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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

Still from a movie about the Anatahan castaways. A Pessimist is Never Disappointed

15. Kazuko Higa, Femme Fatale

Kazuko Higa became a full-blown femme fatale, transferring her affections between a series of lovers. Things got worse when the men discovered how to ferment coconut wine, then spent days on end drinking themselves into a stupor, interspersed with bouts of alcohol-fueled rage. By 1951, there had been 12 murders on Anatahan, as the men fought for the affections of the island’s sole female. One of Kazuko’s wooers had been stabbed by jealous rivals on 13 separate occasions, yet returned to his amorous pursuit as soon as he recovered from each attempt on his life.

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.