Talk:Japanese holdout

I'm omitting this paragraph:
In 2005 two men were discovered living on Mindanao Island in the Philippines who were believed to be Japanese soldiers left behind after World War II. Their claims are being investigated. However it seems likely that they were aware of the end of the war, but chose not to return home for other reasons, possibly because they feared punishment for desertion.

Last edited by Brandon Ngai, April 22 2006


 * It’s a fake story. You can check the external link on that article or visit this history thread:
 * http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=78498
 * Apparently, someone “recognized” the Mindanao resident as a lost Japanese soldier and the news media hyped the story up or got excited by the story because they are still missing soldiers in WW2. Then when they did a background check on said person when they went over there, they realized it a terrible mistake. It’s probably similar to stories being hyped up about American P.O.W.’s from the Vietnam War and Korean War rumored to be still alive in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Even though the Vietnamese government is more open in helping American veterans and families find any missing servicemen. Vietnamese are missing a lot of their own people also both civilians and military. --James 23:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Good call!

-Brandon

Fumio Nakahira? (supposedly found in 1980)
Can anyone find a news story or anything about this guy? All I can find on the Internet is the same one-sentence line repeated everywhere. The BBC story on the hoax mentioned above says that the last holdouts were found in the 70's, which suggests that this may have been a hoax or something as well, or possibly not a real holdout like the ones with the Thai rebels. KarlM 05:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You are quite right. After filtering out the Wikipedia mirrors, there is no reliable sources on this Fumio Nakahira. I have removed the name from the article, and it should stay removed until a credible source can be found. 70.20.175.189 18:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the name may have been misspelled in whatever website first popularized this story. Searching Google News for Fumio Nakahara turns up a few articles about a Japanese holdout in the Philippines in 1980. However, only one of these news articles actually indicates that Nakahara was found - the others are all about rumors and/or the hunt for this soldier. 71.162.227.200 (talk) 12:17, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * there is what purports to be video of him here from British Pathe. W guice (talk) 04:28, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Article incomplete!
Seems obvious there are a lot of Japanese "holdouts" missing in this article: http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/registry.html That list is not complete either, see for instance Ishinosuke_Uwano /dynggrep of Sweden, 090121 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.52.62.143 (talk) 01:09, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Major Igawa, Major Ishii
Major Igawa and Major Ishii are Vitnam Indepedence war volunteers. My translation skill is not well, so cite Japanese texts.

Tokyo foundation research report (2005)

http://nippon.zaidan.info/seikabutsu/2005/01036/pdf/0001.pdf

ベトナム独立戦争参加日本人の事跡に基づく日越のあり方に関する研究 井川一久 大阪経済法科大学アジア太平洋研究センター客員教授

Japan-Vietnam relations, were based on the performance of Japanese volunteers in Vietnam Independence War. Kazuhisa Igawa OSAKA UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND LAW Visiting Professor

p15-16 井川少佐の一行は、プレイクに通ずる国道（山道）の中間地点で仏軍の待ち伏せ攻撃に遭った. 一行の中にいた少年兵ファン・タイン（のち人民軍少将）によると、井川少佐は人為的な倒木が道を塞いでいるのを見てジープを止め、ピストルを構えて下車し、後続のトラックに乗っていたベトミン兵全員に退避を命じた. その瞬間、前方から仏軍の機銃弾が殺到、井川少佐は兵士数人とともに戦死した（享年33）. Major Igawa and his troops were ambushed by French troops on the national road (mountain trail) to Pleiku. According to Pham Thanh (later Major General People's Army) who was a juvenile soldier then, Major Igawa found a fallen tree deliberately placed across the road and stopped his Jeep. He got off the car with a pistol in his hand. Immediately after he ordered Viet Minh troops on the following trucks to evacuate, the French troops machine-gunned from the the front of the road and Major Igawa and several soldiers were killed by the shots.(He was 33.) p29 ベトナム協会専務理事西川捨三郎の紹介している石井の元部下グエン・バン・タインの談話（1969年）によると、石井は50年5月20日、メコン・デルタで仏軍と交戦中に戦死した. According to Nguyen Van Thanh who was the formar subordinate of Major Ishii, introduced by Vietnam Association Executive Director Sutejiro Nishikawa, Ishii was killed in a battle with French troops in Mekong Delta on May 20, 1950. p29-30 青木茂は、石井が大山准尉と名乗る部下（旧第2師団第29連隊の大山正夫曹長か）とともに仏軍の地雷に触れて死んだという、かなり信憑性の高い情報を伝えている. According to Shigeru Aoki, Ishii was killed by French mine with Ohyama warrant officer (seems First Sergeant Masao Ohyama belongs to Imperial Japanese Army Second Division 29th Regiment). This imformation is highly creditable. p27 ※青木茂（旧陸軍第45教育飛行連隊曹長、山口県出身）

※Shigeru Aoki (Imperial Japanese Army 45th Training Air Regiment First Sergeant, from Yamaguchi prefecture) --Bukubku (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this. It is a useful addition to the article. Stephen B Streater (talk) 23:03, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments on this article
So is the goal of this article to be a list of holdouts, or to also discuss this phenomenon? If the latter, then this article needs to discuss the Japanese ideal of Bushido. As Ruth Benedict notes in her The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (pp. 38f), the WWII version of this ideal led to the proportion of Japanese POWs to the dead was 142 to 17,166, a ratio of 1:120, in the North Burmese campaign. "And of the 142 in the prison camps, all except a small minority were wounded or unconscious when taken." Benedict notes that for "Occidental nations" armies cannot withstand the death of a fourth to a third of their numbers before surrendering; "surrenders run about 4:1". (I suspect this ratio holds true for many other Asian countries.) The WWII version of Bushido resulted with many soldiers finding themselves faced with either hiding in the bush (no sane person seriously wants to die for a lost cause) or committing suicide by one means or another. -- llywrch (talk) 22:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Good question. I think it should do both: discuss the phenomenon, and list notable (verifiable) cases...The article does not go into much detail about the 'phenomenon' itself - and IMO the Japanese situation was rather unique (soldiers hiding out for 10-20 yrs). The reason appears to be twofold, as the article alludes to: the isolation of the islands, and Japanese military culture that 'evolved' in the 1920s-30s; the Japanese Army behavior changed a lot from the Russo-Japanese War to WW2... Benedict's book is excellent, but does not address holdouts as it was written during the war I believe. Anyway, the subject could use more info if it can be verified. Engr105th (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Misleading!
List is great, but article seriously lacks any sense of what happened all those years. How they ate, how they survived. It is my understanding that the ones in Lubang kept to themselves, only venturing into town on occasion to steal food or livestock. To say that they "kept fighting" is a bit misleading; they were more like a hermit camp, only fighting when challenged.

In fact, I seem to recall an article where a couple of them said they actually suspected the war was over, but were unsure what to do next. Article definitely gives the impression they were gung-ho warmongers actively fighting; i don't think this was the case for most.

Also...while the Japanese public/media initially saw them as heroes, the perception among the younger generation changed radically, eventually blaming the stragglers for the kind of blind devotion that got japan into the war in the first place. I believe one of them (Yokoi, i think) stated he felt "shunned" in his later years. 209.172.25.16 (talk) 08:32, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Japanese soldiers fighting for other people's armies
I have removed references to Japanese soldiers who fought in other people's armies before going home a few years after World War II ended. I have done this because I do not feel that this is what this article is about: they did not carry on fighting World War II, they took part in other conflicts before going home. That is another matter. Britmax (talk) 12:53, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Non Japanese Holdouts?
Have there been other notable non-Japanese holdouts? I understand WW2 Japan was the perfect time and place for holdouts to appear, since their tropical islands prevented information to travel freely. Still, I imagine in periods before WW1 there would have been other types of holdouts too. 86.86.215.140 (talk) 06:19, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Island hopping
The lede is a summary of the article. The exact tactics used are better detailed in the body. Alfie Gandon (talk) 10:15, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Don't sermonise, just add what you think should be in the body of the article - rather than uninformative comments. Thank you, David J Johnson (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Is sermonising what you were doing on my talk page? If that information isn't already in the body of the article, then it really has no business being in the lede. Alfie Gandon (talk) 11:08, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

More popular depictions
In addition to the ones mentioned, there were other depictions of Japanese Holdouts, some serious, some not so much. It was in TV shows in the 60s thru 80s, a trope.

Gilligan's Island - Episode: "So Sorry, My Island Now"
 * "A Japanese solder arrives on the island, thinks it's still WWII, and holds the castaways prisoner on their own island."
 * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0588094/reference


 * "The character portrayal, while humorous to some, is considered racist by others as it played upon common themes and stereotype portrayals in U.S. WWII era propaganda films and cartoons. The episode is sometimes left out of syndication rotation in some markets due to the percieved racially insensitive nature of the character."
 * https://gilligan.wikia.com/wiki/Japanese_Sailor

The Six Million Dollar Man - The Last Kamikaze:
 * "shown originally in 1975, the Bionic Man, Col. Steve Austin, recovers a nuclear bomb that accidentally has fallen into the hands of a former kamikaze pilot stranded on a small Pacific island."
 * http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/films/sixmillion/index.htm

Movies

"In The Burmese Harp, a Japanese POW is tasked by his British captors with getting a Japanese unit holed up in a cave to surrender, since Japan has surrendered and the war is over. The POW fails, the Japanese in the cave refuse to give up, and they are annihilated. The POW eventually stays in Burma as a monk, helping locate and bury all Japanese dead, vowing to only return to Japan once he's finished." https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheBurmeseHarp

Comic books

"In 'The War That Never Ended!' in Adventure Comics #255, Green Arrow and Speedy are stranded on a Pacific island that is still inhabited by Japanese soldiers who do not know that WWII is over."

"Atomic Robo: The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific has CHOKAITEN; a rogue Japanese military unit that has been waiting six years since the end of the war to unleash a devastating super weapon that will sink the North American continent."

"Parodied in one of the "Tales of Irony" in Snake & Bacon's Cartoon Cavalcade, a Japanese soldier on a Pacific island is discovered to still be fighting World War 2—by a Confederate soldier that still thinks the Civil War's on!"


 * From TV Trope page, "The Remnant"

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheRemnant

There are also movies and episodes based on the real life Japanese holdouts. There's of course, the movie titled "Holdout."
 * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5724046/reference

Hiroo Onoda's story is mentioned in "Fargo." "In 'Fargo' Episode 8, 'Who Rules the Land of Denial,' Varga tells Emmit Stussy (Ewan McGregor) the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who fought in World War II." https://www.thewrap.com/fargo-japanese-soldier-surrender-world-war-ii/
 * Ileanadu (talk) 06:41, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Soldiers who served other countries' civil wars/independence wars before going home
I am confused about how a Japanese army veteran serving with the Vietminh in the First Indochina War, or the Chinese Civil War, or Indonesian war for independence qualifies as being a "holdout". "Holdout" indicates these members of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) either did not know of or did not accept the surrender of Japan and stayed at their posts continuing to follow their last orders, continuing to fight World War II. A veteran of the IJA who joined the Vietminh in their war of independence against France wasn't doing this. The Vietminh fought against the IJA occupation forces during World War II, a former IJA member now joining the Vietminh would indicate an acceptance that Japan's war was over and moving on to serve with a different military force for a different country in a different war. The sources for the two former IJA Vietminh are in katakana, so cannot be read by most members of English Wikipedia, we cannot verify even if the Japanese source recognizes them as "holdouts" or the nearest translation of that word into Japan. Barring a secondary source in English that characterizes these two as holdouts, they should not be here. Same with the soldier who volunteered with the Indonesian independence army. 73.32.38.72 (talk) 21:39, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Soldiers who fought in Malaysian communist party
I removed the part about the two Japanese soldiers who fought in the Communist Party in Malaysia. The soldiers who fought in the Viet Minh and Indonesian Volunteer Army don't count so why should they?