WW1 Victory Medal Document dates

[Rich C]

Hello all. Hope I can get some help on this question. According to Peterson, the WW1 Victory medal was established on 9/17 1920. However, I have found some WW1 Victory medal award documents that are dated Taisho 8 [1919] December 15. Others are dated Taisho 9 [1920] November 1. Did Peterson get this date right? Or perhaps the Imperial Edict was merely the final formal announcement of a medal that had already been established and awarded.

Any ideas? I've attached a couple of pictures of the 1919 documents.

Cheers, Rich

[Paul L Murphy]

I think Peterson got his dates wrong. The edict should predate the award of the medals. The certs I have come across were all Taisho 9. Do you have the serial numbers of these two certs from Taisho 8 so I can add them to my database? The number will be in the text on the left side of the cert.

[Rich C]

Thanks, Paul. I'll have to get access to the Imperial edicts, too. I think they may be online somewhere.

The two roll numbers are 193132 and 54877.

Cheers, Rich

[Paul L Murphy]

Thanks, Paul. I'll have to get access to the Imperial edicts, too. I think they may be online somewhere.

The two roll numbers are 193132 and 54877.

Cheers, Rich

Rich,

Are you sure about the first number ? It is a lot higher than the numbers of the Taisho 9 certificates that I have sighted. The number 54877 makes perfect sense since this is a lot lower than the numbers I have seen to date.

Paul

[Rich C]

Rich,

Are you sure about the first number ? It is a lot higher than the numbers of the Taisho 9 certificates that I have sighted. The number 54877 makes perfect sense since this is a lot lower than the numbers I have seen to date.

Paul

Paul, sorry to say (?), the first number is correct. I have attached a picture of the full document. Is it possible that perhaps it is a re-issue? That is, the soldier got it on the date listed, lost it, and had another one (with a higher number) awarded to him. I know that the government did re-issue orders (at the expense of the individual who requested it), so maybe commemorative and war medals could be re-issued, too.

Rich

[Rich C]

As a follow-up, I should clarify one point. According to the Japanese books I have read, commemorative and war medals cannot be re-issued. But these were post-WW2 books, so perhaps there was a pre-war system of re-issuing those medals if they were lost or stolen.

Cheers, Rich

[Paul L Murphy]

As a follow-up, I should clarify one point. According to the Japanese books I have read, commemorative and war medals cannot be re-issued. But these were post-WW2 books, so perhaps there was a pre-war system of re-issuing those medals if they were lost or stolen.

Cheers, Rich

I am not aware of any system whereby commemorative or war medals were reissued, and certainly not where certs were reissued. The high number here is very curious indeed since it is completely out of sync with the other numbers I have so far. Time to put my thinking cap on !!

[Rich C]

Yes, this high number is a bit puzzling... One easy way out is to blame it on human error, i.e., that the ten (十) was added out of carelessness. That would chop off 100,000... But I guess that is too simple.