Nambu World: Showa 19.9 Type 14 Photos (2)

I got this pistol as part of a seven-gun purchase in April-May, 2007. It was the largest deal I have ever done in terms of number of firearms. This pistol duplicated an even better 19.9 that I already had, so it was in my collection only a short time before I passed it on to a friend.

Here’s the left side.

This close-up of the markings tells a lot about the pistol. The top row starts with the Nagoya Arsenal logo on the left, then a katakana ro in a circle. This is the second “letter” in the Japanese “alphabet” and indicates the gun is part of the second series. That line ends with the serial number, 56766. The second line starts with the kanji character sho, short for Showa, to indicate it was made during the reign of the Showa Emperor, i.e. Hirohito. The 19.9 indicates the gun was made in the ninth month of the 19^th year of Hirohito’s reign, i.e. September, 1944. The little mark to the far right is a poorly struck kanji na as in Nagoya. It is a final inspection mark.

The magazine matches. The dot above the serial number (last three digits of gun’s number) indicates this was the spare issued with the gun. The marks in the lower right are inspection marks that got stamped one over top of the other: ri, na and a circle.

The finish on the gun shows virtually no wear, and the insides are similar. However, the front and rear of the grip frame have very thin bluing. This may have been a production problem.

The only real problem with the gun was that the striker tail was broken and the top had been broken and then reground into a sharp point, and the striker spring guide had been broken and badly repaired so it was all crooked. I replaced those defective parts with these. They don’t match number-wise (striker 928, guide 714), but they are the correct type and fit properly.

In my examination of the pistol I noted a strange anomaly. The number on the trigger is 761 (you can just barely make out the 1 in this photo. However, the trigger guard is a sealed unit and has not been opened (you can see a faint circle where the head of the trigger pivot pin was machined flush with the guard—if it had been opened this area would be a mess).

Here you can see that the trigger guard is numbered correctly, i.e. 766, even though it has a trigger numbered 761 sealed inside! I guess in wartime mistakes happen.

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Last updated: May 7, 2007. All contents are copyright Teri unless otherwise specified and may not be used elsewhere in any form without prior permission.