I bought it from a guy in Oregon, who bought it years ago from a WW2 aviator. No provenance, but I am buying the gun, not the story. Considering I got it for $300, I am not complaining! Generally, shooting martial arms always gives me a sense of History. Shooting the Inland is an intense personal experience for me, that goes above that normal sense of History. My dad and his brothers, now all gone to their eternal rest, used the Carbines in the Pacific. I hope that shooting the Victory Model will also give me that heightened sense of personal History that shooting the carbine does.

My dad was Signals NCOIC with the Army headquarters and went on Iwo the 6th day with the advance party. He said he was never so scared in his life as the night that the main ammo dump blew up. A piece of shrapnel falling back to earth took out the middle of his cot while he was in the slit trench next to his tent.

Between daily snipers, sapper attacks, a dud type 97 grenade landing a his feet, dodging Jap artillery and bombs landing around him, and just missing stepping on a "bouncing betty" mine by one inch, he was quite convinced the Emperor wanted him dead!

I still have the minefield map he was issued, and a pre-invasion planning map, along with a bunch of his other stuff. Cherished family heirloom.