40 Facts About the Japanese Who Refused to Surrender After WWII Had Ended

40 Facts About the Japanese Who Refused to Surrender After WWII Had Ended

Khalid Elhassan - January 3, 2019

40 Facts About the Japanese Who Refused to Surrender After WWII Had Ended
Takasago Volunteers, Teruo Nakamura’s colonial unit. Wikimedia

2. Teruo Nakamura’s Holdout Earned Him No Love From the Japanese

In contrast to Hiroo Onoda whose holdout had ended a few months earlier, and who was lionized and celebrated as a paragon of conscientious devotion to duty, Nakamura garnered relatively little attention in Japan. Onoda was an ethnic Japanese citizen, while Nakamura had been a colonial soldier from what by 1974 had become the independent nation of Taiwan. Although he expressed a wish to be repatriated to Japan, Nakamura had no legal right to go there, and so was sent to Taiwan instead.

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