Glass Balls/Japanese Floats

Dear Friends, Family, & Readers:

     I hope that life is finding you well. This blog is about a hobby common to the Pacific Islands, whether it be Guam, Saipan, or any of the other Marianas Islands.   The topic is that of searching for glass balls while beach combing.  If I had more time on Saipan, I would search for more glass balls as there are still places on the island that are virtually inaccessible to humans unless they have a background in climbing and repelling by rope.   I have seen such areas and expect there to be many glass balls yet to be found there, but they are becoming rare.  In the 70’s one could find more glass balls, but they are no longer made today or at least not for fishing as was their original purpose. 

     Glass balls come from Japan and were originally used as net floats.  A great website for both pictorial amusement and research is http://home.comcast.net/~4miller/aboutfloats/about.html .  Amongst my friends on the island, the place code named “Lobster Lagoon” that proved to be a place to still occasionally find glass floats earlier this year.  The chances of finding them at this location, however, have diminished as there is a house located above the trail head that has its own private trail leading down to the crevice.  During a heavy storm or typhoon I’m sure that this family would be the first on the scene to find such beauties. 

     I will not share this location with anyone because it is a secret to be earned from many days of hiking and exploring the island.  One of my regrets about Saipan is that I did not make friends that shared the love of exploring and trailblazing that I have.  The longest I had ever spent in the jungle was 6 hrs and I nearly didn’t make it back due to exhaustion.  It would have been nice to have a friend to explore the jungle and beach comb with.  I could have headed up a group at church, but I didn’t feel that the interest was there.  I wish everyone the best of luck in finding these beauties on Saipan and other islands in the Marianas chain.

This glass ball was given to me by a friend on the island of Saipan.  You can see that the original roping is still attached. At first, I had the idea that I would try and get rid of the added sea grunge, but I figured that it was a lost cause.  I even thought about bleaching the rope, but I figured that it might weaken the rope and lead to it fallen apart.  What I will say about cleaning a glass ball is that soaking it in non-bleach or non-corrosive dish soap for a few days and lightly scrubbing the glass with a steel wool sort of scour dish pad will take off a little bit of junk off of the glass. 

This glass ball is one I found at Lobster Lagoon.  It is smaller a a little cleaner than the big one that was given to me.  An important thing to know about glass balls that many people make the mistake of doing is in regard to a shipment of these objects back home.  The truth is that you cannot ship these objects by air.  Because glass floats are sealed glass blown objects, they cannot be flown by plane.  When the air pressure changes, the glass floats will break. So, DO NOT SHIP THESE HOME BY PLANE.  Instead, ship the glass floats by parcel post while wrapped in a lot of bubble wrap.  The parcel post will be a lot slower than shipping by plane because it is shipped by boat, but at least your beach combed treasure will be safe.

This picture was taken at Jeff's Seaside Museum in Guam.  The museum is attached to the restaurant located on the south side of the island named Jeff's Pirates Cove.  I did not care too much for the food, but the museum is worth visiting despite its extremely small size.  It is actually the size of a shack, but is filled with lots of beach combed material and Guam WWII era treasures.

This is a the row of glass balls in the lower glass shelf at the museum in Guam.  I'm not sure if this is true, but I have a hunch that the glass balls were originally made from melted down glass sake bottles from WWII.   In Japan today, One can still find glass floats but many of them are actually made just for tourists or enthusiasts. 

WWII Relics and Exploration on Saipan

Dear Friends, Family, & Readers:

It is time for me to write again about my adventures while exploring, but rather than write too much about the experience I'm going to let the pictures do the talking and write information below them for those that are interested in the history or may be interested in proper identification of things. I hope you enjoy the pictures and find the information useful in your relic hunting and boonie stomps. Oh, and before I forget, these photos are taken from Naftan Point and from the public land between the two cliff lines near Santa Lourdes Shrine Saipan.  Remember to click on the pictures for a better view.

A picture of me wearing my dad's old Martin Sexton (an indi-rocker) shirt with five of the six blue WWII Japanese bottles I found.  I cannot say for certain if they were beer or wine bottles as I am finding there is a lot of misinformation out there on the internet as to their identification.  I do know that the bottle making process was different as the tallest bottles have holes near the neck where the could be opened like expensive beers from Europe.  The smaller blue ones I believe to be wine bottles that once held a simple cork.  While at this location, I also found a dark olive green bottle that is smaller and has Japanese writing all over it.  I am not sure yet what it is, but from what I have read it may be a Japanese cider bottle.  That was probably my find of the day I think.

This a WWII beer bottle from Nippon Brewery LTD of Japan.  Dai Nippon was originally founded jointly in 1906 by three different beer companies in Japan.  After the war, this beer company was bought by Asahi in 1949 and split into two major groups one that continued to produce Nippon Beer and the other Asahi. I am not sure if this bottle will be worth something someday, but perhaps it will because of its uniqueness.

Some cool sites for identification of Japanese bottles are 

Japanese Beer Timeline for Research of Dai Nippon Brewery LTD:

http://www.asahigroup-holdings.com/en/company/history/index.html

 

Great PDF Link for Proper Identification of Japanese Bottles:

http://www.sha.org/publications/technical_briefs/volume04/article_02.pdf

This is a Bireleys Soda bottle from circa 1940's. This particular bottle was most likely an orange soda bottle; however, it may also have held grape.  I couldn't find too much online about this bottle, but Bireleys produced at least 4 main products including: orange, grape, natural fruit (w/o carbonation), and milk.  I didn't really find this bottle so much as I came across a pile of bottles someone had left near the side of the road at Naftan. Since this was the only bottle of the three Bireley bottles that had the stamp still visible I took this one.  On e-bay they are selling for $4-10.  Websites that talk briefly about Bireleys are listed below:

 http://www.angelfire.com/tn/traderz/bireleys.html & 

 

http://www.usasoda.com/Bireleys.htm

View from the cliff line I was exploring near Santa Lourdes Shrine

This is a picture of one of the three/four?  gun emplacements at Naftan.  You can see the small ammunition storage bunks.  I'm guessing there would have been a huge gun in the center of each of these.  I'm really not sure what the history is behind these emplacements but seeing how well they have withstood the test of time shows Japanese skill. Concrete reinforced with re-bar. To see them in the jungle is really astonishing.  I may update this later if I find out more from American Memorial Park in Saipan.I imagine Iwo Jima as having similar heavily fortified gun emplacement designs.

I thought this was a pretty cool picture of a Japanese grenade that had been decaying where it was left.  You can see the fuse to the left surrounded by the hard metal shell.  The green,white, blue inside is the decaying T.N.T.  While watching a documentaries of WWII I learned that Japanese used all sorts of grenades and mines.  On Guam, one was so powerful it flipped a Sherman tank on its back!  This was taken at Naftan.

A bomb or at the very least some type of mortar lying in the middle of a trail at Naftan, undisturbed.

This is a bomb or large mortar shell I found split open and decaying at Naftan.  The length of this shell was at least 4 ft. long maybe longer.

A friend of mine said this structure at Naftan was located on the highest point and once held a Japanese radar dish on top of it.  To the left of this structure, not in the picture, are the remains of a fortified building that was destroyed.

This is a picture I took at Naftan Pt. On the right side of the road there is a short trail leading to this vantage point.  During the war, the Japanese must have had this exact view because just below the picture frame is a coral wall they built and while looking out at Obyan Beach you stand on large slabs that they must have used for traction.  I'm sure This would have been a great gun emplacement at one time.

Crazy picture of a butterfly at Naftan next to where my car was parked.  Turning on the flash in a dark jungle makes for a cool picture sometimes.

Saipan Time is also Guam Time: