19. Some Japanese Soldiers Hid and Kept up the Fight for Years to Escape the Perceived Shame of Surrender
Some Japanese military personnel were true believers in Japan’s claims that the war was fought to free fellow Asians from European colonialism. So they stayed behind when their comrades marched off to POW camps and joined forces with nationalist anti-colonial movements such as the Viet Minh. Others had snapped and suffered what would be diagnosed today as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As such, they acted irrationally because of mental instability. Others were simply jerks. They could not swallow their pride and admit that all their wartime sacrifice had been for naught, and face up to the fact that they had lost.
Whatever their motives, thousands of Japanese failed to surrender after WWII had officially ended. Most holdouts did not hold out for long, and within a few months, were convinced that the war had ended. So they stacked their arms and turned themselves in to the nearest Allied forces, or if unable to face the humiliation of surrender, committed suicide. Others, cut off from supplies of food and medicine, starved to death or succumbed to illnesses. Others were tracked down by Allied or native forces and killed. However, a tiny minority survived and held out for far longer continued the war and managed to escape the perceived shame of surrender for years – in some cases, for decades.
