Some recent additions to my collection

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Spartan198

I read in one of my dad's WWII Pac Front books a while back something along the lines of that ground troops were instructed to "pay close attention" (i.e., put as many holes as possible in) to Japanese officers with swords due to that they had cut through the barrels and stocks of rifles on some occasions.

Many officers came from families with military traditions, and thus brought their own swords, which were made in the traditional way. Those were hand made, with steel folded several hundred times and hand sharpened. Like I said, that really doesn't lend itself to mass production. You can probably mass produce enough rifles to arm a battalion in the time it takes one man to make one sword the traditional way.