Shoichi Yokoi

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Shoichi Yokoi
March 31, 1915 - September 22, 1997
Place of birth	Saori, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service/branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1941 - 1972
Battles/wars	Guam

Shoichi Yokoi (Japanese: 横井庄一 Yokoi Shōichi), (March 31, 1915–September 22, 1997) was a Japanese soldier and, later, celebrity. Born in Saori, Aichi Prefecture, he was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941 and sent to Guam shortly thereafter. In 1944, as American forces reconquered the island, Yokoi went into hiding.

Yokoi hunted primarily at night and used much of the native plants to form clothes, bedding, and storage implements, which he carefully hid in his cave. Many of his items are on display at the public library in Hagåtña, Guam. Yokoi feared harsh reprisals if he fell into the hands of the residents of Guam, due to the cruel treatment that the occupational Japanese Army had meted out during the occupation of Guam.^[1] For twenty-eight years, he hid in an underground jungle cave, fearing to come out of hiding even after finding leaflets declaring that World War II had ended. This has therefore made him the third-to-last Japanese soldier to surrender after the war, before Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura.

On the evening of January 24, 1972, Yokoi was discovered in the jungles of Talofofo by Jesus Duenas and Manuel DeGracia, two local men who were checking their shrimp traps along a local river. They had initially assumed that Yokoi was a villager from Talofofo, but managed to surprise and subdue him, carrying him out of the jungle with minor bruising.^[2]^[3]

"It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive," he said upon his return to Japan, carrying his rusted rifle at his side.^{[citation needed]} The remark would later become a popular saying in Japanese.^{[citation needed]}

Visitors to Guam can take a short ropeway ride to "Yokoi's Cave," a tourist attraction/ monument to Yokoi's life located on the site of the original cave at Talafofo Falls Resort Park. The replica cave itself is sealed off; only the entrance and airhole are visible.

After a whirlwind media tour of Japan, he married and settled down in rural Aichi Prefecture. Having lived alone in a cave for twenty-eight years, Yokoi became a popular television personality, and an advocate of austere living. He was featured in a 1977 documentary called Yokoi and His Twenty-Eight Years of Secret Life on Guam. He would eventually receive the equivalent of $300 in back pay, along with a small pension.

In 1991, he received an audience with Emperor Akihito. He considered the meeting the greatest honor of his life. He had even prepared a speech of regret to read to the emperor. Months later, Yokoi told a Japanese journalist that he had in fact had a deeply personal reason for remaining isolated:

"I had a tough childhood, among many unkind relatives," he explained. "I stuck to the jungle because I wanted to get even with them."

Yokoi died in 1997 of a heart attack at the age of 82. He was buried at a Nagoya cemetery, under a gravestone that was initially commissioned by his mother in 1955.