[Milsurplus] "Setting Suns"

[Hue Miller]

Having a sort of fascination with Japanese aircraft, I bought this
book photo collection "Setting Suns:  Captured & Wrecked Japanese
Aircraft in WWII".   ( Tom Laemlein, 2007 )
Fascinating photos of aircraft in all states from piled up wrecks being
burned by U.S. forces, to fields full of combat-ready aircraft at the end of
the war. Seeing the abandoned aircraft always makes me feel a surge
of the old plunder fever. Seeing this many aircraft accessible makes
me wonder why there doesn't seem to be more avionic loot around.
Probably because the looters were limited to what they could store
and carry. Like one of those shopping prizes but in this case, the rule
says, no shopping cart allowed - unless perhaps if you were an officer.
And also, the civilian populations were different than in Europe. Either
too primitive to value the equipment for other than raw materials, or
too cowed by  unpredictable  violence to want to venture anywhere near
military activity, or too starved to be interested. The 'official rules'
concerning souvenirs, at least in the Pacific area, declared electronic
equipment to be disallowed, despite the fact that the US government
likely already had their choice of thousands of the same particular
item.
Europe was somewhat different, at least in the access of civilians
to war detritus. As the fighting moved on, civilians from nearby
villages were able to harvest what they could.  National Geographic,
in an early postwar copy, for example, described villagers in Belgium
stripping abandoned tanks of everything they could carry off.

My father told me he thought the Combat Engineers had the best
opportunities to gather loot. Tasked with securing ordnance and
checking for trap bombs, they were right behind the front lines
and had the time and access.
-Hue Miller