This is a story that starts with one war and ends with another.

Or, rather, ends with a war that, for one man, didn’t end.

But let me back up.

In February 1895, Cuba began its fight for independence from Spain. Though largely isolationist, there was growing demand for U.S. intervention in the crisis…a crisis that reached a fever pitch after the still-unexplained sinking of the American battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February 1898. It had been sent to protect U.S. citizens and property after anti-Spanish rioting in the city. What is known is that the ship sank after her forward gunpowder magazines exploded. What wasn’t known was why. Still, war-thirsty Americans were quick to blame the sinking on the Spaniards, and what ensued was an almost pathetically one-sided conflict in which the United States quickly overtook Spanish fighting forces, who had neither the army nor navy to adequately compete. The conflict was over within months, and the U.S. took possession of several Spanish territories, including a 200-square mile island in the Western Pacific known as Guam. A U.S. Navy yard was established there in 1899, and a United States Marine Corps barracks in 1901. For nearly fifty years, the island served as a station for American merchant and warships traveling to and from the Philippines.

But then another war started.

During World War II, Guam was attacked and invaded by Japan on Monday, December 8, 1941, at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor, across the International Date Line. Under Japanese occupation of Guam, which lasted for approximately 31 months, the indigenous people of Guam were subjected to forced labor, family separation, incarceration, execution, concentration camps and forced prostitution. Some historians estimate that war violence killed 10% of Guam’s then 20,000 population.

American forces finally reached the island on July 21, 1944, with troops landing on western side of the island after several weeks of pre-invasion bombardment by the U.S. Navy. After several weeks of heavy, bloody fighting, Japanese forces officially surrendered on August 10, 1944.

Well…all Japanese forces but one.

On the evening of January 24, 1972, two CHamoru hunters from Talo’fo’fo, Manuel Tolentino De Gracia and Jesus Mantanona Duenas, were checking their fish traps when they stumbled upon a man down by the river . Startled, the man charged at them after dropping a homemade net sack containing shrimp traps and reached for one of the hunters’ guns. However, weak and emaciated, the hunters quickly subdued him, and brought him out of the jungle tied and slightly bruised. As he was led through the jungle, the man asked for the soldiers to be kill him. Instead, they fed him and then took him to the commissioner’s (mayor’s) office.

The man turned out to be Shoichi Yokoi, a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army, stationed on Guam during the Japanese Occupation of the island. During the battle with American forces, Yokoi’s unit had been annihilated. Despite US leaflets and broadcasts calling for surrender as the fighting wore down, thousands of Japanese soldiers refused. It took months to flush out the remaining troops; thousands were killed, hundreds more captured. Sergeant Yokoi, the apparent last of these, wasn’t discovered until 28 years after the official surrender of Guam, 27 years after the end of the war, and 17 years after the Japanese government had him declared dead.

Yokoi’s is a story of remarkable survival. He told the commissioner that he was originally one of ten who had escaped into the jungle after the U.S. invasion, but all the others had since passed on. Before his stint in the army, he had been a tailor, and so he was able to weave hibiscus bark fiber together to make cloth and to sew them into garments he could wear. In the early months after the war, Yokoi and his ten companions learned how to catch, acquire and process local foods from the surrounding environment. They made shoes from materials found in piles of war wreckage. Eventually, they began making their own footwear, such as sandals woven from plant fibers, and even began repairing their clothes with dried toad skins. Three of the group eventually were shot and killed by patrolling American soldiers; two left on their own volition; and tension among the rest divided them into smaller groups.

By 1946, from the original ten holdouts, Yokoi remained with only two other soldiers, Shichi Mikio and Nakahata Satoshi, for several years until the three separated, leaving Yokoi alone for a year. They returned to live with each other around 1950, moving from place to place until they decided to build an underground cave. After several attempts to dig a suitable place–and several residences later–Yokoi finally left the other two in a disagreement over the preparation and storage of food. Recounting this experience, he said, “We dug a cave in a bamboo thicket, but after a few months our food ran out. The others moved to a new hiding place where there was more food. We visited each other.” The three agreed they should limit their contact with each other to avoid being detected.

Yokoi took three months to construct his cave about 500 meters away from the one he left behind. The interior of Yokoi’s cave was about three feet high and nine feet long, and about seven feet underground. The cave was supported by strong bamboo canes, and was accessible through a narrow, concealed hole with a ladder. The floors and walls were covered with bamboo and he even constructed an indoor toilet. The other two soldiers had been his only human contact until about eight years before he was captured, when he found them dead, presumably of starvation. He buried his former companions in a cave which he revealed to officials after he was captured.

Yokoi himself lived on shrimp, fish, river eels, toads, rats and wild pigs and jungle vegetation such as coconuts, breadfruit, papayas. He even learned how to process fadang or federico nuts, which are toxic if not processed correctly. He bathed frequently and avoided getting lice or ringworm or other infections. He moved only at night, covered by darkness and the thick jungle growth.

When Yokoi was captured, his cave was found to contain a shelf which held handmade utensils, rusted metal food and water containers and handmade traps. Two grenades and a 155mm artillery shell were the only weapons, and Yokoi’s rusty and useless rifle, which he had hoped to present to the Japanese Emperor Hirohito.

But, equally as astonishing as the “how” behind Yokoi’s survival is the “why.” Why would he have remained in the jungle even though he himself admitted he knew the war was over?

Japanese soldiers had been trained that death was preferred to the disgrace of being captured alive. Despite the cessation of hostilities, Yokoi was unable to shake the shame that went along with the Japanese defeat at Guam. He had failed. Not only that, he had survived. Those two facts, he believed, were unforgivable.

Perhaps most telling to Yokoi’s state of mind were the words he spoke when he returned to Japan in February 1972. Though treated to a hero’s welcome, he appeared forlorn and bewildered, uttering this phrase, which was broadcast nationally:

“It is with much embarrassment that I return.”