Holding-Out

Japanese Holdouts:

-          The Japanese Holdouts were Japanese soldiers who were outside of Japan when World War 2 officially ended in August 1945 and who refused to believe their Emperor or their country could surrender (since they were heavily brainwashed.) Many hid in jungles or in caves for decades coming out only to attack their nonexistent enemies (usually local police forces.)  Most had surrendered by the later 1950s, but not all.

-          Teruo Nakamura (October 8, 1919 – June 15, 1979),  a Private in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War 2, was the last non-ethnically Japanese soldier (he was born in Japanese-controlled Taiwan) within the Japanese Army to surrender He officially surrendered on December 18, 1974 in Indonesia. As a private of a colonial unit, Nakamura was not entitled to pensions after a 1953 change in the law on pensions, and thus received only a minimal sum of ¥68,000 (US $227.59 at the time, now US $1,200 in 2019 for 31 years of fighting (29 of those years after World War 2 had ended in 1945.)

-          Hirō "Hiroo" Onoda (March 19, 1922 – January 16, 2014), a Second Lieutenant in the Intelligence Service of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War 2, was the last ethnically-Japanese Army soldier to surrender. He officially surrendered on March 9, 1974 in the Philippines after receiving official word from his former commandeering officer (who was a bookseller in 1974) flew down and personally ordered him to surrender.

-          The Soviet Union, and now the Russian Federation, and Japan have officially been at war since August 1945. On August 9, 1945 after the US had dropped both bombs on Hiroshima (on August 6th) and on Nagasaki (on August 9th) the USSR declared war on Japan – just time for the Soviets to invade and occupy the northern part of Korea (later North Korea) and to take over the Japanese Kuril Islands before Japan surrendered to all of the Allies except for the Soviet Union. The 117,000 Japanese citizens living in the Kuril Islands were expelled in 1946 and the Soviets incorporated the islands into the USSR. Today there are 19, 434 ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Nivkhs, Oroch, and Ainus living on the islands (this doesn’t include the Russian Military or Border Guards stationed there.) In 1956 the USSR and Japan signed a Declaration that ended the armed conflict between the two countries, but not World War 2 itself. So technically the Soviet Union/Russia and Japan have been fighting World War 2 for 74 years now.