Japanese Holdouts from Shipwreck
Late in the war, a group of stranded survivors of a Japanese vessel sunk by the American
military found their way to Anatahan. This group was first discovered in February 1945, when
several Chamorros from Saipan were sent to the island to recover the
bodies from the crashed B-29. The Chamorros reported that there were about thirty Japanese survivors
from three Japanese ships sunk in June 1944, one of which was an Okinawan
woman. By 1951 the Japanese holdouts on the island refused
to believe that the war was over and resisted every attempt by the Navy
to remove them.
Pamphlets had been dropped informing the holdouts
that the war was over and that they should surrender, but these requests
were ignored. They lived a sparse life, eating coconuts, taro, wild
sugar cane, fish and lizards. They smoked crushed, dried papaya leaves
wrapped in the leaves of bananas and made an intoxicating beverage
known as "tuba", (coconut wine). They lived in palm frond huts with
woven floor matting of pandanus. After the crash of the B-29, the holdouts used material salvaged from the wreckage.
Personal aggravations developed as a result of being
too long in close association within a small group on a small island
and also because of tuba drinking. The presence of only one woman,
Kazuko Higa, caused great difficulty as well. Six of eleven deaths
that occurred among the holdouts were the result of violence. One
man displayed thirteen knife wounds. Ms. Higa would, from time to
time, transfer her affections between at least four of the men after
each mysteriously disappeared as a result of "being swallowed by the
waves while fishing." In July 1950, Ms. Higa went to the beach when
an American vessel appeared off shore and asked to be removed from
the island. She was taken to Saipan aboard the Miss Susie and, upon
arrival, informed authorities that the men on the island did not believe
the war was over.
Meanwhile, officials of the Japanese
government became interested in the situation on Anatahan and asked
the Navy for information "concerning the doomed and living Robinson
Crusoes who were living a primitive life on an uninhabited island",
and offered to send a ship to rescue them. The families of the Japanese
holdouts on the island of Anatahan , were contacted in Japan and requested
by the U. S. Navy to write letters advising them that the war was
over and that they should surrender. In January 1951, a message from
the Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture was delivered.
The letters were dropped by air on June
26 and finally convinced the holdouts that they should give themselves
up. Thus, six years after the end of World War II, "Operation Removal"
got underway from Saipan under the Command of James B. Johnson, USNR,
aboard the Navy Tug USS Cocopa. Lt. Commander James B. Johnson and
Mr. Ken Akatani, an interpreter, went ashore by rubber boat and formally
accepted the last surrender of World War II on the morning of June
30, 1951 which also coincided with the last day of the Naval Administration
of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
References
Saipan Oral Histories of the Pacific War page
78, 119-120.
