Yokoi Shoichi (original) (raw)

Yokoi Shoichi (1915 - September 22, 1997) was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941 and sent to Guam during the Japanese occupation there. He went into hiding on Guam in 1944, when Douglas MacArthur's army liberated the island.

In January of 1972, Sergeant Yokoi was found by two hunters in a remote part of Guam, and he was repatriated to Japan a month later. After a whirlwind media tour of Japan, he was married and settled down in rural Aichi prefecture. After living alone in a cave for 27 years, Yokoi became a popular television personality, and an advocate for austere living. He was featured in a 1977 documentary called Yokoi and His Twenty-Eight Years of Secret Life on Guam.

He received an audience with Emperor Akihito in 1991, which he called the greatest honor of his life.

He died of a heart attack at the age of 82, and is now buried at a Nagoya cemetery, under a gravestone that was initially commissioned by Yokoi's mother in 1955.