This was one of the reasons why their submachine gun production was limited. The Japanese were a very frugal people who didn’t believe in wasting anything including bullets. “This backbiting and infighting hindered the cooperation between the branches of service and greatly affected the outcome of the war. “This led to the navy having to struggle to procure arms and equipment from the government & eventually led up to the navy establishing its own arsenal systems,” emphasizes Holub. Additionally, another issue complicated matters for the Japanese military, namely the acknowledged rivalry and simmering hatred between the Japanese army and navy. The Japanese actually faced greater resource problems than the other powers, but they also had cultural issues – essentially a “want not, need not” mentality. Likewise, Germany and Russian were using their respective bolt action rifles at war’s end, as were the British.

Even the United States was still in the process of rearming with the M1 rifle, and thus large numbers of 1903 Springfield rifles were used in the early stages of the war. It is true however that the two main combat rifles, the Arisaka Type 38 and the Type 99 rifles were essentially based on technology used a generation earlier – but it should be remembered that the same held true for most of the other powers at the start of World War II as well. This has resulted in the misconception that Japanese small arms were always somewhat inferior. The result is that many of the small arms encountered – notably the famous rifles – are actually late war items. air strikes, that factories started producing subpar products.” “It wasn’t until the very last two years, due to U.S. “The fit, finish & overall quality of manufacture on early Japanese weapons equals if not surpasses weapons made by other participants of World War II,” explains advanced Japanese militaria collector Jareth Holub. One reason for this misconception is that much of what survived, and is now in collections is actually from the later war years, thus not up to the highest quality.

Japanese type 4 garand