Exploring a World War II Japanese cave on the island of Guam. Trevor probably took the photo.
I found this fork with U.S.N. stamped in the handle while diving in Apra Harbor on Guam. I was diving along the Glass breakwater side between Dog-leg Reef and the American Tanker wreck. Stainless Steel does not corrode so other than having to clean off some sea growth it was as good as the day it was dropped overboard. Could General McArthur have eaten from that fork? We'll never know.
I have always been a treasure hunter and it was so fun to find stuff from WW II. Was it casually dropped, or did someone drop it so that they didn't have to wash it?
Here is a 20 mm shell casing that I found in the same area as the fork. Look at the date: 1943.
You probably notice that the primer is still live. It was a live round when I found it. Here was the steps I took to render it harmless: 1. From about 30 feet where I found it I put it in a flooded dry box. 2. I tied a cord to the handle and then dragged it a safe distance behind the skiff back to the dock. 3. I left it flooded inside the dry box and took it home. 4. At home I dropped it off of a high place until the shell was harmless. Why did I do all that? Some say that after all that time underwater the powder becomes unstable. With this shell water had leaked in and when I threw it off of the high place it fizzed and twirled a little and then stopped. I then took the bullet off with pliers.
There are horror stories where unexploded ordinance has gone off years after it was abandoned on the field. One story I heard while living in Guam was that a school teacher had found a grenade and several months after keeping it in her classroom, it rolled off the table and exploded. Trevor and I found a dude grenade at the War In The Pacific Park. That was the battlefield where the American forces attacked the Japanese to take back the island.
Trevor found this Japanese fishing float while we were hiking along Scout Beach on Northern Guam during a Father and Sons outing. Nowadays, they are pretty hard to find.
This is a medicine bottle that Trevor and I found near a big bomb crater hole a mile or so south of where we lived on Nimitz Hill. I always assumed it was Japanese because of the cork lid. There were chunks of shrapnel all around so I thought it was some king of medicine.
These are chucks of some kind of fragmentation explosive. I found them while diving as well as hiking. I would like to know if these were Japanese or American?
Hiking through the jungle or diving and looking for WW II stuff was great fun. Especially when Trevor was with me. After serving my mission in Japan, it was interesting to visit battle fields where intense fighting took place. To know that all of that animosity is gone makes me agree with the side that says that men are basically and instinctively good.
