I finally had a chance to take my metal detector back into the jungle. One of my receive antennas transects a WW2 era site where I’ve found Japanese and American bottles, GI boot soles, and even a fully loaded M1 carbine magazine. This time, I brought my son with me.
I have an inexpensive metal detector I bought from Harbor Freight. It does the trick, but soon after we got into the jungle, I snapped the plastic piece that holds the coil to the rest of the unit. It’s something I can easily fix, however it made searching for things difficult, so we didn’t spend much time looking.
Justin holding our metal detector. He’s dressed for the jungle – not for rain but to keep the mosquitoes and thorns away.
It did not take long to start finding stuff. We uncovered a lot of random iron pieces, as well as some rock breaking tools – a heavy chisel and a breaker bar. Shortly later, we dug up a silver plated fork. I am pretty sure this site was a ranch during the prewar years.
We found a few more M1 carbine rounds – live. These are all definitively from WW2. Just before we left, Justin found the most interesting thing – a 7.7mm shell casing. This is a Japanese rifle round, fired in an Arisaka type 99 rifle. Wow! This is the first Japanese rifle shell casing I’ve ever found – was there a skirmish here during the war? Who knows – but I will definitely have to dig around some more!
