8. The Marooned Japanese Who Kept Fighting the War
WWII formally ended on September 2nd, 1945, with representatives of the Japanese government signing instruments of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo’s harbor. However, that did not bring an immediate end to all the fighting, or acts of resistance from diehards against history’s verdict of an Allied victory. Many Japanese in scattered outposts throughout the Pacific and Asia either did not receive word of their country’s surrender or refused to believe it, dismissing it as fake news and enemy propaganda.
Eventually, most of them faced reality, accepted facts, and laid down their arms. Some, however – whether out of stupidity, insanity, pride, or some confluence of bizarre factors, refused to surrender. Instead, they hung on for months, years, and in some cases, even decades, before they were either killed or captured. Few holdouts had a tale as dramatic – or salacious – as that of a band of marooned Japanese in the small island of Anatahan.
