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40 Facts About the Japanese Who Refused to Surrender After WWII Had Ended

Khalid Elhassan January 3, 2019 25 min

Hiroo Onoda - Ishinosuke Uwano — Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who kept fighting for nearly three decades after WWII had ended. Observer

A Japanese ship sinking under air attack. Pinterest

24. The Japanese Sailor Who Hid in the Jungle

Seaman Noboru Kinoshita was in a Japanese ship that was attacked and sunk off the Philippines in 1944 by American planes. He was one of the few survivors who managed to swim to safety, reaching the shores of Samar Island after hours in the water. There, he joined Japanese forces and accompanied them to Luzon, where they fought the US military. When his unit was dispersed, Kinoshita struck off into the jungles of Luzon, successfully evading enemy forces. There, isolated from the outside world, he eked a precarious existence, surviving on lizards, frogs, fruits, monkeys, and any other edibles he could find.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.