Shoichi Yokoi

was a Japanese soldier who served as a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during the Second World War and was one of the last four Japanese holdouts to be found after the end of hostilities in 1945. He was discovered in the jungles of Guam on 24 January 1972, almost 28 years after U.S. forces had regained control of the island in 1944.

Biography Yokoi was born in Saori, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. He was an apprentice tailor when he was conscripted in 1941.

Initially, Yokoi served with the 29th Infantry Division in Manchukuo. In 1943, he was transferred to the 38th Regiment in the Mariana Islands and arrived on Guam in February 1943. When American forces captured the island in the 1944 Battle of Guam, Yokoi went into hiding with nine other Japanese soldiers. Seven of the original ten eventually moved away and only three remained in the region. These men separated, but visited each other periodically until about 1964, when the other two died in a flood. They had assumed Yokoi was a villager from Talofofo, but he thought his life was in danger and attacked them.

"It is with much embarrassment that I return", he said upon his return to Japan in March 1972. The remark quickly became a popular saying in Japan. He had known since 1952 that World War II had ended, but feared coming out of hiding, explaining: "We Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive."

Yokoi died in 1997 of a heart attack at the age of 82.