Thank You For Skull

When he said goodbye two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends, and inscribed: “This is a good Jap—a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.” Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces [LIFE pointedly noted] disapprove strongly of this sort of thing.

(May 22, 1944, issue of LIFE, p. 35.)

And ICYMI, more 70 yrs. ago oddities, at Anzio. Via, which noted,

[S]hrapnel holes in canvas casting what look like stars and galaxies ...

Caption from LIFE: "In a riddled tent five men were killed and eight wounded by a German shell.
The tent is a ward in the beachhead hospital."

Not published in LIFE. Pvt. Robert Scullion holds the Purple Heart he was awarded after
being wounded by shellfire while in the hospital, Anzio. (Note shrapnel holes in tent wall.)