What are Japanese stragglers?

true in yano mommy right. I wouldn't want to be confused with a comic strip purse word, though, which is also random punctuations. Yes, it is it random? Well, I don't know. I don't think each one signifies a letter, does it. I've driven myself mad trying to find a pattern. There's one in there somewhere, right, Yeah, I'm like the guy from Pie. Yeah, so, Chuck, you know much about World War Two, you know, Josh, I'm the hugest history

buff when it comes to the wars. But I know a little bit about the Great One, the Great War, the Big One. I think they're both called the Great Wars. No, I think the First War was called the Great War and the second one is the War to end all wars. Who knows. Let's leave it to the listeners to correct this. Boy.

Um uh, did you know that during World War Two, towards the end, although no one realized it was towards the end yet, sure, everything was still hot and heavy, Japan's air force was actually starting to sag quite a bit. Which if you have an air force and you're a nation, the last time you want your air fleet to start showing its age is in the middle of a major war. And if you have an air force and you're not a nation, then uh, that's pretty damn cool. It is

pretty cool. You are a real threat and a rich rich man, I would say, probably woman. I mean, I think about it. Bill Gates could probably a massive private army. He probably has one, probably he can, right, Josh. The deal was, was Japan's air force was old? Really? Yeah, their fleet was old. Um, not the pilots, but the planes themselves were old. Someone outdated maybeen old pilots too, and they couldn't keep up with the newer technology that America had to offer. No, so they came up with

a very radical idea. Actually, more to the point, Vice Admiral Onishi taka Jiro came up with an idea. I don't want to call it a good idea because it sent people to their deaths. It was a good idea though, well it worked at least. So what they did, what he decided to do, was to take these aging planes and strap five and fifty pound bombs to them and then aim them right into aircraft carriers and destroyers and and you know, basically anything that you wanted blowing up

um and use them as flying bombs. Essentially, talk these pilots and going down. That was their problem. They used pilots. It's called kama kaze, which means mine wind. Let's say that together again, that's right, which is probably the coolest name for suicide I've heard of so far, except for Harrie koree, which is gut cut in slang in Japanese. Is it really? I didn't know that? Yeah. So anyway, I mean, if you we have suicide bombers today, right, Chuck, which I have to tell you, I can't wrap my

mind around that. I've yet to encounter an ideology or dogma that I can point to and be like, yes, I would kill myself for that not even the Simpsons, No, not anymore. Maybe during season seven. Okay, yeah, but that's a long time ago. Yeah, so um, we but you can explain and I've actually read a study before UM that kind of explains how suicide bombing works or why suicide bombers do what they do has nothing to do

with um religious city. Oh really no. Uh. They did as some I can't remember who did a study, but they did a survey of people who UM and they they defined religiousness or adherence to the Muslim religion UM as how often you prayed every day a daily basis, And they found that when you when you factor that in that being equal. The the real thread that showed support for suicide bombing or an aversion to suicide bombing was how often you attended mosque. So it seems to

be more of a social than a religious thing. Interesting suicide bombing, right, but still you can explain it by um it has that kind of structured framework of religion, right with the with the kama Kaze pilots that had to do more with a perverted version of the code of honor. Because this begs the question, how do you talk a man in getting into a plane and flying

himself to his death. Well, I think the you talked him into it by saying that your reward is lies in the afterlife, in the case of religion or in this case with I guess what your family name the honor of your family name, and what it was was a There there's a an eighteenth century um code of the samurai called bushy dough And what is that way of the warrior? Yes, way of the warrior? Right? Okay,

so you've got Bushi dough um. And it's this huge code of conduct that includes everything from and it was created in feudal Japan and it creates it involves everything from there's like a tenant that you don't hire an incompetent person or put them in a position of power just because they've been loyal to you for X number of years like um in this somewhere right, this code of conduct is basically it says that you self sacrifice is very important, and honor comes from death, humiliation comes

from surrender, right, disgrace if you surrender. And that's where the how did you pronounce it? I always said, Harry Carey. If Harry Carey has got harrikuri, harri cury. Uh, my girlfriends had Japanese Dude, it's like a walking I have a walking crib sheet next to me, similar concept, and that uh, death brings honor, right, But that's just part of it exactly, So there's there's all this other. Um. It's basically like how to live as a samurai, right, um,

and the samurai were noble warriors. They were definitely in Japan. They're still revered and they have been for centuries. Right. So when the Japanese government took this one facet of bushi though that you know, death death, honor comes from death, and humiliation comes from surrender. They took it and kind of pounded it into their military's head. It was kind of a twisted form of it, would say. Some historians

would call it an outright perversion of right. But it worked and that's how they got common Kazi pilots to have a real impact. I think at their debut at the the Gulf of the Battle for the Gulf of late they took out the U S. S. St. Low Um with a hundred forty four men on board, and that was the first time. By the time the Battle of Okanawa came around, I think in um three hundred planes outfitted with fifty pound bombs. We're just coming out of the sky, and what do you do because I mean,

think about it, Chuck. You've told me this before, right that if you are prepared to die, you are an indestructible enemy. If you're prepared to give your own life. That's part of war. Is like you're hoping to make it out of the battle, but you don't assume you're going to make it out of the battle. You're the

most dangerous person on the planet. And if you can line up and imagine once they started doing this and signing soldiers up pilots, that became a little easier to get the next guy in line, because you certainly didn't want to back down if you're you know, co pilot was all gung how, I don't bet with the first the first round of pilots, uh. Vice Admiral Taka Jiro was like, holy, they actually did it, you know, yeah, It's like it's gonna be easy, yeah, yea yeah, let's

line them up. So plus they tied it to the samurai and what is like cooler probably more honorable to a World War Two pilot in Japan than to be tied to the ancient samit. Yeah, it was like a resurgence of it. Absolute plus. Also, the Samurai had hands down the coolest armor of any group of warriors in history. Agreed, Even Tom Cruise looked cool as a Samurai, which is really saying that says a whole lot, all five and a half feet of them. Yeah, yeah, I think you're

being generous. Um, So this the the the perversion of bushido was also extended to the rest of the military to right. It wasn't just these common concert pilots, which is why. Um. I think five percent of the Japanese military surrendered during World War Two, not much five percent, there was I think in the Pacific, the Japanese um used to flood islands with tens of thousands of soldiers. I can't remember which island it was, but there was one. It may have been Saipan, it may have been Guam,

I can't remember. Um, there were twenty thousand Japanese soldiers on there and only ten percent surrendered on that one battle. So the rest were mostly killed, like that's just how they fought. But that was the only thing you could do. Well, yeah, because it's gonna surrender, you're forced to kill them, right, So in a lot of these battles, actually, um, you you didn't have to get killed. You could also hide right, right.

And a lot of these islands, these islands became key towards the end of World War two because the United States figured, hey, Midway and the Philippines and Guam would be great places to stage attacks on Japan. In Japan thought, hey, these are great islands of stage attacks on us. So they became kind of the focal point. Whoever owned these islands had great sway over the outcome of the war, right,

and like it switched hands here there. The Philippines were a really a key island in World two in the Pacific theater, right, So the Japanese had it for a while, and then the Allies did their own um flooding with Marines who took the Philippines from the Japanese um. And while the Japanese control the Philippines, they set up their own puppet regime, not a sign regime, not towards the Filipinos.

So the Filipinos had um. They're kind of rubbing their hands in anticipation when the Allies liberated the island because they started search parties and rooted out any um hiding Japanese soldiers and just butchered them, I think up to eighty a day for a while. Snakes. Isn't that what they called them? Yeah, yeah, that's what somebody was quoted as, right, And these uh, these islands were lousy with mountainous regions and jungles. So some of these holdouts are stragglers as

we call them, could route down and kind of disappear. Yeah, and a lot of them did, a lot of them did. And actually, interestingly enough, uh, these a lot of these Japanese stragglers are hold out to kept the whole thing out or straggling, depending on the verbue you want to use. Uh, after the war ended and refused to come down. Right, there's some really famous cases of Japanese holdouts. Yeah, there was one uh well summer a little like more heartwarming

than others. Um, definitely here there was one man who apparently was charged with securing and island off the coast of eastern Russia. So I said, defend this island. So he did so until nineteen long time after the war was over. And the nice in history is that he settled in the Ukraine. He got used to things over there and started a new family and just kind of was like, all right, well, this is my life now.

It's kind of nice over here. It was nice for his new family, not so much for his old family yet. Did you have an old family? Probably, I don't know, probably yeah, yeah, um yeah. That that is about as happy as the stragglers stories go. From there, it goes into cannibalism. Cannibalisms. One there was one group, uh it was they were actually I think some of them were civilians, but I think it was, uh, twenty men something like that.

Thirty uh so, twenty nine men and a woman. We've talked about this off the air, about this woman, what it must have been like to be the only woman among thirty. Her name was her, Her first name was Kaziko. And apparently she used to um decide that she liked one man as a boyfriend, and then we get tired of him and liked another man. And um. These people were living making milk out of or making a wine

out of coconut milk. Right, They had their own clothes, they made um they found I think a B twenty nine super Fortress crashed nearby on this mountain that they were living on, so they pillaged it and used like the the rifle springs as fish hooks. And they were doing pretty good living like Swiss family Robinson style, right, for like six years. Right. And and the woman actually when she transferred her affections, people would mysteriously vanish. So

apparently there was a lot of in fight. And I think um uh six or seven of the eleven deaths that were caused um that were attributed to the group itself were through violence. One guy turned up with thirteen stab wounds, and then at least four other guys who the woman had dated, uh, disappeared while fishing. Sure, that's what you call it when it's like, you know, love straggling style. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, just checking out

a movie. Right. Well, they they were finally convinced to come out um in what Yeah, which wasn't so bad. But there's there's a whopper. There's another guy. Well let's talk about um oh what was his name? M you're talking about him? Yeah, But I think we should do this dramatically. Let's lead up forward, all right, I think that's right for play it out, pay it out, yes, wait for it, pay it for Showichi Yokoi. He was um.

He was a soldier, a fellow holdout who was discovered fishing on a riverbank in Guam, wearing burlap pants and a tree bark shirt. Clearly a survivor, John Rambo, if you will, No, he wasn't much of a rainbow, that's true. Wait for a rambow. He's coming up. When when Yokoi got back, he basically I don't know if he admitted it or what, but he he said, I thought the war was still going on. And this is nineteen seventy two. I don't think I even said that yet. Holy cow,

this is nineteen seventy two. I was one year old, crawling around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and this guy was still holding out and he was found fishing and kind of said, uh, famously, I'm ashamed that I've returned alive. When he finally came back, and he would have left, but he knew the war was over, I think, But he he said that he was forced to stay because of shame. He did not want to return as a surrender. Oh you're right, yeah, And and he was kind of met with national shame

here there. Everybody's like, hey, glad you made it. But kid wouldn't be the worst, right, Um. In contrast to your COI was the baddest dude in World War two. Probably as a matter of fact, I invite our listeners to email us anybody who can who want, any single individual who can top the man we're about to talk about as in badness, Okay, and Josh will personally email you back and debate you on that choice. I don't I don't know about that, but this is the Rambo.

Think about it, Chuck. There can't be too many people who who exceed this guy. Now we're talking about lieutenant here, Noda, bad dude. Right. So if your Ki was just kind of hanging out fishing and ashamed of himself Onnada was doing the exact opposite. He was um staging raids on villages in the Philippines and murdering cows and and stealing stuff out of freezers and cheating. Correct, let's start at the beginning. How did you get there? He was on

what island? Chuck? He was on the island of lou Bang. I love it when you say that, Chuck. My pronunciation is stellar. Here. Uh, he was he was unaware, actually the war was over he was a case that did not no no. So they he and I think four other guys end up on lou Bang. He was twenty three at the time when they landed, and lou Bang is a Filipino island. It had an Allied presence at the time. Um. But this was prior to the Allies

just flooding the Philippines with marines and taking it from Japanese. Right. But I get the impression that lou Bang was kind of no man's lamp because he and his four man crack commando teams were tasked with going and sabotaging everything they could on lou Bang, right, And they did. They did. They blew stuff up. They I think they did something to one of the ports, the piers and things like that. Um.

And basically they're just saboteur commandos. While they were there, though, that Allied invasion happened and these guys had to skidaddle and they did into the jungle and became guerrillas. They did. They did not stop fighting. They did not fish along the river banks and get found by somebody who anybody who wanted to talk to him. Now, these guys continued carrying out the war. Yes, all five of them until

nineteen fifty when uh one of them surrendered in nineteen fifty. Yeah, and then he turned around and said he wrote a message exactly that said, hey, guys, the I've been treated very well. The war is actually over, has been for six texted them right, He's like l O L VTW war over l O L come home for sushi nel l O L exactly, I think is what the first message said. And they didn't buy it. Now they didn't.

And then they blanketed the jungle with these messages. They make copies, dropped them from the plains, and evidently they even played over loud speakers into the jungle. Hey, war over right. Well, there's a contingent, contingent of Japanese diplomats that went and use loudspeakers and say, hey dude, we're from Japan, like we're for real, the war is over for like six years. It's been over right now. Lieutenant onata Um did not buy this scene. His guys just

didn't buy it. They figured it was Allied tricks trying to get him out. Yeah, but you know, I can respect that. But it also shows that back in Japan, everybody was aware that this was going on in the bang there was a Japanese UM commando team that was still fighting World War Two several years after it was over, right, and the Japanese loved us, yeah, you know, in their very reserved way. Um. And but one by one these guys started to go down, right, Yeah, two of them.

He became separated from the remaining two evidently, and then both of those UH holdouts were killed. So now he's by himself, right, and he's still fighting this war, still holding out. Like I said, when they wanted meat, they go and murder a cow and I guess field dress it and take the meat back into the jungle. Um. Villagers retreated as spies and were shot at. Um. They

would get into firefights with the local Filipino police. Um. And I read, and this is not verified, but I read that they actually staged a raid on a local police station. This is back when there was more than just Lieutenant Nada. They raided a police station and got into a firefight to steal ammunition and guns. Okay, So flashed through the sixties, the entire decade of the sixties. Dude, go through that and go midway into the seventies to

nineteen seventy So here we are. It's nineteen seventy four. I'm three years old. It was a full decade before Ghostbusters. Correct. Yeah, unfortunately, and uh a noda a noda excuse me, is still hunkered down in fighting by himself, by himself, when a Japanese student who was I heard of this legend goes and seeks him out, right, a guy, a Japanese dropout, apparently, nor Yo Suzuki. He was kind of a wandering drifters. Yeah, he was college dropout. What better person to go talk

someone into quitting? So he nice he u. He leaves Japan and tells his friends he's going to look for Lieutenant Onata, a Panda and the Abominable Snowman in that order, and they're like, okay, alright, to leave your rent check. Yeah. Um, so this guy was not leaving rent. No, he's he

was the hippie rob of Japan exactly. So he goes um to lou Bang if the first thing he did was go to lou Bang to look for um Lieutenant Onada, who by this time, this nineteen seventy four, everyone in Japan is still aware that this guy's killing people left and right, and and and he's carrying on the war right in his fifties at this point. Yeah he uh was twenty eight years later. Yeah, um, so he's still

fighting and everyone's aware of it. And so I guess Szuki is kind of like going to make a name for himself too as being the one who gets this guy to come out. And he actually meets Sonata in the jungle and they become friends. Crazy. Yeah, this needs to be made in to a film. I can't believe it hasn't already. Nanda even wrote a memoir. Yeah, it was a best seller as far as in it. And that was different. That was an entirely different story resemblance.

That was different too. Um. So Suzuki actually meets Sonata and they become friends, right yeah, and he kind of tells him, hey man, this is the worst pinover for a long, long long time. You missed the sixties, you miss Woodstock. Uh, Disco is on the horizon, He's like, but Ghostbusters is coming because coming in a decade. Yeah. Um, And here's here's the problem. Here's the problem. And this is where the story starts to get sad. You get

the impression at this point that lieutena Onata. Lieutenant Onata is aware that the war is probably over, but he says that he can't stop fighting until his commanding officer tells him to surrender because his he was originally given orders not to kill himself. He was under no circumstances allowed to take his own life, and he wasn't to

stop until they came and got him. And so Suzuki was like, all right, let me see what I can do, goes back to Japan, finds this guy's former commanding officer who's now staged stooped over bookseller and um selling little gremlins in the alley. As as part of the Marshall Plan,

Japan didn't even have an army anymore. There's no standing army in Japan, they're not allowed to have one, right um so, But this nice bookseller uh decides to come along to lou Bang and Suzuki takes him to meet Onata, and the guy officially orders Onata to surrender put down his arms, and so after a second apparently it really sinks in and Onata is hit with the fact that he's just at twenty nine more than half of his life, twenty nine years of his life fighting a war needlessly

and killing people needlessly, killing thirty people and wounding a hundred others and god knows how many cows. Right, So he felt bad all of a sudden, Yeah, he felt like a fully felt bad, But he did come back as a national hero. Depending quite know what to do with them, because again, they're trying to move past this. They were, they stood and still staying accused of a

lot of atrocities during World War two. Um, and they've been trying to distance themselves ever since of their role in World War Two because you know, there they were definitely the losers. They had two atomic bombs dropped on him, which arguably the worst thing any group of humans ever done to another group of humans. But at the same time,

they lost another hanging out with the victors. They want to be friends with everybody, so they're distancing themselves from that, and all of a sudden, bam, here comes this guy that exemplifies everything that the Japanese Imperial military was about during World War Two. But they still treated him like a hero. The guy, and he was pardoned by Ferdinand Marcos, husband of Emelda Marcos, who famously had millions and trillions of shoes. You remember the marquess is in the Philippines.

Irony is rich in this one because o'nada didn't have any shoes. But when he was found he had his rifle, five pounds of ammunition, and a couple of hand grenades on him. Still a good thing to hang on to. That stuff, well he needed early. Of course it was an old weaponry and that no, it's in pristine shape. Still, Oh cool guy like that takes care of his gun. I can tell you. Yeah, you know what he said sadly. Yeah,

you close your article with his very poigny. And I thought when he was talking about his dead comrades who he lost years and years earlier, he said, wouldn't it have been better if I had died with them? You can imagine, man, that's so kind of a waste of life. So people have heard stories of these holdouts and Japanese soldiers being found. I know it's supposed that he found some in the eighties and then the Nine Easy a

few years ago, but we haven't found that those were substantiated. Now, Chuck and I figured out a long time ago that if you are doing research and you find a sensational story and in it it says, but they're still trying to figure out whether or not it's for real. And then there's no follow up whatsoever. Then it was a hoax ye or it wasn't real. Uh. And also, Chuck, did you want to mention Japanese stragglers in pop culture? Yeah?

I think we need to be remiss if we did not mention Gilligan's Island, which occurred to me while I was reading circles, like, wait a minute, man, I remember a Gilligan's Island episode with this, And sure enough there was an episode called sorry so Sorry my Island now and uh, I sent you the clip. Also, a racist was in true Hollywood Forum. They hired an Italian man to play a Japanese soldier through some thick glasses on him, told him to squint and talk funny. What do you

think I'd done? Ahead exactly And if you think we're being jerks ourselves, you should look it up on YouTube. That's actually a kind portrayal of what this guy said. His name was Vito Scotti, and he played on the same show a season later, played a Russian mad scientist. I remember that one casting Gilligan's Island. They weren't reaching too far. Yeah, send a six million dollar man. Yeah, do do do do do. Steve Austin was held captive by a Japanese holdout in one episode of the Six Months.

I mean, you gotta think about it. When when Onana came back to Japan. That was that was huge. It doesn't get bigger than that, right, that's like world news, big time huge, pretty pretty cool. So that's that ay? So yeah, oh yeah, you can read this article, um, which is pretty much a rehash of what Chuck and I just said one dot com I did, right, and yeah you should be proud of it. Yeah, that's in the handy search bar. What just type Japanese holdouts or

something like sure? Yeah? Uh And since I just that handy search bar, that means Chuck, it's time for the listener, Mayle, Josh. I'm gonna just call this, um funny email from Natalie who does not who definitely does not want to kill her husband. That's what I'm gonna call it. Oh, is this the pet on the back? We didn't even know it? No, this is different. Hello Chuck and Josh or Charles and Joshua. If we're going formal, we're not. I love your podcast. Have been a big fan for a while, and I

have an idea for a show. Can someone truly be framed for murder? Interesting, don't you think, Josh? Huh? Interesting? Yeah? Well, yeah, okay, we know that many have tried and failed, but there have been Has there ever been in an attempt that was successful? I know if it was successful, we wouldn't really know. Said, that's my first thing that I was going to say right back, because we wouldn't know. Let me explain why I asked this before you think I'm

trying to accomplish us an act. My husband Paul, had two separate freak accidents within the last seven months. The first one was when he was taking some items up to the attic and the spring loaded met achanism came loose and sprang up and hit him in the shoulder. Oh luckily it didn't hit him in the head and he was just badly bruised. Yeah, it probably would have killed him if he had hit him in the head. Perhaps.

The second he aimed a little more poker right. The second accident was when he dropped a floor tile on his head. Yes, a floor tile. He was cleaning his workshop garage and had put some floor tiles up on a shelf, then moved a ladder and one of the tiles came right down on top of his noggin. While he was building the shelves, he had bruised his hands and cut his fingers, so it appeared that he had

defensive wounds. He said that he could totally set me up if he had another accident and came up dead, because all of the marks all over him, and all the shows that we have recorded in our t vow would indicate that I did it. I love all the crime shows C S I and C I S and that is from Natalie and Natalie. One thing that I think you've missed in all this is typically when you frame someone from murder, you commit a murderer and you

try and blame someone else. You do not get murdered and set someone up to have police think that they killed you. Right. Well, maybe her husband hates her gut, you know, and is willing to die for that. Sure. Maybe he's a holdout maybe or a suicide bomber. So I think Natalie kind of was a little confused here. When you frame someone for murder, it's typically not something you do for your own murder. Agreed, Chuck, and sounds like your husband Paul is a bit of a klutz,

and I don't think the cops would buy that story. Well, if you're looking for Chuck and I to serve as your alibi, UM, just go ahead and send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you