Bataan cab 11 water truck

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Mike Cecil

Hanno,

The same way that 25-pdrs from Malaya ended up scattered across the islands of the SWP: the Japanese moved the captured equipment about to where it was needed by Japanese forces. There is a 25-pdr in the collection of the AWM that is ex-British Army, ex-Japanese Army, 'resumed' in 1945.

I suspect a specialist truck like a water tank would be the sort of equipment that would be moved and used in other places.

Thanks Mike,

Seeing the display they were very happy with their war booty.

Similar to the Netherlands East-Indies Army equipment, plenty of which was re-used by the Japanese Army, and then taken over again by the NEI Army in 1945. Some equipment even went through Dutch-Japanese-Indonesian-Dutch-Indonesian hands between 1942 and 1949!

[Mike Cecil]

Hanno,

What I find most astonishing is the large quantity of equipment that was not disabled and was captured in apparently usable condition.

Same goes for Europe and North Africa, I suppose, with the German army picking up plenty of salvageable and usable equipment, and the British Commonwealth armies taking over loads of Italian equipment in the early stages of the North Africa campaigns. A number of Australian units were provided with anti-tank guns of Italian origin, for example, and used them quite effectively against their former owners.

Mike