We all know that the War of Resistance Against Japan was a major component of the Second World War. In the long fourteen years, our anti-Japanese fighters went through a difficult battle process, and finally won the victory and drove out the hateful enemy.
But in the end we won, the evils committed to our country by the hateful aggressors, the innocent souls they killed, are something we can never let go of.
The event to be told this time took place in the Pacific Theater at the same time as the War of Resistance, and the protagonist of the incident was a soldier of the Japanese army. As you may know, after the surrender of Japan, all their personnel in the major battlefields were evacuated one after another, and as a defeated country, they had no reason to continue to stay. But the soldier spent another 27 years on the battlefield after the army was withdrawn.
Who is this soldier? Why didn't he leave with the big troops?
The soldier's name was Shoichi Yokoi. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan. In 1944, Shoichi Yokoi and other comrades were sent to Guam as a death squad to fight the U.S. Army. Knowing that Japan's defeat was decided, the soldiers' momentum was low.
In the face of a powerful enemy, the army is full of trepidation, and the commander is afraid of facing strict punishment after returning home, so he still wants to make a final struggle on the battlefield. However, in 1944, the U.S. army began to attack the Japanese fiercely, first taking the important strategic defense base Saipan, and then continuing to attack Guam. In the face of the strong offensive of the American army, the Japanese army was gradually defeated and retreated, and the defense line was easily broken by the American army.
In this case a lot of people want to surrender. However, once surrendered, he was sentenced to death after returning to china according to the regulations of the time. In this situation where the advance and retreat are all death, Yokoshima chose to escape, he ran into a jungle, into the mountains.
Second, in the more than twenty years of living in the mountains, what did he rely on to survive?
After hiding in the mountains, Yokoi first needed a hiding place, but there were no tools around him, so he dug a cave with his gun. He also used the hidden knowledge of the army to place a lot of dead branches and leaves at the mouth of the cave, hiding the mouth of the cave, and when he was in the cave, he pointed the muzzle of the gun at the road up the mountain to prevent anyone from coming up and finding him.
After having a place to live, the next thing that needs to be solved is food, there are many wild fruits to eat on this mountain, and at first Yokoi ate wild fruits as food. But wild fruits don't always exist, it depends on the season, and after the plants have been eaten, he began to set his sights on the animals.
From time to time there are rats, hares, and snakes in the mountains. So after the wild fruit was eaten, he began to eat these wild meats. These living creatures were not easy to catch, and after a long time, he actually became very good at hunting.
In the more than twenty years on the mountain, has no one found him?
The truth is that no one really found him until 1971. One might wonder if he didn't know that Japan had surrendered? He actually knew, but he didn't believe it. After Japan's surrender, the U.S. military threw leaflets into the area, saying that Japan had surrendered, but he thought that the U.S. military wanted to trick him out, so he did not believe it.
He continued to live like a savage in the mountains until 27 years later, in 1971, when he was discovered by local hunters, after which his existence was exposed and he returned to Japan. He had expected to face trial when he returned home, but he was greeted with heroic treatment, and the newspapers of the time portrayed him as "the emperor's last soldier" and enjoyed great honors.
So there were a lot of women who favored him, and then he married a young woman in her 20s in her 50s, but eventually divorced shortly after that and didn't remarry after that. It was not until 1997 that he died at the age of 82, ending his story-like life.