A Japanese soldier who refused to surrender at the end of World War II and stayed in the jungles of Guam for 26 years has died of a heart attack, hospital officials said Tuesday.
Shoichi Yokoi, 82, became a national hero on his return to Japan in 1972 for his dramatic tale of survival and his adherence to the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army's code of never surrender.His first words upon arriving in Tokyo - "It is with much embarrassment that I return" - were broadcast nationally and instantly became a popular saying.
Yokoi, a former sergeant, was drafted into the army in 1941 and sent to northeastern China, and later to Guam. Japan occupied Guam during the war and most of its 22,000 troops were killed when U.S. troops recaptured the island in 1944.
Two local hunters discovered Yokoi in 1972 in a remote Guam jungle wearing a pair of burlap pants and a shirt that he said he had made from the bark of a tree.
He was repatriated to Japan a month later where he started life over in a country and a world he hardly knew.
Japan had then become a nation without an army, just beginning to emerge as an industrialized power. Upon his return, Yokoi, who had been reported as killed in action, was dumbfounded by the changes that had occurred since he left on a military transport more than a quarter-century earlier.
At the first news conference since his homecoming, Yokoi, surrounded by reporters and photographers after nearly three decades in complete jungle isolation, appeared bewildered and was unable to answer questions posed to him.