My great grampy was in the Pacific, including Manila. UNtil today, a katana was passed down to our family and came from that battle. Read Band of Brothers and it wasn’t a joke, GI’s were sending loot back to the US like they were mailing letters.
Indeed. Body parts as well.
Had a music teacher in elementary school that had a ‘ring’ from the femur of a dead kamikaze pilot that hit his ship. A sailor found the hunk of leg in a bulkhead some weeks after the attack, cleaned it up and sold sections as souvenirs.
He brought that and several pieces of the aircraft skin to show us fifth graders.
Different times.
Another friend of mine back then's dad had left the family and we were fooling around with a trunk of his we found in the rafters above their garage and we found over 50 Luger pistols his dad had brought back from his time in Europe. Being good kids, we closed the trunk back up and told his mom what we found.
One of the stories from Band of Brothers was one of the soldiers obsessed with getting a Luger. It had a tragic ending.
There was a old guy I used to know at the range.
One day, he showed up with a lot, and I mean a lot, of K98’s
Some were very fancy.
“Took them off of Goering’s castle. He didn’t need them anymore!”
Had a few daggers also that he brought to a swap meet looking from some stuff from the Pacific theater.
It's called the spoils of war. I'm sure there's plenty of Nazi memorabilia in Russia, France, England, Canada, New Zealand, etc., as well.
“GI’s were sending loot back to the US like they were mailing letters”
I think Radar got a jeep that way.