wish I could trace it back to the person who did all the work to it! So I could beat them over the head and ask why in the world they would screw up history!
The gun was used as the basis for a build because they were
cheap! In 1975 (about as ar back as my involvement with guns goes), you could buy a good K98k for $50 or so, Arisakas were about $30. In 1981, when I started gunsmithing, you could buy packing crates of 98s for $100 (4 per crate packed by the arsenals in 1945), and we bought them, cleaned and sold the guns just so we could have the crates. Just to give some perspective, in 1981 a Model 70 cost about $375, a Rem 700 about the same, a Ruger 77 was about $300, so a $50 rifle you could strip and use the action was pretty cool. We would screw in a good barrel ($125 for a Douglas or Shilen, some others were cheaper), drill and tap it, and put it in a good stock ($30 for one with some figure in the butt area, for $100 you could get an exhibition grade stock), a few hours inletting it, shape, sand, finish, blue the metal, and you had a great looking custom rifle and you were not upside down in it right from the get go. Not any cheaper than a factory rifle, but it would shoot a lot better and looked different, so we built a lot of them. We weren't screwing up history, the USA won the war, the USA wrote the story. The tools of war never change, they will continue to fascinate people, but they were just old guns, some of which you could not hardly find ammo for. We fixed them up and used them. Get over it.