Hello, Found this at a local estate sale and thought it looked pretty interesting. Problem is I dont know what it is or what it says. Any ideas? I appreciate the help!
I think this is a "Trench Art" piece from WWII incorporating a dataplate salvaged from a Japanese aircraft.
Probably made by an American serviceman. Comparing the writing to illustrations in the links below & other sites
I think this is from a Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen. The rest is open to interpretation. The band is likely aluminum.
Google search Japanese Aircraft Dataplate & Mitsubishi Aircraft Dataplate for more information.
It's all in Japanese, but is a little hard to read because of the size. It doesn not say "aircraft" on it in Japanese, at least not how it is written now as "hikooki" but Montauk may be right. It is a build plate off of some kind of Japanese machine. It does say, I think "Arumaito" in romanji katakana, which could probably loosely translate to "armament."
I had my buddy who knows a lot of Japanese to translate what he could.
On the left of the piece you have a description of what the data is on the right side of the piece.
The word "Arumaito" is either a product or a company name. I did a brief search and found reference to a company in Nagoya that started in 1923 that made a product called "Arumaito" that is a type of anodized aluminum, but I don't know if that is what this is referring to.
I think Montauk is correct. This is a data plate from a WWII Japanese aircraft. It is not the main data plate but from another part of the plane. Here is a data plate from a Zero landing gear cover.
Zeros were made by Mitsubishi and Nakajima. Both located in Nagoya.