7. Shipwrecked Castaways
In June, 1944, the US Navy sank a convoy of 3 Japanese supply ships off Anatahan, a small Marianas island about 75 miles north of Saipan. 36 soldiers and sailors survived, and managed to swim to Anatahan, where they were taken in by the Japanese head of a coconut plantation and his wife.
The US military successfully invaded the Marianas in 1944, seizing the main islands and bypassing the smaller ones such as Anahatan. The Japanese on that island, lacking means of communication with their chain of command, were cut off and effectively isolated from the outside world. Matters soon grew dire on the resource-poor island, as the castaways barely managed to keep body and soul together, surviving on coconuts, lizards, bats, insects, taro, wild sugar cane, and any edible that they could find.