Cecil says its true that some Japanese soldiers didn’t surrended until the 1970’s and maybe even 1980. This seems so strange to me, and hard to believe.
How did they survive 30 years or so on islands? Were they by themselves or did they join native tribes and people? Didn’t they come into contact with natives who could tell them the war was over?
Did they lose sense of time? That is, did they know all those years had gone by? Wouldn’t they think the war was over after a few years? They weren’t helping their side by staying isolated. If they thought the war was still going, they should have tried to re-join their forces.
I already posted this reply in Jab’s thread, but it seems this is a more appropriate thread for it. So I’m C&Ping it here:
I could swear I saw a documentary on Japan’s “stay-behind soldiers”, over the weekend on the History Channel, but I can’t find a lising for it on their homepage or in the TV guide.
Assuming I’m not imagining things, this show stated that Onoda and a private who returned from an island in Indonesia were the last to be discovered. Cecil says he has definite knowledge of a soldier who surrendered in the Philippines in 1980. Who was he and why didn’t the show mention him?
Also, I wonder (like Curious George) how many of these soldiers were really abiding by the Bushido code. Sounds like a pretty good alibi for a deserter shacking up with a Guamanian or Filipino girlfriend.
I’m replying to the “how Jeeps got their name” part of the question. One physical feature of Eugene the Jeep was (like Pluto) a whip-like tail that stood straight up. This resembled the whip antenna that the early Jeeps mounted on their rear bumper, and was a factor in the name.
I always love when Americans find it difficult to accept that people from other cultures can act differently than Americans would. :rolleyes:
In case the message was lost in Cecil’s answer, let’s repeat: Japanese soldiers were trained differently from American soldiers; Japanese soldiers came from a different culture than American soldiers; Japanese culture views the issues involved in a different way from American culture.
Actually, I don’t find it to hard to accept the idea of someone hiding out for years in a remote wilderness-like area skeptical of any attempt to be convinced that things are not as one seems: Montana is filled with such people.
Just replying to copy a link that was posted in the prior thread on this topic.
Thought it was very interesting.
If you click on the links there’s more information on the holdouts. http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/list.html
Note that Sig Signorino’s cartoon depicts a man sewing something?
Probably forgot to account for leap years.
There’s a lot more on that page, but that takes care of what I felt were your most important questions. One thing in that page I found interesting was this: Onoda claims the Japanese knew that America was working to build the atomic bomb about six months before one was first exploded at White Sands, New Mexico.
So you have to wonder why they were surprised when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or maybe they didn’t believe we’d actually use them? (Sounds like a good Great Debates topic.)
Ok. It’s a quiet evening at the lab.
The history link off the main site also explores their mentality. Women weeping in shame because their husbands surrendered rather then commit suicide?
Woohoo! Found more information on that site.
Dunno about that sunk sub, but apparently a Nazi sub was captured with 1200 pounds of uranium oxide onboard, bound for Japan.
When I was in Guam some buddies and I went to the water pool Shoichi Yokoi lived at until 1972. It was a pretty nice place. Had a nice waterfall and there was a lot of wild life around he could eat.
Guam is a pretty small island, it might seem suprising that Yokoi wouldn’t see anyone for that long. But the spot he chose was really inaccessible. The pool is in a small valley with really steep walls, and the jungle is so thick that no one would have noticed the pool until they were practically standing on it.
I’d be interested in hearing about the first contact these soldiers had with the outside world after so long. I bet it’s an interesting story.
