A friend and I were out making the rounds this afternoon and getting lunch. I walked into a local gun shop. The fellow's who worked there exclaimed "Man have we got something for you!" He walks around to the back and comes out with... A Japanese WWII Nambu, Type 94, 8 mm pistol. It was in great shape. It was designed by a fellow named Kijiro Nambu. Who back engineered it off a German Luger.
Later on two Americans got one off a US Marine, who had acquired it in the Pacific during WWII, while Island Hopping. Strom and Ruger were working out of a garage back then in 1948. They loved the little semi-automatic so much, they used it to design the and produce what became known as the Standard. Later to become the Mark Series. Based on their initial success, they started producing other firearms and the rest is history.
I recognized the first Kanji marks as being from an armory in Japan. Having owned an Arisaka Rifle. It uses a numbering system that shows the year and month of the Sho or Showa Empire, which was Emperor Hirohito's reign. It's a Type 94, which means it was adopted in the year 2594 by the Japanese Calendar.
The 12 - 11 stamp says that it was produced in November 1937. There is a final inspection mark, followed by the mark of the Nagoya Arsenal and the Company Logo of Chuo Kogyo, who inherited the company after Nambu died. That's on the right side.
On this picture the three marks next to the screw are simply the model designations, They read Kyu-yon-shiki or Type 34. Next to the safety lever are markings for "Safe" and "Fire"
These little jewels are ill reputed. If you have a round in the chamber and press the exposed trigger bar on the left hand side of the receiver, unless the safety is on, the weapon will fire. Later on as WWII progressed and materials became scarce, product quality dropped. But the Japanese military carried them through out the war.
They only produced 72,000 of these weapons from 1934 to 1945. They are hard to find especially with matching numbers on the frame and the magazine. Mine was a spare magazine.
This one will probably not get a range trip. I'd been keeping my eye out for one for years but they were way over priced at the local gun shows and I've never seen one in a local shop.
