated.
I have found out that the name is Sakamoto but nothing else.

Could anyone help me and give me more details.

Thank you so much.

[Nick Komiya]

You have two items that do not belong together. The first one is an employee ID card at a manufacturing company and the rest are the rescript pages from an army pay book. See my article here for details about the pay book
Introduction to Japanese Army Pay Books - Wehrmacht-Awards.com Militaria Forums

[schum]

I have added more pics.

Could you tell me some information about them?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards.

[schum]

Hi Nick.

As always, very valuable information!

I was wrong, but it is still interesting.

On the other hand,are the Id card and the pay book from the same guy?

Thanks Nick!

[Nick Komiya]

Yes, both were from the same man. He was a native of Okayama Prefecture, an employee at a bookstore when he got conscripted into the army in December 1918 to join the 17th Inft Div, 54th Regt, 12th Company. He did not experience any war action and got discharged in Nov. 1920. He made corporal on 1st Dec 1919.
After discharge, he remained in the reserves and reported regularly to inspections, the last of which was for 1929.
The ID card was issued in 1944, so long after he had any obligations to the army.

[schum]

Thank you so much again Nick.

[schum]

Hi Nick.

I was looking for another one on the Internet, and I have found this one.
But I am unable to translate the birthdate. The emperor is Taisho, but I can not recognize the other characters.
Could you help me?



Thanks in advance.

[Nick Komiya]

Sadatoshi Tomioka, Born 1st Jan. 13th (拾参) Year of Taisho. There are two types of Kanji characters for Japanese low digit numbers. Simple numbers like　一　二　三 are too easy to falsify by adding bars, so they are not suitable for financial documents. Thus 壱　弐　参 are used instead.　十 can be easily changed to 五, so 拾 is used for 10 on things like checks. Older documents tend to use these more complicated form of numbers.

[schum]

Hi Nick.

Finally I bought it. It is lightly damaged by a worm in some pages but it was very cheap.

There is not much information inside. I think it starts in january 1945, and I think He was an army enginier.

Could you help me with the information inside?

Thanks in advance.
Regards.

[Nick Komiya]

Yes, he was an Engineer, starting with the 78th Independent Engineer Battalion and got transferred many times, but never saw combat action as I said before. Japanese Army paybooks are really loaded with history yet still quite inexpensive allowing one to have a really valuable collection without putting in too much money.