Forgotten Fighters by Piper

Throughout history people have been devoted to their causes and personal beliefs. Sometimes loyalty and duty can be so fierce that people will close their eyes to any conflicting "truths" that are placed before them. Believing in what you're doing so wholeheartedly that the rest of the world dissolves in your single-minded devotion can be admirable, but could also leave you in a time warp. In 1945, on September 2nd aboard the USS Missouri in the Tokyo harbor, the Japanese Empire surrendered and officially ended the war in the Pacific. Of course, soldiers in remote regions were slow to learn of this development and continued to follow their orders to combat their enemies. Some of these soldiers were so devoted to the cause that they spent decades waging war against an enemy they no longer officially had.

"Bushido is a way of dying," says the Hagakure or The Book of the Samurai, published in 1716. By this creed of samurai code, a warrior is not to surrender and has no fear of death. This is one factor in the relentless pursuit of victory by the wayward soldiers of Japan. Another impetus to fight to the death centers on Japanese prisoners from the previous war with Russia. When they returned to their island nation, these hapless soldiers were treated as outcasts for allowing themselves to be captured. Society was not the only unforgiving agency that motivated the troops. Life in the Japanese army was brutal, as referenced by letters and diaries of Japanese conscripts who were later killed in action. These documents refer to incidents of beatings and senseless assaults for trivial mistakes, such as serving a superior too slowly or using a vest as a towel. Some believe that many followed this system because they felt they had no alternative considering how angry (bordering on genocidal) the Americans were over Pearl Harbor. Basically, kill or be killed. Another motivator, of course, was pure desperation by the forces of Japan.

Loyalty to a cause is not that unusual. What is unusual is the lengths to which some of these young men followed through on their devotion. The Emperor was a God to many of these people. When the Emperor told them to fight to the death and the war could last a hundred years, many young soldiers embraced his will. It wasn't just the soldiers who followed this creed, though. Tales of mothers, with their young infants in hand, jumping off cliffs at the sight of approaching enemy soldiers, are not unique. Strong beliefs can lead to unimaginable sacrifice.

One example is Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi of the Japanese Imperial Army. Yokoi recently passed away in 1997 at the age of 82, but not before he was saved from his service to the now defunct empire. Shoichi was a tailor's apprentice who was drafted in 1941. His unit had been located on the island of Guam, in the Fena Mountain region of the upper reaches of the Talofofo River, when the Americans had landed. His unit had made a night assault on the arriving troops but they were unable to achieve victory because the Americans had managed to land tanks and were on the offensive. Some escaped to the west shore, many were killed and Sergeant Yokoi hid in the mountains instead of surrendering.
This jungle area provided Yokoi with many resources. His diet consisted of mangos, breadfruit, papaya, nuts, snails and rats, while his shelter was a cave dug out from a bamboo thicket. Being a tailor's apprentice equipped him with skills that allowed him to make clothing and footwear out of the bamboo and indigenous plant life. He managed to live like this until he was finally captured in 1972.
During his time on the island he had read a leaflet that stated the war was over, though he took it as propaganda. Avoiding capture, he patiently waited for the Japanese army to return. Surprisingly, when the two hunters captured him he was found to be in good health. When the people of Japan learned of his capture he was welcomed home as a hero and received many gifts, marriage proposals and job offers. His country was radically different than when he had left, though. Smog, the proliferation of automobiles and the modern women of Japan all left the sergeant feeling disconnected. Eventually he took a wife, a nice old-fashioned Japanese girl, and lived out his life in his country.

Another Japanese soldier of note was Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was drafted into the military in 1942, right after the United States had entered the war. He trained for guerrilla warfare in a special school and in December of 1944 was sent to the small tropical island of Lubang, about 75 miles southwest of Manila in the Philippines. His was a solo mission, and his orders were to do anything to hamper an enemy attack on the island, not to die by his own hand, and take as many years as necessary to complete the mission. When he arrived he met up with a group of Japanese soldiers, which contained officers that outranked him and prevented him from completing his mission expeditiously. By February of the next year the United States had landed and taken over the island in short order, leaving a mere handful of soldiers, including Onoda, alive and free. These men, now under the command of Onoda, took to the hills without knowing that the war would soon be ending. They avoided capture by consistently moving camp except in the rainy seasons, when no one ventured out to search for them. They subsisted off of bananas and the occasional wild game when they could risk the sound of firing a weapon.
One of these men, Private Yuichi Akatsu, actually got tired of living in this manner and left the quartet in 1949. He survived on his own for half a year before finally surrendering to the Philippine Army. Yuichi later led groups of soldiers into the mountains to find the others, and left notes informing them that the war was over but none of them believed it. The other three assumed that he was now working for the enemy and moved to a different location. Several different methods were used to let these men know that the fight was over, but they always believed it was propaganda and trickery.
In 1953, another one of the group was lost; this time to violence when a search party killed him after he had survived an earlier shoot-out with some fishermen. Even Onoda's own brother pleaded with him over a loudspeaker to give up, but the men still believed it was a trick since Onoda was too far away to see his face. Besides what they were able to acquire from the jungles, the men would also make the occasional raid on the islanders. Many islanders were wounded or killed by these "mountain bandits." The remaining two men even got a radio but refused to believe any of the propaganda being broadcast. Interestingly, they followed horse races and knew that Japan had become an industrial power. The two remaining soldiers continued their war against the island until October of 1972, when Onoda's remaining companion was killed during one of their raids. Onoda again fled into the wild and the search parties intensified, as well as a campaign to inform him of the war's end. The cycle continued for almost another year until a young Japanese student encountered him. This young fellow eventually brought one of Onoda's previous commanders to him to orally order the man to stand down. Onoda also had difficulties accepting the changes that occurred to his nation, and he took the gifts and a new wife and moved to Brazil.

Still another of these heroes is Teruo Nakamura, on the island of Morotai. Similar to the others, he managed to evade capture and hide in some local mountains for some 28 years, still believing the war was going on. Eventually, in 1973, Japanese functionaries using a loudspeaker and the old Japanese anthem lured him out. When he was informed that the war was over, he surrendered his still-working rifle and his last five bullets. The modern world turned out to be too much for Teruo, and he died a mere three years after his return home.

As you can see, dedication, motivation and fear of reprisal are powerful forces that can keep soldiers fighting for decades. It is easy to believe that these men would have lived out the entirety of their lives fighting for this cause. In the '70s, Japan began a campaign to search for these lost soldiers that time had forgotten. While we might think these scenarios make for a humorous sitcom, it is sad to think that these men spent their lives in this manner. These were valiant men who never gave up the belief that their army would return for them even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If nothing else, this shows what the human spirit is capable of and how strong certain types of motivational forces can be, not to mention denial. These examples are not isolated, either. There were over a dozen other young men who loyally served their Emperor and never gave up, and there may still be someone hiding out there today who continues to fight on. Warriors that time forgot, we salute you.