Upon his return to Japan, “he stirred widespread soul-searching … about whether he represented the best impulses of the national spirit or the silliest.” Kristof for the New York Times in 1997, when Yokoi died of a heart attack at age 82.

“He was the epitome of prewar values of diligence, loyalty to the emperor and ganbaru, a ubiquitous Japanese word that roughly means to slog on tenaciously through tough times,” wrote Nicholas D. Yokoi, who only rejoined society after being overpowered by two local fishermen in January 1972, was one of the last stragglers to surrender, offering an extreme example of the Japanese Bushidō philosophy’s emphasis on honor and self-sacrifice. Though the Allies captured or killed the majority of these holdouts within a few months, some 130 remained in hiding by the end of World War II in September 1945. According to historian Robert Rogers, Yokoi was one of around 5,000 Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender to the Allies after the Battle of Guam, preferring life on the lam to the shame of being detained as a prisoner of war. Then 56, Yokoi had spent the past 27 years eking out a meager existence in the jungles of Guam, where he’d fled to evade capture following American forces’ seizure of the island in August 1944. When Japanese sergeant Shoichi Yokoi returned to his home country after almost three decades in hiding, his initial reaction was one of contrition: “It is with much embarrassment that I return.”

Japanese tank battles ww2