A JAPANESE SOLDIER SURVIVED FOR 27 YEARS HIDING ALONE IN A CAVE AFTER WORLD WAR -II

 

      

        A JAPANESE SOLDIER SURVIVED FOR 27 YEARS HIDING ALONE IN A CAVE AFTER WW-II  

           

 

     Shichi Yokoi,former lance corporal in the Japanese army during world war– II , was discovered in 1972,hiding in the jungleds of Guam in an underground shelter with the firm belief that his fellow soldiers would return for him one day.

       When Yokoi returned to Tokyo in February 1972,two weeks after being discovered,he was met with a hero’s welcome.

         Shoichi Yokoi (31 March,1915 ---- 22 September,1997) was a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese  Army (IJA) during second world war-2 and was among the last three Japanese holdouts to be found after the end of hostilities in 1945.He was discovered in the jungles of Guam on 24 January,1972 almost 28 years after US forces had regained control  of the island in 1944.

           In 1943  he was transferred to the 38^th regiment in the mariana islands and arrived on Guam in February 1943 .When American forces captured the island in the 1944 battle of Guam .Yokoi went in to hiding with nine other Japanese soldiers.

                

 

        Yokoi who was 26 when he was drafted in to the army in 1941, was thought that surrender would bring great shame upon himself and his family,thought of as the worst possible family, fate for a Japanese soldier.

          The soldier lived in the jungle for 27 years,several of those years in complete solitude,surviving on river eels,rats,frogs,fruits & nuts.Yokoi built his own shelter by digging a cave near a waterfall & covering its walls using bamboo & reeds for support . Prior to the war,he worked as a tailor,which equipment him the skills that helped him survive in the wild,such as building shelter or making clothes.

                                  

             

           Guam, a 200-square-mile island in the western pacific, became a U.S. possession in 1898 after the Spanish-American War,in 1941 ,the Japanese occupation ,U.S.  forces retook Guam. It was  at this time that Yokoi, left behind by the retreating Japanese forces,went into hiding rather than surrender to the Americans.In the jungles of Guam ,he carved survival tools and for the next three decades waited for the return of the Japanese and his next orders. After he was discovered in 1972 ,he was  finally discharged and sent home to Japan ,where he was hailed as a National hero. He subsequently married and returned to Guam for his honeymoon.His handcrafted survival tools and threadbare uniform are on display in the Guam Museam in Agana.

           On the evening of 24 January,1972 , Yokoi was discovered by two local men checking Shrimap traps along a small river on Taloffo.They had assumed Yokoi was a villager from Taloffo, but he thought his life was in danger and attacked them.They managed to subdue him & carried him out of the jungle.

                         

             After a whirlwind media tour of Japan,he married & selthed down in rural Aichi prefecture.He was featured in a 1977 documentry film -called Yokoi & his twenty-eight years of secret life on Guam.

       He eventually received the equivalent of US $300 in back pay & a small pension.Yokoi died in 1997 of a heart attack at the age of 82.

                     

    Although he never met Emperor Hirohito,while visiting the grounds of the imperial place,Yokoi said, ”Your Majesties,I have return home …….. I deeply regret that I could not serve you well.The world has certainly changed, but my determination to serve you will never change.

    

                                                      (Suvendu Singha.)

Thank You so much dear readers

Best wishes  from

Suvendu Singha,India,Odisha,Balasore.