8. The First Famous Japanese Holdout
When Japan threw in the towel and surrendered in 1945, millions of her soldiers, sailors, and airmen were spread out across the territories then still under Japanese occupation in Asia and the Pacific. Most of them laid down their arms and surrendered, but a minority did not. Whether they did not receive the orders to surrender – communications had gone to hell by war’s end – or whether they got the orders but did not believe them, thousands of Japanese refused to give up.
Thus was born the trope of the Japanese holdouts, hiding in jungle-covered islands. Of those, Imperial Japanese Army Captain Sakae Oba’s holdout was relatively brief compared to others, some of whom kept fighting for decades. However, Oba’s holdout was the first that captured widespread media and public attention, and thus introduced the trope of Japanese bitter enders to popular culture.