Not suicide powder

My dad was a Seabee and found this waterproofed fabric pouch full of powder on Peleliu in 1944 after the battle. He thought it might be Japanese suicide powder.

It's actually a mortar increment, which is a small bag of gunpowder to put in a mortar round to adjust trajectory.

The saga of its identification may be found on TreasureNet, where I am known as Sonny Cancún.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,264966.0.html