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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

3. Teruo Nakamura Held Out Until December of 1974

Nakamura stayed hidden in the jungles of Morotai Island, isolated and alone, until a pilot spotted and reported his hut in mid-1974. That led the Japanese embassy to request the Indonesian military’s help in tracking him down, which it did, launching a search expedition later that year. Indonesian soldiers finally located and captured an emaciated Nakamura on December 18th, 1974, and flew him to Jakarta, where he received his first medical care in three decades.

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.