26. The Japanese Duo Who Refused to Surrender For Fifteen Years After WWII Ended
Imperial Japanese Army Sergeant Masashi Ito and Private Bunzo Minagawa were assigned to the Japanese garrison of Guam, when that island was invaded by American forces in 1944. In the fierce fighting that followed, most of Guam’s defenders were killed, but Ito and Minagawa were among the lucky few Japanese survivors. Japanese propaganda had convinced them that the US military treated its prisoners of war barbarically, so the duo were too afraid to surrender. Instead, they struck off deep into the island’s jungles and hid. And hid, and hid, and hid, then hid some more. Ito and Minagawa ended up spending a miserable 16 years cowering in Guam’s jungle, sleeping in the elements as their uniforms rotted away into tattered rags.
As Minagawa described it: “we ate roots, worms, grass, and grasshoppers. It’s no use telling you because you wouldn’t believe it. You can’t imagine such a life. We were sleeping every night in the rain on the ground“. The duo’s Robinson Crusoe existence took place only a stone’s throw from civilization: Guam is only 25 miles long and 8 miles wide, and at the time had a population of more than 60,000 people. The holdouts lasted until May 21st, 1960, when an emaciated and dazed Minagawa was discovered in the jungle and captured by locals. Ito was taken two days later. Asked by a reporter whether they had seen leaflets written by their relatives and dropped over the jungle years before their capture, they said “Yes, but we didn’t believe them. We thought it was propaganda”.
