• question about post marks
    2 replies, posted
for context: my mother is doing research on our family history she found these post cards. https://i.imgur.com/ah3ifdd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ah3ifdd.jpg every post mark she found had roman numerals and/or morse code and to add to it; its barely legible. so the question is, whats up with these post marks and what do they say?
I didn't expect to find anything, since I know nothing about stamps, but I figured I'd give it a shot: Artist's rendition of the postmark: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/114090/8540513c-521d-4b2f-aa3d-93ff14481fa3/postmark.png The stamps are Japanese and were issued in 1947 and 1951. That type of postmark was used for outgoing foreign mail (scroll down to the "Swordguard" section). From what I can gather, the middle section contains the date in DD/MM/YY format (with the month being in roman numerals), meaning the date that the mark was applied is December 17, 1958. The other portion of the middle text (that I can't make out) might be the hour and minute that the mark was applied. In the top section, I can make out in the letters "SAS". The only Japanese cities with that start with those letters and used that type of postmark (and would reasonably fit in the postmark given the font size) according to this list (which is also available through the aforementioned 'foreign mail' link) are Sasebo and Saseho. According to the same list, Sasebo didn't start using that type of postmark until ~1960, whereas Saseho was using it since ~1954 (note that the list only contains dates for earliest found postmarks, not necessarily earliest actual usage of the mark) . It could be either city, but the Saseho's usage is closer to the issue date of the stamps, and the date of the postmark falls within the date range in the list, so it's the more likely option in my opinion (and on second glance, I can kind of make out an 'H' at the 1-o-clock position of the mark, but 'B' and 'H' can look a lot alike) . In either case, that would mean that the smaller text in the semi-circle would be "Nagasaki", according to the same list mentioned previously.
my mother will no doubt appreciate your research, thank you.
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