fat tony
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
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Japanese Soldiers on the lam from the authorities :eek:
- Thread starter fat tony
- Start date
Old story. Might still be one or two holdouts, out there.
Gives you some idea of the kind of soldiers, the Allies were fighting. Battles with the Japs were always noteworthy, for the few number, who surrendered.Grizz
On the flip side there are rumours of gereatric ex-Brit/US POWs who escaped from the Germans or went "on the trot" in Italy, married village women, and never bothered to report back. Whiling away the yrs under the Tuscan sun raising bambinos and drinking grappa would be preferable to toughing it out on some Pacific island stinkhole.
The one that I recall reading about in the news was Hiroo Onoda. Still had his sword and Type 99 with him. Another holdout with him had been killed in a shootout with the Phillipine police not long before Onoda himself gave up.
He was discovered by a Japanese tourist who went to find stragglers. Remarkably, Onoda's old CO was still alive and went there to give Onoda his surrender order.
Onoda went on to write a book called "No Surrender: My thirty year war".
He was discovered by a Japanese tourist who went to find stragglers. Remarkably, Onoda's old CO was still alive and went there to give Onoda his surrender order.
Onoda went on to write a book called "No Surrender: My thirty year war".
Chin Peng leader of the CT's in Malaysia, mentioned in his book that approx 200 Japanese soldiers fought with the CT's. Upon the first round of peace talks, the Japaneses were considered an embarassment and were murdered in the jungle by their CT comrades.
Greenhorse six
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Ishinosuke Uwano ,This guy was found in the Ukraine like 63 years later, one of 600,000 Japanese P.O.W.s the Soviets captured .
Funny how many prisoners the Soviets captured of the Japanese when the Americans captured hardly none. But the war was already lost for a long time when the Soviets declared war on Japan.
fat tony
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
The Kwantung army was composed of inexperienced conscripts by the time the Soviets ground them into the dirt. That arm of the Japanese forces was once elite, but was slowly stripped of it's best servicemen who were sent to fight in the Pacific campaign along with their best weapons and equipment.
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They weren't hiding from combat, just figured eventually they'd be getting their orders. Some even carried on guerilla warfare as long as their resources permitted. Surrender was the ultimate disgrace and even surrendered weapons generally had the Mum, on the receiver defaced, since it was the emperor's symbol. A Jap rifle, with an intact mum, generally means it's owner did not give it up willingly.
Pretty tough for the Western mind to understand their way of thinking. Grizz
I suspect most of them knew the war was over but just didn't want to go back. Maybe it avoided the hara-kiri thing.
Some, like Hiroo Onoda, were ordered to stay alive for specific missions.
