‘He persuaded himself to survive’: The Japanese soldier who never surrendered
For the rest of the planet, World War II ended in 1945, but, for one foot soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army, it kept on going for another 28 years.
It was early evening on January 24, 1972, when two CHamoru hunters checking their fish traps in the Talo’fo’fo river that winds through the jungle on the Pacific island of Guam were startled by a wild-looking, barefooted man bursting out of the undergrowth in front of them.
Clearly as surprised as they were, the stranger flung aside the handmade fish trap he was carrying and attempted to seize one of the hunters’ rifles. But he was easily overwhelmed, subdued, and forced to accompany the pair back to their village, where one of the most extraordinary stories of the 20th century began to slowly unfold.
The man who appeared from nowhere in the evening gloom 50 years ago was Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 38th Division. His last contact with the outside world had been 28 years previously, after US forces had regained control of the island from Japan, and, in the eight years prior to his encounter with the CHamoru men, he hadn’t spoken a single word to another human being. He was one of three Japanese hold-outs who had evaded capture, and the last to survive, hiding out in a cave and hunting by night.
This week, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Yokoi’s apparent return from the dead, his nephew, Omi Hatashin, whom the older man had treated like the son he had never had, spoke exclusively with RT.com.