In August 1941, four months before the United States entered World War II, a 26-year-old tailor named Shoichi Yokoi was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army. For about two years, he served with the 29th Infantry Division in northeast China until his superiors promoted him and transferred him to Guam in the Mariana Islands.
On July 21, 1944, just over a year after Yokoi’s transfer, U.S. forces stormed the island of Guam. Admiral Chester Nimitz’s plan was to capture the Mariana Islands so the U.S. military would have airfields from which they could bomb the Japanese home islands. Yokoi and the rest of the soldiers in the Imperial Army were under strict orders never to surrender. On August 10, after 20 days of fighting, U.S. soldiers declared Guam secure.
Thousands of Japanese soldiers were killed, but less than 1,500 surrendered. Many Japanese soldiers, including Yokoi, fled into the jungle to avoid being captured. Japanese soldiers were trained to fight to the death because becoming a prisoner of war was the greatest shame a soldier could bestow upon his family back home.
Yokoi and other fleeing soldiers hid in caves and foraged for food. As per their orders, they burned their Japanese army uniforms. The only thing that Yokoi kept was a pair of scissors, a waistband his mother had embroidered, and a Japanese flag, all of which he kept hidden in the cave.
Finally, Shoichi Yokoi’s luck ran out when two hunters, Jesus Duenas and Manuel Degracia, came upon him just after nightfall as Yokoi was going to set out a homemade shrimp trap on the Talofofo River. Yokoi panicked and tried to attack them, but Jesus and Manuel trained their rifles on the Japanese soldier. Yokoi halted his attack, but he had another plan.
As the men neared Yokoi, he grabbed one of the men’s rifles but they quickly overpowered him. Despite his orders to fight to the death, there was little he could do. Yokoi was captured. At gunpoint, the hunters led him out of the dense jungle. Yokoi cried for them to kill him because he thought he would be killed either by his captives or, worse, by the Japanese if they returned him to his home country.
According to Japanese teachings, being killed on the battlefield was honorable. Being captured alive was disgraceful. Despite his pleas, the hunters marched him to a local police station.
Yokoi had nothing to fear. No one wanted to harm him. From the police station, Yokoi was taken to Guam Memorial Hospital for treatment for malnutrition and anemia. When Yokoi returned to Japan two months later, he told reporters, “I have returned although I feel shame…I want to report that I am sorry I did not serve his majesty to my satisfaction.”
He pounded on a table and insisted that “Japan lost the Pacific war because it lacked arms, warships, and planes, and not because of any lack of fighting spirit.” Rather than being ostracized by his Japanese homeland, he was a media sensation. You see, by the time Jesus and Manuel captured the Japanese soldier, World War II had ended. Shoichi Yokoi had been hiding in the jungles of Guam for 28 years.