460 - Lee Harvey Oswald Personally-Owned and -Worn Overcoat from His Years in the Soviet Union

Lee Harvey Oswald Personally-Owned and -Worn Overcoat from His Years in the Soviet Union Lee Harvey Oswald's personally-owned and -worn blue single-breasted, heavy wool overcoat with three buttons down the front, with his name finely embroidered above the inner pocket on the right side, “Lee H Oswald.” On the other side is a maker's label, "Kawashima, Tailor, Yokohama, Japan." Included are three Soviet transit tickets discovered tucked inside the coat's sleeve cuff: two consecutively numbered bus tickets, 975181 and 975182, and a four-kopeck trolleybus ticket marked “БССР” (BSSR, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic). In overall fine condition, with light expected wear, including a few small holes on the left panel. Accompanied by a letter of provenance from his older brother, Robert L. Oswald, in part: "Lee purchased this overcoat while still in the Marine Corps during his time at Naval Air Force Facility Atsugi near Yokahama, Japan from September 1957 to October 1958. The coat appears in one known photograph, taken c. 1961-1962 of Oswald and Marina on a bridge in Minsk. (The photograph became exhibit 1392 in the Warren Commission investigation of the Kennedy assassination)." Oswald lived in Minsk, capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, from January 1960 until 1962, working as a lathe operator at the Gorizont electronics factory and residing in a government-subsidized apartment near the city center. The Cyrillic abbreviation “БССР” stands for Byelorusskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika, or Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Minsk’s trolleybus system had been in operation since 1952, providing further context for the transit material preserved with a garment that accompanied Oswald from his Marine service in Japan through his years in the Soviet Union.