Hopefully this is the correct subreddit for this. Story: My grandparents found this sword in the attic of the house they moved into quite a few years ago. Apparently the last person to own the house was a U.S. Marine who fought in WWII. The sword is actually broken in half, and the sheath (not sure if it's called that for swords) is pretty tattered. I doubt it's worth anything but I am interested in the symbols. Picture 1.....Zoomed in
I'm also not sure that this is the right subreddit for this, and /r/whatisthisthing might be better. Hopefully a decent answer will be sufficient enough historical grounding for the post to not be removed.
With that in mind, I actually can tell you a little bit about the inscription. The characters are 沖光作. 沖光 is the name Okimitsu, who was either a Shōwa period swordsmith that lived from 1926-1989, or his father who worked under the same name. The last character 作 just means "done by" in this case, so it's saying "This sword was made by Okimitsu".
I can't tell you anything about the authenticity, but just what it says. Here are some examples of work done by Okimitsu (the son not the father). I can't tell you which would have been responsible for this particular sword. His actual name was Hara Hiroshi (原寛 / はら ひろし), a.k.a. Hara Okimitsu (原 沖光 / はら おきみつ), and he was based in Shimane Prefecture. I believe the same was true for the elder Okimitsu but I'm not certain.
If it's truly a WWII era sword that'll certainly narrow down which of the Okimitsu's was likely to have been the creator. The inscription certainly looks to be the same "handwriting" of the example I linked above, despite not being the longer usual inscription of Okimitsu.
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You may want to ask in /r/swords.
