2 japanese WW2 soldiers found still hiding in the phillipines

this has happened before but what do u all think the reasons are??
did the japanese army leave these people there to fend for themselves?
i have heard that a tactic used by the japanese was to place soldiers on islands in the south pacific and leave them there to cause chaos if needed.
any takes on this??

channels.aolsvc.co.uk...

That link wants me to signup for AOL..

heres another.
link

Seems there might be a little doubt regarding this story

More like to be one of two explanations. The Japanese fleeing when they realised they had lost the war and some just got left behind or Japanese solders hiding or being hidden by locals.

thx for the link spacedoubt
and no i am not an aol recruiter...

reminds me of an old sitcome i use to watch .
It all started out on a three hour tour with gilligan the skiper to a millionair and his wif a movie star the preffser and maryann .
In one epsode there was just that a WW!! japanese soldier that still though the war was on .
this is sooo unbelivebul .

I not surprised that the 2 old guys might not be anxious to run right in to a city and meet with press and all -- if you have been thinking for so long that your still hiding and that there is still reason to hide you can't just shift gears in a flash and believe anyone. How sad though -- think of all that they have missed if this is true. Family, friends, births, deaths,

This happened back in the 80's as well. Some guy named Onada was found in the Phillipinnes and still thought the war was on. Family members and such have tried to contact him but he thought they were all Allied tricks to get him. Eventually, his retired commanding officer finally flew over to him and got him out .

He wrote a book as well, although I can't recall the title exactly. I think it contained the words "Thirty Years." Could be an interesting read for the curious.

it just goes to show how much these soldiers believed in what they were doing. that is a very scary thought, that these guy were more than willing to hide out in excess of 60 years waiteing to go back into action for the emporor. frankly that shows one hell of a commitment for the cause. can you imagine yourself willing to go through the same thing? i can't.

as for the media in this. they should KNOW that these guys could not take a media mob at this time. they realy need time to adjust to life as it is now. talk about culture shock. they have been hideing for so long that they were bound to become rather hermit like, due to their only haveing each other for sso long. i wonder if they have any families to go home to? i certainly hope that they do. they need all the support and love that they can get right now. believeing in something for so long and finding out it was all for naught has got to be the hardest thing a person can face.

This also happened on the island of Guam back in the seventies.

Shoichi Yokoi

Originally posted by drogo
it just goes to show how much these soldiers believed in what they were doing. that is a very scary thought, that these guy were more than willing to hide out in excess of 60 years waiteing to go back into action for the emporor. frankly that shows one hell of a commitment for the cause. can you imagine yourself willing to go through the same thing? i can't.

It is very hard for anyone in this country to understand that much passion and commitment for their country. Very few people in America show that kind of passion and commitment for anything, except maybe sports. Yet we see this in other countries. Why?

I think that it is emotion based. When I was a recruiter for the US Navy, we were taught to "sell the Navy". If you were a good recruiter, you were likened to a successful used car salesman. ALL of our sales scripts were based on emotion. We seldom used logic, but stressed emotion. We would spin a scenario of the young fella coming home from bootcamp in his crackerjacks (uniform) and how the girls would swarm around him encouraging the person to imagine how "that" would feel.

Emotions can be strong things, using them to sell a product is not something new. Whether that product is a bowl of cereal, a religion, an idea, or a country, nothing sells better than emotion.

I've heard on TV that this is probably bogus, and that people that are on the lookout for them havent actually found anyone at all who says they've seen them.