Last week, Bob Ciancia posted a scan of a pair of chips he got off (shown here)

In a reply post, Bob Champiom stated that they were from the Tachikawa Air Force Base (USA) NCO Club, in Japan. John Chamberlain queried what the character depicted was, and I've been trying to find out.

Doing a little Google searching it is easy to find a history of the Air Base, which was heavily bombed in WWII (World War II) and occupied by the US Military after the War. The base was restored to operational status and became a US Air Force Base, up until it was turned back over to the Japanese sometime after the Vietnam War.

Since I work with a fair amount of retired US Service personnel, I asked a retired Air Force troop if he had ever been stationed in Japan. Well, not only had he been stationed in Japan, but his housing assignment was at Tachikawa! (It seems that after the base was closed for flight status, it remained for military housing and other such uses, prior to being fully returned to Japan.

I showed him the scan of the chips and asked if he was familiar with the character. He said he had seen similar charaterizations of the animal, but was not certain as to what it was. He said that he would check with his wife (Japanese) and as it turns out, she is familiar with the creature, but does not know the English name and can only pronounce it in Japanese.

She is checking with a relative in Japan, who has a better grasp of English, to say what the critter is and perhaps what the story is about the clothing and hat.

I will post more when I find out!

Jim