Is it because of a lack of kits? Or no interest?
It seems like the war in the pacific got pushed aside! There is a lot of good modeling to be had by modeling this great war in the pacific. I know there are very few armor kits available! The figure selection looks a little better. I'm not sure about soft skin vehicles, is there any of these available? Sure would be sad to leave this area un-modeled!

Regards,

Garry

Nah, it's just because of the kits. I really would like to do one but the only armor I've seen here at my LHS is the Finemolds Chi-Ha. Quite expensive though

ya i noticed that FineMolds solely sells Japanese Tanks? Over here, we have quite a variety

and yes, they are quite expensive

I know of only about 3 IJA softskins. All are white metal and resin and very expensive. There is 3 or 4 IJA tank kits as well but once again a little pricey.

Tamiya had/has three tank/SP gun kits, all based on the Chi-Ha hull. I think Finemolds makes five or six other kits, but as said, they are expensive. There are a few companies making Japanese artillery in resin and white metal.

Figures are pretty limited, too. Tamiya did a Japanese infantry set many years ago that still can be found, and Dragon/DML had a nice set of Japanese Infantry that was reboxed with some Marines for a "Windtalkers" set. The old Airfix Multipose line also had a nice set of Japanese, but these are very hard to find and long out of production. There are several resin kits out there, but I think it would be difficult and expensive to assemble a large group from them.

I just happen to be working on a "Ha-Go" at the present time, inbetween 15 other projects.

Like others have said, there are the three Tamiya kits and the Fine Molds kits. Also RPM does the Type 79 which is a copy of the French Ft-17 that they used in the early stages of the war. I think Fine Molds makes more IJA tanks than the Japanese Army actually used!

The Fine Molds kits are some of the best 1/35 scale armor kits produced. The smallest, the Type 94 TK tankette is about the size of a 1/72 scale MBT. The largest is the Type 3 medium tank that was armed with a 75mm gun that someone on Armorama was building last year. They do the Type 94, Type 95, Type 97, Type 1 and Type 3. FYI, the Japanese labeled their tanks using the year of the Emperor's rule (or something like that). The Type 94 was developed in 1934, Type 95 in 1935...Type 1 in 1941, Type 3 in 1943.

The reason why there are not a lot of Japanese armor kits is because there wasn't a lot of Japanese tanks. During WW2 the IJA was still basically a foot army. They had very little mechanization (hence the lack of softskins) and thought of the tank as mainly an infantry support weapon.

Pacific armor has not been missed. Italeri has embraced the AMTRACs, given us a PTO USMC Sherman and even Tamiya's original M4A3 Sherman had the Classy Peg markings of a US Army tank used in the Pacific.

Add to that the Japanese tanks done by the Japanese companies Tamiya and Fine Molds, and you will see that they cover just about all the variants of IJA tanks. There is a hole though. The special purpose vehicles and amphibious vehicles used by the Japanese are sorely missed. Probably not big enough of a market to justify producing injection molded kits of this nature.

As far as figures go, Fine Molds did at least 5 sets of figures from pilots to infantrymen to tank crewmen. Verlinden did some resin Japanese figures as well.

Tamiya and Dragon has a Japanese infantry set. Dragon also has the Windtalkers kit which I believe is both the Japanese infantry and the US Marines set combined plus a bonus Marine that represents the Nicolas Cage character in the movie Windtalkers. There is also an old Airfix 1/32 multipose Japanese infantry set

I think part of the reason for the lack of kits is many people think of planes and ships when they think of the war in the pacific and there are plenty of planes already out.

And once you decide to build one, Japanese soft skins in particular, research material is hard to find! I've had little luck coming up with photos of a type 97 Fuel truck.

For Japanese armour images, check out the Australian War Memorial website at www.awm.gov.au
linkname

We also have a Ha-Go in the collection, captured in August-September 1942 at Milne Bay in New Guinea. A long barrelled Chi-Ha is in the collection of the Australian Armoured Corps Museum at Puckapunyal, Victoria.

Japanese amphibious tanks are sorely missed in 1/35 scale modelling.

My North American mates, PLEASE PLEASE don't forget that it wasn't just the Yanks with the tanks in the Pacific. We also had M3 Stuarts, Matilda II's and Universal Bren Carriers in theatre fighting from the very first days of the "Oriental Blitzkreig" on December 8th, 1941.