19. Yokoi Became a Celebrity Upon His Return
By the time Yokoi made it back to Japan, he was famous. Unlike most other castaways, he had little trouble adjusting to life in a Japan radically different from the one he had known. Despite 28 years of isolation in a Pacific jungle, his mind was still sharp, and he swiftly parleyed his celebrity into a successful media career, becoming a popular TV personality and an advocate for austere living. Shoichi Yokoi died of a heart attack in 1997, and was buried under a gravestone that had been commissioned by his mother in 1955, when he had been officially declared dead.