Yup. Bamboo was never used on pipes (Western ones, anyway) until WWII when the briar flow stopped and pipe manufacturers wanted to stretch their exising supply. Since shank flaws killed more pipes during manufacture than anything else, being able to simply cut the shank off and replace it with something cheap and readily available became a Thing. Bamboo was one of the ways they settled on. After the war ended and the briar flow resumed, a small but steady demand for bamboo-shanked pipes remained.
