I have always thought that one of the things that may have motivated some of these World War II hold outs was the fear of being prosecuted for war crimes, not the idea of never surrendering. There was a number of massacres that happened on Guam during the war that makes me wonder of Sergeant Yokoi had anything to do with?:
Cpl. Shoichi Yokoi, center, who held out in the remote jungle of Guam for 28 years after the end of World War II, raises his hands with two other former holdouts of the Japanese army on July 30, 1972, in this photo displayed at the Pacific War Museum, Guam.
For some combat veterans, war lives on in memories of camaraderie, loss, pride and shame.
For a small group of Japanese soldiers who fought in World War II, the war literally did not end for decades.
Referred to as “stragglers” or “holdouts,” these men retreated to remote, mountainous jungles as Allied forces retook dozens of Pacific islands conquered by Japan.
Guam is tiny compared with some other Asian nations, but its small population that clustered mainly along the eastern coastline left much of the interior isolated even 25 years after war’s end in 1945.
Cpl. Shoichi Yokoi was among the last of the stragglers discovered in the Pacific, captured on the eastern side of Guam in 1972 when two local shrimpers were checking traps along the Ugum River abutting the cave he’d lived in for 28 years.
Photographs of Yokoi and other Guam stragglers — Pvt. Bunzo Minagawa and Sgt. Masashi Ito, both captured in 1960 — are on display at the Pacific War Museum in Guam. [Stars & Stripes]
