Imperial Japanese Army sergeant Shoichi Yokoi fled into the jungles of Guam when American forces recaptured the island in 1944 — and didn’t emerge until he was finally discovered 28 years later.
On Sept. 2 , 1945 , World War II come to an end . But not for Shoichi Yokoi .
Public DomainShoichi Yokoi went to war at the age of 26 — and did n’t come home until he was in his mid-50s .
Hidden deep in the jungles of Guam , Yokoi and century of his fellow Japanese soldiers steadfastly resist to surrender to American military personnel , believing that doing so would bring swell shame . But as the age passed , Yokoi ’s brother were captured or die . By 1964 , he was all alone .
Public DomainShoichi Yokoi went to war at the age of 26 — and didn’t come home until he was in his mid-50s.
Yokoi remained in the jungle until 1972 when he was discovered by local hunters . He return to Japan to great fanfare , but he found it difficult to return to life sentence despite his hero ’s welcome . In the 30 geezerhood since he ’d left , the Japan that Shoichi Yokoi had once know had transformed dramatically .
The Tailor’s Apprentice Who Went To War
stand in 1915 , Shoichi Yokoi acquire up in a poor , fractured family during one of the worst recessions in Japanese history . He bounced from comparative to relative until he became a tailor ’s apprentice at the age of 15 .
His life-time — like the sprightliness of countless Japanese valet de chambre across the country — changed in 1940 when Japan entered World War II . Yokoi was drafted at the age of 26 and send to China , where he serve up in a logistical social unit behind the front lines . Next , he link 20,000 other soldiers in Guam , an American abroad district that the Japanese had captured in 1941 .
U.S. Marine CorpsU.S. Marines move inland during the Battle of Guam in 1944 .
U.S. Marine CorpsU.S. Marines move inland during the Battle of Guam in 1944.
Like other Nipponese soldier at the metre , Yokoi believed in fighting to the death . give up , he was convinced , was deeply opprobrious . So when American soldiers stormed the island in 1944 and all but obliterated Yokoi ’s brother — Slatereports that 18,382 were killed and some 1,600 were captured — Yokoi take flight with a number of his fellow troop into the hobo camp .
He did n’t jazz it then , but Shoichi Yokoi would stay hidden deeply in the wilderness of Guam for almost 28 more twelvemonth .
How Shoichi Yokoi Survived In The Jungle
life sentence in Guam was n’t easy . At first , Shoichi Yokoi and the other holdouts were able to charm , kill , and eat local oxen . But the Japanese troop were deeply resented by local anaesthetic , who had suffer under their dominance . lento but sure as shooting , Yokoi and the others strike deeper into the hobo camp .
populate in cave or underground shelters , the stranded man survived on a dieting of coconuts , papaya , shrimp , frogs , salientian , eels , and bum . But most of them did n’t survive long . One by one , they died , were kill , or tiredly surrendered . In 1964 , Yokoi ’s two net companions died in a flood .
He was alone .
Wikimedia CommonsA reconstruction of Shoichi Yokoi’s cave shelter in Guam. The original was destroyed in a typhoon.
With nothing else to do and with no one else to talk to , Shoichi Yokoi gear up about making a life for himself . He was able-bodied to use his skills as a sartor to painstakingly craft habiliment by weaving fibre from tree bark , a process that took month but had the added benefit of occupy his hours . He built traps to see wild eel and constructed an underground shelter to populate in .
Wikimedia CommonsA reconstruction of Shoichi Yokoi ’s cave shelter in Guam . The original was destroyed in a typhoon .
But Japan — dwelling — was never far from his intellect .
Keystone Press/Alamy Stock PhotoShoichi Yokoi cries upon his return to Japan in February 1972.
As theBBCreported in 2012 , he endeavor to keep fussy to relegate thoughts of his female parent . As he later pen in his memoirs :
“ It was purposeless to induce my sum pain by dwelling on such thing . ” And Yokoi remained ferociously loyal to Japan . When he decrease deathly ill , he determinedly wrote : “ No ! I can not break here . I can not bring out my corpse to the enemy . I must go back to my hole to die . I have so far manage to exist but all is coming to nothing now . ”
That said , Yokoi seemed to have some estimate that World War II had , in fact , arrive to an end . Slatereports he was always “ vague ” about when he ’d see of the Nipponese yielding , andSmithsonian Magazinewrote in 2022 that though he had seen pamphlets about the final stage of the conflict , he ’d dismissed them as American propaganda .
JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty ImagesImperial Japanese Army soldier Hiroo Onoda offers his military sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to express his surrender at the Malacañan Palace in Manila on 27 January 2025.
Shoichi Yokoi was , for all intents and purposes , slew off from the world . But in 1972 , the Earth issue forth to Shoichi Yokoi .
In January of that yr , two local hunting watch stumbled across Yokoi checking a Pisces trap . Though Yokoi resisted gaining control — and even tried to catch one of the hunter ’s rifle — the two men were capable to overtake the 56 - class - sometime former soldier . He demanded that they kill him ; the hunters decided to take him to a police force station instead .
There , he told his incredible story .
Shoichi Yokoi’s Complicated Return To Japan
A few weeks after Shoichi Yokoi was distinguish in Guam , he fly home to Japan for the first time in almost 30 years . The New York Timesreported in 1997 that he weep upon seeing Mt. Fuji from the airplane and that millions of Nipponese mass watched on television — a technology foreign to Yokoi — as he arrived at the airport in Tokyo .
Keystone Press / Alamy Stock PhotoShoichi Yokoi weep upon his restoration to Japan in February 1972 .
Yokoi ’s countrymen get wild upon his arrival . They draw the streets as he was take back to his native village , and camera enchant how Yokoi wept upon get wind his family tombstone . Alongside the death of his family member , it recorded that he ’d died back in 1944 .
But Shoichi Yokoi ’s homecoming was complicated . Though he claimed he had tried to subsist for the “ sake of the Emperor , ” Yokoi admitted that he was “ ashamed I have returned alive . ” He ’d never listen of atomic weapon system or the Moon landings , wondered out aloud if Franklin Roosevelt was still Chief Executive , and was befuddled by Japan ’s post - war fellowship .
golf game courses should be destroyed and replaced with bean fields , he suggested . The new 10,000 yen banker’s bill struck him as “ valueless , ” and he scolded the Japanese for their excessiveness and waste .
Unsurprisingly , the Japanese react to him in dissimilar ways . While the one-time generation applauded Shoichi Yokoi as an inspiration , the younger generation saw his mind-set as archaic and wasted , evocative of a time when citizenry were expect to conform to confidence and not guess for themselves .
He was a controversial form , but Shoichi Yokoi was n’t give way away anytime shortly . At 56 , he embark on the terminal chapter of his remarkable life .
The Man In The Jungle’s Final Years
For the next 25 years , Shoichi Yokoi caught up on living lifespan . He wed in 1972 after his family hired a matchmaker ( he remained marital to his wife until his death in 1997 ) , wrote his memoir , sat down for interview , have speeches across the body politic , and even ran for political office .
Yokoi , who ran on a political platform that eliminate consumerism and short skirts , lost badly . He admit to his nephew that he never felt quite at home in mod society . Indeed , the BBC reported that Yokoi grow nostalgic about the past as the years go by , and he even turn back to Guam on several juncture — including his honeymoon .
He must have seemed to many like a vestige of a lost age , but Yokoi was n’t the only soldier who ’d lead on fighting . Two more Nipponese holdouts were break after him : Hiroo Onodain the Philippines andTeruo Nakamurain Indonesia . Onoda refuse to surrender until his command officer return to the island and ordered him to put down down his arms ; Nakamura was lured out of concealing by searchers singing the Nipponese national anthem and roll the country ’s flag .
JIJI PRESS / AFP / Getty ImagesImperial Japanese Army soldier Hiroo Onoda offers his military sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to press out his fall at the Malacañan Palace in Manila on March 11 , 1974 .
To the Japanese , they either represent the best or the regretful of their country . But Yokoi might have been the first to allow in that the truth was complicated . In tapes that come up out after his end , he spoke about how he and his fellow soldiers had been abandoned by their higher-ranking officers , his revulsion at the atrocity they had send while in Guam , and the trouble of telling the stories of his fellow .
When he died on Sept. 22 , 1997 , Shoichi Yokoi was remembered as a soldier and a subsister . But to his wife , he was something different . “ The treasure in my heart , ” she severalise newsman , “ has endure . ”
After read about Shoichi Yokoi , await through these haunting images from the 1945firebombing of Tokyoduring World War II . Or , discover the sickening wartime human experiment performed byJapan ’s Unit 731 .
