Shoichi Yokoi (Yokoi Shoichi, March 31, 1915 in Saori, Aichi Prefecture - September 22, 1997) was a Japanese soldier who remained in the jungle on the island of Guam until 1972.
In 1941, he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army and sent to Guam almost immediately. In 1944, when the American armed forces seized the island, Yokoi went into hiding.
In the early days he kept carefully hidden, hunting at night and trying not to be seen during the day and using the plants of the island for food, to make clothes and to arrange a mattress for himself. sleeping, and dwelling in a hole. He feared that he would be killed if he fell into the hands of the people of Guam, because of the abuses that the Japanese had perpetrated during the war against the civilian population. For twenty-eight years he lived in hiding, refusing to give himself up even after finding loose sheets that announced the end of the Second World War.
On the afternoon of January 24, 1972, Shoichi Yokoi was discovered in the woods of Talofofo by two local hunters, Jesus Duenas and Manuel DeGracia, who were raising their shrimp traps that had been thrown into a small river in the area. At first, they took Yokoi for a native, but having recognized that he was a Japanese, they somehow managed to seize him by surprise and lead him out of the bush. Fleeing Japanese soldiers had murdered DeGracia's niece shortly after the end of the Battle of Guam and it took Duenas to convince his fellow hunter not to shoot the Japanese on the spot.
He returned to Japan carrying his rusty old rifle. He reportedly said:“It was despite extreme shame that I came back alive.” His comment subsequently became common in popular parlance.
After a media tour of Japan, he got married and settled in Aichi Prefecture. Because of his long absence for a lost cause, he became a prominent figure on Japanese television, where he regularly advocated an austere life. He is featured in the documentary Yokoi and His Twenty-Eight Years of Secret Life on Guam (1977). He received the equivalent of USD 300 as a retroactive payment, which was in addition to a small annuity.
In 1991, he met the Emperor of Japan, Akihito. He considered this meeting the greatest honor of his life. A few months later, he said he had his reasons for remaining isolated:
“I had a difficult childhood, several members of my family were mean. I stayed in the jungle to teach them a lesson. »