JapanX

Box interior

Obverse and reverse.

And noooowwwwwwww, please welcome wounded soldiers association good conduct badge (a.k.a. “distinguished” badge). Japanese enamel craftsmanship at its best. Real beauty!

And now silver variation.

Here comes gold variation of the badge.

For high rank executives of Imperial Wounded and Disabled Soldiers Association we have this very original badge. It seems that there were two classes of this badge. Gold gilded badge for top level executives and silver for middle level executives. But there is a probability that this gold/silver variation was just a consequence of different manufacturers.

Obverse and reverse.

This one looks very much like honorary member of imperial military reservist association gold gilt badge on outer orange ribbon (2nd type of honor badge that was in use after 1940). Here it is for comparison.

Box cover

Obverse and reverse

It will be interesting to note that the pre-war “badge structure” of wound association was similar to the badge structure of imperial military reservist association. Just take a look at the following photos.

Obverse and reverse

First badge will be this pre-war wounded soldier association regular member badge. Obverse gilt kanji reads Shoui (Wound badge). It is massive (height 44,5 mm and width 36,5 mm) and very high quality badge. It was introduced in late 20s or early 30s and was abolished shortly after 1938 (it was replaced by “general” badge – we’ll talk about this badge a little later).

APPENDIX In addition to 4 basic types of wound badges and their variations there exists a whole family of badges issued by (or connected with) Wounded Soldier Association of Japan (a.k.a. Imperial Wounded Soldiers Association or Imperial Wounded and Disabled Soldiers Association). Let’s examine these interesting badges in every detail.

The left side of document reverse clearly states that this card should be turn over in case of badge unfitness in case of address change you should inform village elder or mayor in next 7 days in case this card or badge is lost you should inform civil or military police in case of citizenship change, death of receptor this card together with badge should be returned to village elder or mayor Now it’s quite clear why type 1.1 – type 3.4 badges and documents on them are so scarce!!!

Content of the tight side section of this document practically duplicate information from large size documents: type of wound, injury or illness, time when this incident occurred and asset number from invalid regulation. In case of this document it is bullet wound in left hand that our fellow men get during Russo-japanese war of 1904-1905!!! This is unbelievable! Our document was issued 37 years later. In 1905 there were no wound badges at all! What does it mean? It means that all types of badges were retroactive as well as documents! This man in consecutive order was awarded by badges type 2.3, type 3.3 and type 4.1. Every time new type of badge was instituted he returned his old badge together with the document and got a new one instead. Was this really so? Indeed!!!

Now the most important part for us – reverse of this small document.

Obverse is saying that we have Document type A number 16 199 Second lieutenant Ishita Asajiro Date of birth September 18, 1870 Date of document issuing February 1, 1942 (sic!)

Obverse

Smaller add-on document has the following dimensions: height 105 mm and width 75 mm. Its purpose was being more mobile and compact version of the original large document. It was used by recipient for getting regular pension payment (and of course as verifying document). Its size is suitable for military or civil ID booklet. Here we got very interesting example of such small document.

These large, impressive documents are beautiful, interesting and quite rare, but they couldn’t help us figure out the fate of documents for early badges. Maybe smaller documents will?

And here is the photo of large document for non-battle wound badge type 4. It has exactly the same design and same kend information. The only diffference is class of badge - in case of this document non-combat, private service wound badge.

Document number: 8426 Recipient name: Murakami Hisakichi-san Dated: January 9, 1941 Wound type: shell splinter hit at right thigh

Late documents for wound badges There two types of documents that we could find for type 4 badges. Actual award document (“large” document in father discussion) and smaller add-on document (“small” document in father discussion). Large document has the following dimensions: height 300 mm and width 420 mm. Here is the photo of document for battle wound badge type 4.

So where were we? Yes, this documents for early badges… Where are they? All we have is documents for late type 4 badges. Let’s take a close look at these documents. And who knows… Maybe they will shade some light on early documents and why we don’t see them.