HOLDEN (AP) – Ralph McLeod collects and sells guns and memorabilia. But he has no plans to sell his latest acquisition, a war trophy from World War II. Instead, he’s making it his mission to return the human skull to Japan.

McLeod purchased the skull for $50 from a fellow gun dealer who obtained it by purchasing a box of materials at an estate sale several months ago.

The skull, which has the words “1945 Jap skull, Okinawa” printed by hand in ink on its top, has not been officially determined to be a trophy skull. But it’s not uncommon through history for warriors to keep such gruesome mementos from war.

“I said, I’ll get it and return it to Japan – that’s where it should go,”‘ McLeod said. “If it were an American skull discovered in another country, we’d want it back. It’s the moral thing, the right thing, to do.”

McLeod contacted the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C., and was referred to the consulate general of Japan. McLeod was told by the consulate to gather information to be forwarded to the appropriate Japanese ministry.

Dr. Marcella Sorg, a state forensic anthropologist based at the University of Maine, has conducted such investigations to determine the ethnic origin of a skull. But she said the inscription alone makes it likely that the skull was a trophy.

Hideo Matsubara of the New York office of the Japanese Consulate said the process to determine if the skull is in fact from Japan could take six months to two years.

“If we receive these kinds of items, we return (them) to the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare in Japan,” he said. “If we find the owners of the items, we return them. The ministry passes them to the owners or descendents.”

If no owners or relatives are found, “the materials will be sent to the Ministry of Fallen Officers,” he said.

McLeod has more than 200 guns, old coins and swords, knives and a case of Nazi memorabilia. The skull sits in a cardboard box behind the counter.

In his 30 years of dealing guns and military artifacts and memorabilia, this is the first trophy skull that McLeod has come across, but he knows five different men who have them. One of them went through the piles of paperwork necessary to return it to Japan.

Returning the skull was an easy decision, McLeod said. “We would want the same thing.”

Copy the Story Link