← Back to the front page

Queen Victoria’s Chimney Stalker and Other Creepy Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2019 33 min

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex - Buckingham Palace — Queen Victoria's most famous stalker was a begrimed urchin. Iluminasi

6. There is Pride, and Then There Is…

Opening to underground cave in which Shoichi Yokoi hid. Flickr

Japanese Army sergeant Shoichi Yokoi was posted to Guam in 1943. The following year, after the island was captured by US forces, Yokoi went into hiding with nine other Japanese soldiers. They refused to surrender at war’s end. The group gradually dwindled over the years, until Yokoi’s last two remaining companions drowned in a flood in 1964, and he was left as the last Japanese holdout on Guam.

Unlike the majority of holdouts who did not believe that the war was over, Yokoi knew by 1952 that the war had ended with Japan’s surrender. He simply could not bring himself to swallow his pride and return home as a defeated soldier. So he hid in the jungle for 28 years.

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.