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For those of you that were following the story on the family that had the Type I, I have an update. Well I went over to the families house today. A reporter and I interviewed the family and we managed to get the story straight from the vets mouth. Here is the story of how he acquired the Type I. Mr. Flagg was a cook on board a transport vessel that had stopped in Saipan. He and some crew mates went ashore and came across a cache of captured weapons. From what we gathered the cache was unguarded and they all proceeded to take a rifle. He took the rifle back to the ship and eventually sent it home. There aren't any official papers for the rifle. Somewhere along the line someone must have taken out the firing pin and stuck the bolt in backwards. As you can see from the pictures it is still missing some of the bolt parts and the bolt is lodged in there backwards. The rifle had remained in his closet since it came home and his family wasn't even aware of it until about 2 years ago. When they found it they wanted to know more about it and this year they finally decided to go to a gunshow to get some more information. That is when I met them and talked to them about the gun. It came out that they were on hard times and needed to sell it. I offered to buy it from them as long as I could document their story. This is the basic version of the story but there will more information soon. Now I have to clean the rifle up. It has lots of surface rust and has a splotches of pink paint on it. Mr. Flagg had taped some papers with his name on it so I don't know how I can take it apart without ruining the papers. I don't even like the idea of taking it apart but if I don't it will continue to rust away. Hopefully I can have some pictures up of it in a cleaner and better preserved state. Stay tuned for more.
Brad
Brad