“The Overlook” appears on Tuesdays and Fridays. An overlook is usually a place from which one can see in many if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. There is no political or personal agenda at work here other than to tell stories that from time to time will have a particular relevance. If you enjoy the column, please let others know.
For that brief moment
When the fire-fly went out . . . O
The lonely darkness.
—Hokushi
You think it’s tough to be in quarantine in one form or another for much of the past year? Maybe a year from now you’ll look back and think, “How did I survive that without going completely bonkers?” Okay, consider if you will (cue the Rod Serling voice) the case of Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant who 49 years ago this week was discovered on the island of Guam after having been in a major self-quarantine for the previous 28 years.
Okay, the story I am about to tell is a bit of a stretch because none of us (yet) have anything like this experience. But given the Covid-19 conditions of the past year, I think when you finish reading you’ll have an inkling of of the loneliness and social isolation the main character felt.
Before World War II, the importance of Guam – an island in the Micronesia subregion of the Western Pacific Ocean -- was as a stop for U.S. ships and planes for refueling. It had been a territory of Spain for four centuries until the United States acquired it at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Forty-three years later, on December 8, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they invaded and easily took over Guam (which they renamed Omiya-jima, or Great Shrine Island). During the next 31 months approximately 10% of the island’s population of 20,000 died from being worked to death or murdered. On July 21, 1944, it was the U.S.’s turn to invade Guam. The island was deemed recaptured on August 10 after 18,000 Japanese soldiers were killed and a mere 485 surrendered. One of those not killed or captured was Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi.
He had been born in Saori, Aichi Prefecture, and was an apprentice tailor when drafted into the Japanese army in 1941, age 26. He was seemingly a loyal and competent soldier when his unit was transferred to Guam in February 1943. There was not a lot to do until the U.S. Marines arrived 17 months later. When the Americans had the island secured, they apparently did not know that 10 Japanese soldiers were hiding out in the jungle and thus no one went looking for them.
So, initially, with nine comrades, Sgt. Yokoi was not in a self-quarantine situation. But over time the 10 soldiers split up. Yokoi and two other men stuck together. They never had contact with the other seven again. In 1964, Yokoi’s two companions died in a flood, and then the Japanese sergeant was alone. He lived in a cave and created a second cave hideout after the first one was destroyed by a typhoon. (A replica of that first abode, known as “Yokoi’s Cave,” is now a tourist attraction at Talofofo Falls Resort Park on Guam.) He hunted for food at night and used native plants to make clothes and bedding and other necessities. He was completely alone for eight years.
His isolation ended on January 24, 1972. Two local men were checking their shrimp traps along a small river. Hoping to keep his whereabouts a continuing secret, Yokoi attacked them. The 57-year-old’s fighting skills were much diminished by this time and he was quickly subdued. The two men carried him out of the jungle to their house, where they fed Yokoi soup, then brought him to a local commissioner’s office where under questioning his story came out. Yokoi was given a medical exam and his first haircut in 28 years.
It turns out that Yokoi had known for 20 years that the war had ended in 1945 but, he explained, “We Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of being captured alive.” And upon his arrival in Japan, he said, “It is with much embarrassment that I return.”
In case you’re wondering, Sgt. Yokoi was not the only Japanese holdout when World War II ended. Some did not have much lasting power, like the two Imperial Navy machine gunners who surrendered on Iwo Jima in 1949, just four years after Japanese capitulation. More impressive were the four Japanese soldiers who turned themselves in on the island of Mindoro in November 1956. And Yokoi was not the last. So far, that distinction goes to Pvt. Teruo Nakamura, who, in December 1974, 29 years after the war’s end, was spotted on Morotai by an Indonesian Air Force plane and was located soon afterward.
In the years since there have been reports of other Japanese holdouts but none have materialized. Given that even an 18-year-old Japanese soldier in 1945 would be turning 94 this year, the chances of another holdout emerging are extremely slim.
With Shoichi Yokoi, one would think that given the life he had lived for 28 years, back in Japan he would be a very private person. Well, not so much. He gave press interviews and appeared on TV talk shows, got married, and was popular on the speaking circuit, though a frequent topic was how to live a life of austerity. For his extended military service, the government awarded Yokoi $300 in back pay, but at least tossed in a modest pension.
In Japan, he had been declared dead in 1955, and his mother had erected a gravestone above a plot she purchased in a cemetery in Nagoya. It was still waiting for Yokoi in 1997, when he died of a heart attack at age 82. Poignantly, he never met Emperor Hirohito, but once while visiting the Imperial Grounds, Yokoi proclaimed, “You Majesties, I have returned 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.”
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including, most recently, “Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell,” the concluding volume in the “Frontier Lawmen” trilogy. For more info, go to tomclavin.com. “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” the next collaboration with Bob Drury, will be published in April by St. Martin’s Press.