The Historic Records home page image shows smiling Canadian and Japanese soldiers during the First World War and was probably published in July 1916 as the caption for what was originally a black and white postcard reads, “The Jap ‘entente’ after the Big Push”. The words “Canadian Official” appear to the bottom right of the card. Three of the men wear bandages around their heads and the two bandaged Canadians standing front right also each have an an arm in a sling. Despite this, all the men seem to be remarkably cheerful.

The men’s smiling faces also reveal, unwittingly, the shocking state of their dental health. The man standing second right appears to have no teeth, whilst the Japanese soldier far left, and the Canadian far right both exhibit poor dental hygiene. Dental caries was a concern for the British army and it was not uncommon for men to be rejected for the army on the grounds of bad teeth. This lead to at least one disgruntled would-be soldier to moan, “I don’t want to bite the Germans, I want to shoot them.”

The original postcard was published by The Pictorial Newspaper Co Ltd which had its base in Bouverie Street, just off Fleet Street in London. Once home to the newspaper trade I believe that DC Thomson is now probably the only newspaper publisher still with a presence there.

Unfortunately, the names of these soldiers are unknown to me and I know of no source for Japanese records of the First World War. If you know differently please do contact me. Libraries and Archives Canada will hold the service records for the Canadian men pictured here, if we only knew their names. For British Army soldier photos, there is no better site than British Army Ancestors which publishes over 12m records and 102,000 British Army photographs.