9. This Holdout’s Extreme Loyalty to Japan Was Met With Extreme Ingratitude
Teruo Nakamura exhibited extreme loyalty to Japan, with a nearly three-decades-long holdout in obedience to the last orders he had received from Japanese authorities. Unfortunately, Japan repaid his extreme loyalty with extreme ingratitude. Other famous holdouts such as Hiroo Onoda, whose holdout had ended a few months earlier, were celebrated as paragons of devotion to duty. By contrast, Nakamura attracted relatively little attention in Japan. For one thing, Onoda was an ethnic Japanese citizen, while Nakamura had been a colonial soldier from what, by 1974, had become the independent nation of Taiwan.
Although he wanted to be repatriated to Japan, Nakamura had no legal right to go there. So he was sent to Taiwan instead. As a member of a colonial unit rather of the Japanese Army, Nakamura was not entitled to a pension and back pay under Japanese law. Hiroo Onoda was awarded about U$160,000 by Japan, equivalent to roughly U$850,000 in 2021 dollars. By contrast, for his three-decades-long holdout in service to Japan, Nakamura was awarded only U$227 – equivalent to U$1200 in 2021. He returned to Taiwan, where he died of lung cancer five years later, in 1979.
