World War II Ended in 1945. One Japanese Solider Kept Fighting Until 1974.
A remarkable Second World War story.
Warfare History Network [2]
Remarkably, Onoda was not the last Japanese soldier to come in from World War II. In December 1974, a holdout named Nakamura Teruo was captured on the Indonesian island of Morotai. He was not Japanese, but a Taiwanese conscript more afraid of his Japanese masters than he was of the Indonesians. Consequently, he did not receive a hero’s welcome in Japan, but returned quietly to Taiwan where his arrival highlighted the wartime activities of the so-called Takasago Volunteers.
The Japanese empire was a fine place for young Hiro Onoda. In 1939, at age 17, he hired on with a lacquerware company that posted him to Hankow (Wuhan) in Japanese-occupied China. There, he visited suppliers by day and danced the night away with obliging Chinese women.
Source URL (retrieved on March 3, 2018):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/world-war-ii-ended-1945-one-japanese-solider-kept-fighting-24710
