Individuals Groups , a Japanese holdout, photo from 1937. • Captain
Sakae Ōba, who led his company of 46 men in
guerrilla actions against United States troops following the
Battle of Saipan, surrendered on December 1, 1945, three months after the war ended. • On January 1, 1946, 20 Japanese Army personnel who had been hiding in a tunnel at
Corregidor Island surrendered to a U.S. serviceman after learning the war had ended from a newspaper found while collecting water. • Lieutenant Ei Yamaguchi and his 33 soldiers emerged on
Peleliu in late March 1947, attacking the
U.S. Marine Corps detachment stationed on the island believing the war was still being fought. Reinforcements were sent in, along with a Japanese
admiral who was able to convince them that the war was over. They finally surrendered in April 1947. • On May 12, 1948, the
Associated Press reported that two unnamed Japanese soldiers had surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam the day before. • On June 27, 1951, the Associated Press reported that a Japanese
petty officer who surrendered on
Anatahan Island in the
Marianas two weeks before said that there were 18 other holdouts there. A
U.S. Navy plane that flew over the island spotted 18 Japanese soldiers on a beach waving
white flags. However, the Navy remained cautious, as the Japanese petty officer had warned that the soldiers were "well-armed and that some of them threatened to kill anyone who tried to give himself up. The leaders profess to believe that the war is still on." The Navy dispatched a seagoing
tug, the
Cocopa, to the island in hopes of picking up some or all of the soldiers without incident. After a formal surrender ceremony, all the men were retrieved. The Japanese occupation of the island inspired the
1953 Japanese film Anatahan and the
1998 novel Cage on the Sea. • In 1955, four Japanese airmen surrendered at
Hollandia in
Dutch New Guinea: Shimada Kakuo, Shimokubo Kumao, Ojima Mamoru and Jaegashi Sanzo. They were the survivors of a bigger group. • In 1956, nine soldiers were discovered and sent home from Indonesia's
Morotai island.
Alleged sightings (1981–2005) In 1981, a
Diet of Japan committee mentioned newspaper reports that holdouts were still living in the forest on
Vella Lavella in the
Solomon Islands. However, it is believed that these were hoaxes made up to lure Japanese tourists to the islands. Searches for holdouts were conducted by the Japanese government on many Pacific islands throughout the 1980s, but the information was too scant to take any further action, and the searches ended by 1989. In 1992, it was reported that a few holdouts still lived on the island of
Kolombangara, though subsequent searches were unable to find any evidence. An investigation into similar reports of holdouts on
Guadalcanal in 2001 failed to turn up evidence. It was initially assumed that the media attention scared the two men off as they disappeared and were not heard from again. Suspicions of a hoax or a kidnapping attempt later mounted as the area where the alleged soldiers emerged from is "notorious" for ransom kidnappings and attacks by Islamist separatists. It was reported by
Tokyo Shimbun on May 31, 2005, that unconfirmed information about remaining Japanese soldiers is said to be rampant in the Philippines. These reports are connected to scams tied to wealth, such as the alleged location of
Yamashita's gold and (The M Fund). It is unknown how many or if any legitimate Japanese holdouts remain today, but after over three quarters of a century since the end of the war, harsh jungle terrain, and equatorial climates, it is highly unlikely that any are still alive.
The National WWII Museum reported in 2022 that surviving veterans are "dying quickly", as those who served are now "in their 90s or older". ==See also==