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Type 97 hand grenade
The Type 97 hand grenade was the main grenade used by Japanese forces during the Second World War. It was more or less just the earlier multi-purpose Type 91 grenade with the attachment socket for a propellant canister deleted from the base, preventing it from being used as a rifle grenade or light mortar projectile as the Type 91 could be, and with the 7-8 second fuze replaced with a 4-5 second fuze to prevent the grenade being thrown back.
Many Type 91s were retrofitted with this fuze: they were further modified by having their base threading drilled out, and had blobs of welding flux added to the lip at the top of the base so they would not physically fit inside a mortar or rifle grenade launcher. For identification, the bases of these grenades were painted white: any grenade that appears to be a Type 97 but has a white base with a hollow in it is actually a modified Type 91. Without a white base but with a visible recessed socket, it is a regular Type 91. With a white base and no hollow, it is an error, as no grenades were marked in this way.
The grenade still suffered from the same bizarre fuze design as the Type 91, extreme variations in fuze burn time, and was still not particularly effective compared to other WW2 designs due to its small explosive content and cylindrical body which made throwing it uphill a hazardous activity.
The Type 97 High-Explosive Fragmentation hand grenade can be seen in the following films and video games used by the following actors:
Film
| Title | Actor | Character | Note | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Fighting Seabees | Japanese soldiers | 1944 | ||
| Pride of the Marines | wounded Japanese soldier | 1945 | ||
| None But the Brave | Tatsuya Mihashi | Lt. Kuroki | 1965 | |
| The Thin Red Line | Imperial Japanese soldiers | 1998 | ||
| Pearl Harbor | Michael Shannon | Lt. "Gooz" Wood | 2001 | |
| Imperial Japanese troops | ||||
| Windtalkers | Imperial Japanese troops | 2002 | ||
| Letters from Iwo Jima | Imperial Japanese Army and Navy troops | 2006 | ||
| Death and Glory in Changde | Wenkang Yuan | Capt. Feng Baohua | 2010 | |
| Imperial Japanese troops | ||||
| The Flowers of War | Imperial Japanese Army soldiers | 2011 | ||
| My Way | Dong-gun Jang | Kim Jun-Shik | 2011 | |
| Imperial Japanese troops | ||||
| Oba: The Last Samurai | Part of booby traps | 2011 | ||
| Cold Steel (Bian di lang yan) | Tony Leung Ka Fai | Zhang Menzi | 2011 | |
| Victor Chen | A Gui | |||
| Imperial Japanese troops | ||||
| The Tiger: An Old Hunter's Tale | Imperial Japanese soldiers | 2015 | ||
| Hacksaw Ridge | Imperial Japanese soldiers | 2016 | ||
| The Eight Hundred | Imperial Japanese soldiers and sailors | 2020 | ||
| Chinese soldiers |
Television
| Title/Episode | Actor | Character | Note | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gilligan's Island | Bob Denver | Gilligan | "So Sorry, My Island Now" (S01E15), "Diogenes, Won't You Please Go Home?" (S1E31) | 1965 |
| Vito Scotti | Japanese soldier | |||
| Alan Hale Jr. | The Skipper | "Diogenes, Won't You Please Go Home?" (S1E31) | ||
| The Pacific | Imperial Japanese troops | 2010 |
Video Games
| Game Title | Referred as | Mods | Note | Release Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deadly Dozen Pacific Theater | 2002 | |||
| Medal of Honor: Rising Sun | 2003 | |||
| Hidden & Dangerous 2 | "Grenade typ 97" | 2004 | ||
| Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault | 2004 | |||
| The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific | 2007 | |||
| Call of Duty: World at War | 2008 | |||
| Battlefield: 1943 | 2009 | |||
| Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm | "Type 97 frag grenade" | 2013 | ||
| Sniper Elite 4 | 2017 | |||
| Yakuza Kiwami | Used in cutscene by Futoshi Shimano | 2017 | ||
| Yakuza Kiwami 2 | Incorrectly depicted as an incendiary grenade | 2018 | ||
| Battlefield V | "Frag Grenade" | added with "War in the Pacific" (2019) | 2018 | |
| Yakuza: Like a Dragon | "Incendiary Grenade" | Incorrectly depicted as an incendiary grenade | 2020 | |
| Call of Duty: Vanguard | "Type 97" | Missing its horizontal grooves | 2021 |