AA is for Anti Aircraft

   Lots of farms around here have old equipment lying around, sinking into the ground.  Old farming implements--mowers, seeders, combines, balers.  Old logging arches, trucks, water tenders, crummies, even steam donkeys.  One local farm has a Second World War Japanese anti aircraft gun mixed in with all the other machinery.
     Oral history has it that local Sea Bees souvenired the three inch piece at the close of the war and brought it home along with enemy flags, pistols and samurai swords.  After the Japanese saw the light (the blinding light over Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and surrendered, there were a lot of bored American servicemen scattered around the Pacific, waiting to go home.  There was some incredible mechanical talent with multi million dollar machine shops at its disposal.  Many "genuine" samurai swords gathering dust in Grampa's attic, started their lives as pranged airplane propellers.
     The rusty old gun was most likely mounted on a ship and fired 75 millimeter shells at American dive bombers and torpedo planes that sought to sink the entire Japanese Navy.  No telling how the Sea Bees got the thing home, but get it home they did.  The gun spent four decades in front of the VFW hall in Junction City.  Children liked to climb on the piece and fall off of it until it became viewed as a liability and was banished to a farm west of JC where it was forgotten along with tons upon tons of other rusty steel orphans, sinking a little deeper into the mud each year.
     The price of scrap went way up and the current owner of the farm reduced his inventory and made mortgage payments until the old gun stood alone, muzzle pointing skyward out of a blackberry bramble.  If you know where to look, you can make out Japanese characters and maybe even chrysanthemums stamped on the breech block.
     The organization where I work shares a roof with 2nd Battalion of the 162 Regiment of the 41st Combat Brigade.  The 41st spent almost four years in the Pacific combatting the Japanese in New Guinea and points west.  We are cramped for room but it seems logical that we need to make space for the old relic as a war trophy.  A little steel brush work, a coat of battleship grey, and we have a fine gate guard.  Failing that, perhaps we can find a home for it at the Camp Withycombe Museum near Portland.  N