← Back to the front page

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

Anatahan castaways, as depicted in a 1950s movie. Pinterest

16. Life on Anatahan Turns Into ‘Lord of the Flies’

Anatahan’s demographics further complicated the castaways’ plight, and produced Lord of the Flies dynamics. Unsurprisingly, 30 men stranded for years on a small island that contained only one woman led to trouble, as the men competed for her affections. The woman, Kazuko Higa, had arrived on Anatahan with her husband in 1944, but he disappeared in mysterious circumstances soon after the castaways washed ashore. So she married a Kikuichiro Higa as protection against his comrades. However, a castaway shot and killed her new husband, only to have his own throat slit soon thereafter by another aspiring beau.

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.