Some of the stuff looks as if...

Some of the stuff looks as if it has been moldering in somebody’s back yard for a few years. But the tanks and guns at the American Military Museum, in the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, are the real deal, says exhibit director Craig Michelson.

“We’ve got an eight-inch mobile Howitzer, one of the largest self-propelled guns in World War II,” Michelson says, “and a 40-mm antiaircraft gun from the USS Missouri. “

He could go on. There are 85 pieces in all, including a German amphibious wagon that looks like a bathtub with a propeller. They all seem to reek of the Battle of the Bulge or D-Day or the grueling War in the Pacific.

And now, straight from the Middle East, there are a pair of big trucks from Desert Storm, two

five-ton tractors and a tanker, their camouflage exteriors scoured by the desert sand.

The museum was opened with donated exhibits 12 years ago by Michelson’s father, Don Michelson, a retired colonel who was with the U.S. Army Quartermasters Corps. “A zillion years ago, people started giving my father souvenirs, like uniforms and swords,” says Craig Michelson. “Next thing you know, they’re giving him jeeps and trucks.” The elder Michelson, now 73, is still the museum’s executive director.

The museum, at 1918 N. Rosemead Blvd., is open Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4:30 p.m. Suggested donations are $2 for adults and 50 cents for children.