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When US and German Soldiers Fought Together and Lesser-Known World War II Events

Khalid Elhassan August 25, 2020 35 min

Itter Castle - Battle of Castle Itter — The French Army's former commander in chief, Maxime Weygand, leaving Itter Castle. Agence France Presse

5. A Japanese Lord of the Flies

Still from a movie about the Anatahan castaways. A Pessimist is Never Disappointed

In addition to the daily struggle for survival, Anatahan’s demographics resulted in added layers of difficulty, further complicating the castaways’ plight and gradually leading to a Lord of the Flies dynamics. There was only one woman on the island. Unsurprisingly, 30 men stranded for years on a small island that contained only one woman led to problematic interactions, as the men competed for her affections.

The object of their attentions, Kazuko Higa, had arrived on the island with her husband in 1944. Her husband disappeared in mysterious circumstances soon after the castaways washed ashore. So she married a Kikuichiro Higa as protection against the marooned shipwrecks. However, one of the castaways shot and killed her new husband, only to have his own throat slit soon thereafter by yet another aspiring beau.

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.