4. Teruo Nakamura Was Well Suited to Hiding in the Jungle
By the time Japan surrendered, Nakamura and his remaining comrades were deep in Morotai’s jungle, cut off from communications with their chain of command, with no means of receiving official notice of war’s end. Like other holdouts, they dismissed airdropped leaflets, advising of war’s end, as fake news and enemy propaganda. Nakamura stayed with his steadily dwindling group until 1956, when he set off on his own and built himself a hut inside a small field that he hacked out of the rainforest, and in which he grew tubers and bananas to supplement his diet. His aboriginal tribal upbringing made him particularly self-sufficient and capable of surviving in the wilds.