4. ‘I Was Really Good at Hide and Seek’
When Shoichi Yokoi was asked how he had managed to hide for so long in an island as small as Guam, only two miles from a major American air base, he replied “I was really good at hide and seek“. By the time he finally arrived back in Japan, Yokoi was famous.
Despite 28 years of isolation in a Pacific jungle, his mind was still sharp, and he swiftly parlayed his celebrity into a successful media career, becoming a popular TV personality and an advocate for austere living. He 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.