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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

22. Shoichi Yokoi Hid in the Jungle for 28 Years

Shoichi Yokoi spent 28 years in the jungles of Guam, hiding and avoiding capture – the third-longest Japanese holdout. A Japanese army sergeant, Yokoi had been posted to Guam in 1943. A year later, the island was captured by American forces, and he fled into the jungle with nine other Japanese soldiers, who refused to surrender at war’s end. The group gradually dwindled over the years, until Yokoi’s last two companions drowned in a flood in 1964, and he was left as the last holdout on Guam.

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.