Item Description
Original Item: Only One Available. This is a solid condition Japanese Imperial Army Type 45 Officer's Visor hat. It has a body of brown/green wool with a top panel seam of red piping, matching the color of the red wool cap band.
The center front of cap features a brass Imperial Japanese Army Star along with brass Army Cherry Blossom chinstrap buttons. The black visor is in good condition, however it does show wear. The leather has shrunk somewhat, and the finish on the bottom has flaked off on about 1/3 of the surface. The oilcloth chin strap is in good shape, but delicate.
The interior is lined in olive green rayon (typically missing), with the cheesecloth based reinforcement underneath. The crown lining has a small tag with the Kanji for number 7 (七 or Nana) next to the Katakana letters タ ナ ベ, read as TANABE. The black oilcloth sweatband shows wear but is complete, without any major splits or tears. Most interestingly, there is some Japanese newspaper stuffed behind the liner, either to support the cap, or to make it a bit smaller. We have not removed the paper, so we do not know if it is wartime or postwar.
Areas of light mothing are present on the exterior, but only go through the material in a few places. The damage is mostly contained to the nap of the fabric.
Size is approximately 7" (56cm). It has a look to it which shows it saw long service. This hat was most likely a USGI bring back from the Pacific Theater of WWII, however we do not have any specifics of how it came to the United States.
A very nice example, ready to display!
The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the navy. Later an Inspectorate General of Aviation became the third agency with oversight of the army. During wartime or national emergencies, the nominal command functions of the emperor would be centralized in an Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), an ad-hoc body consisting of the chief and vice chief of the Army General Staff, the Minister of the Army, the chief and vice chief of the Naval General Staff, the Inspector General of Aviation, and the Inspector General of Military Training.
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