Matsudo Linsoki and Yamakage Kifuku
Matsudo Linsoki and Yamakage Kifuku were two Japanese machine gunners who had been posted to the volcanic island of Iwo Jima. In 1945, the island was invaded, and some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the entire Pacific War ensued. The defenders fought fanatically, almost to the last man: out of a garrison of 21,000 Japanese, nearly 20,000 died before the island was declared secured.
Linsoki and Kifuku were among the few Japanese survivors who neither died fighting nor committed suicide. Believing their government’s propaganda that Americans tortured and killed prisoners, they were too afraid to surrender, and so went to the ground.
Hiding during the day in the warren of tunnels that honeycombed the rocky island, and emerging at night to pilfer food and other necessaries from the American garrison’s supply and trash dumps, Linsoki and Kifuku managed to survive for a long time in a barren and inhospitable island bereft of vegetation and game. Given the American garrison’s lack of interest in scouring a hard landscape, the duo went unnoticed for years.
Their holdout lasted until January 6th, 1949, when a pair of US Air Force corporals in a Jeep spotted a pair of pedestrians in uniforms a few sizes too long, walking alongside a road. Then the Chinese laborers, and although they spoke no English and were uncommunicative, the corporals assumed they were hitchhiking to the island’s main base, and so kindly gave them a lift and dropped them off in front of the headquarters building.
From there, Linsoki and Kifuku wandered around the base for hours, until a passing American sergeant realized that they were Japanese and took them in. After the initial interrogation, the duo took their captors to their hideout. There, the Americans encountered a cave richly stocked with canned foods, flashlights, batteries, uniforms, boots and shoes and socks, and sundry goods that the pair had pilfered over the years.
